MEM ID problem causing imac hangups?

[macfly]

read this at the apple discussion forums ...later posts had tried to get users to quote their vendor ID #s and the thread was removed by apple. maybe it would help to start it here?
everyone with freezes can run system profile and report the vendor id number of the video card?

"SOME NEWS:
guys, i mentioned before i use to intern at ATI in the apple group. I contacted some people there, they finally answers. They said it has to do with the memory id on the graphics chip. They are NOT the same on all cards, they use different vendors for the memory on the graphics card. The problem occurs at boot, that's why the freezing is random. Look at the MemVendorID for those that are freezing. They should all be the same.

They also told me they working on the fix and it will be released next week. I already gave my mac in today to change the logic board and ATI chip, just wanted to let others know. "

[nvidia2008]

Certainly ATI cards are causing problems in the iMacs, the fact that it is GPU memory that may be the culprit... This kinda makes sense why some people are having major problems and some are fine.

ATI is pretty screwed right now alongside AMD. They have *got* to really start fighting back in 2008 or ... well, see my nickname... :D

Thanks for info.

Anyone with crashing iMacs please post MEMID or whatever else details on AI.

[macfly]

on that note...i had bought an ATI radeon x800xt for my g5 duo 2.0. the thing had the exact same problems and i had to send it back twice. i think it was overheating too. it still freezes occasionally , especially during the summer when its hotter inside. i just got sick of dealing with their sh*tty cusotmer service.

[macfly]

arent there a bunch of u out there with this problem?
post some numbers!

[wheelhot]

According to my fren who works at AppleCentre, he says that whenever Intel uses ATI as their graphics card, they are bound to be users who sent back thier Macs cause of freezing issue. He told me the previous ATI MacBookPro has this issue with some users.

[macfly]

According to my fren who works at AppleCentre, he says that whenever Intel uses ATI as their graphics card, they are bound to be users who sent back thier Macs cause of freezing issue. He told me the previous ATI MacBookPro has this issue with some users.

i imagine it is definitely the ATI cards. why is no one posting their info? it sounded like a million people were having this problem. help out some imac owners and post your card's details so we can see if there is any pattern to the problem!

[BrunoBruin]

why is no one posting their info?
Yeah, for all the shrieking and hair-pulling, things seem to have gone awfully quiet. :no:

Anyway, here's mine - this is after reinstalling the original iMac software and doing NO updates, which so far has given me a freeze-free computer...

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-207
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.207

[macfly]

i was just looking again on the apple support discussions and the same guy posted. it appears the info is not shown in system profiler but instead you have to run a terminal command as follows:

"ATY,MemVendorID" = <0600>
"ATY,MemRevisionID" = <0100>
I got the same as yours...

For those of you who don't know how to access this info (I just figured it out myself) here's how you find it.

Go/Utilities/Terminal/
When the window pops up, paste in the following

ioreg -l | grep ATY | grep Mem

And you should get your answer


the numbers printed above were from someone who was having the problem. it seems there might have been a bad batch of cards. running the update that apple came out with (or upgrading to leopard) changes the bios of the card irreversibly (?) so the only fix is changing the card out...dont know how true this is..just reporting what i read.