<<The first issue, which some are calling "the black screen of death," manifests itself on unibody MacBook Pros during game play.>>
I have a lesser version of this problem on my MacBook aluminum. ("Aluminium" for our British friends... very amused to see all the fuss over the is/are issue, as I'm a professional editor and have long been familiar with this non-issue.)
I'm using a 22-inch Dell external LCD monitor, and every so often (random intervals thus far), the Dell goes black for about 5 seconds, then snaps back on. Doesn't seem to be affecting the built-in LCD, and doesn't affect system stability... I keep on typing and eventually the display comes back and shows everything I've typed.
Another symptom: the Dell is a 1360x768 pixel display, and that's how it's set in the Monitors preference panel, but it's clearly displaying at some slightly distorted lower resolution that doesn't match what the Monitors setting says... changing resolutions and then back again has no effect. There are occasional vertical bands of pale grey running through some solid white or light grey areas, and the fonts display really badly, no matter what antialiasing settings I choose.
Clearly something is significantly wrong here. <g>
I'd love to report these symptoms to Apple to help them with troubleshooting, but Apple is aggressive about hiding any obvious way to report problems via their Support site, so I haven't been able to do so. Given that it's U.S. Thanksgiving, there's not much point trying to get through to their support lines today.
It didn't occur to me yesterday, but Finder has been having issues but it might be a GPU issue. I can use Finder but the desktop icons are frozen so I can't click on any of them. A simple relaunching of Finder fixes the issue. It's only happened a few times in the weeks I've had it so it's not something that is overly annoying, like the trackpad issue.
Just bought my MBP 2.4 CTO (with 4GB Ram and 320GB HD) today. As i play WoW, i'm going to check if the black screen issue manifests on my machine. I'll post a reply with what happens as soon as i can get my hands on it. Came directly from the store to work, so i didn't have a chance to unbox it. Btw, this is my first mac and i'me very happy to be a switcher :-P
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
I just got my alu 2.0 gHz MacBook back. Still need to investigate if the issue is gone.
I was browsing using Safari. Then I got a kernel panic. Surprised, but I thought it was just the software locking up very badly. I reset my computer, but could not boot anymore. I heared the MacBook turning off automaticly.
Separately, owners of both the new unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros are reporting wave-like video distortions while scrolling in web browsers of viewing HD content. They say the problem is common on most systems on display at Apple retail stores, but note the distortions do not appear while running Windows, which may suggest a Mac-specific NVIDIA driver issue.
Adding to that theory, other users note the problem also exists on NVIDIA-based iMacs, but does not show up on the MacBook Air with integrated Intel graphics or iMacs with ATI graphics cards.
Ok, I have a 24" imac 3.06Ghz with 4GB ram and nVidia 8800 gfx. What exactly are 'wave like' distortions as I dont see anything like this when I scroll. ??????
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
Well... I'm thinking of installing the game just to see how it runs and I think it will run faster than on my desktop pc that only has a 7600GT. However, i'll keep playing the game on my desktop pc because it runs good enough for a god game play and only on the laptop when i'm not at my place. The main goal was not getting the mbp to play WoW but to do all the other things. I still have the idea that a laptop is not a gaming machine. Yes, you have gaming laptops but they tend to be heavy, thick, big and that makes the portability questionable.
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
WoW shouldn't be all that slow on a late-model Macbook Pro... that kind of hardware far exceeds the recommended system reqs.
(Note that I don't mention the minimum or 'liar' sys reqs, as I like to call 'em. I've definitely learned from hard experience that when Blizzard says 'minimum', they mean, "It'll run, but it'll run like a drugged-up sloth" ).
It is a four-year old game, after all (release date, not players' ages).
Apple needs to improve its quality control AND transparency when there is a problem.
By the way, Mukei, it's 'hence,' not 'whence.'
Not singling you out, but judging by most forum posts I see, the state of education (or at least English grammar) in the United States must be simply atrocious. Kudos to those brave grammar queens/nazis/etc. who try to do something about it. We express our thoughts through language. The better our language ability, the clearer the expression of our thoughts and the more nuanced our thinking in general.
It's hard at this point to tell if this is a driver or HW issue. But the Inquirer was pretty much spot on with the 8600 so I would tend to believe them at this point and assume its a HW issue.
I think Apple gave a response to one forum user (apple.com forum) and told that they're working on a software patch to fix this. So that indicates that it just might be a software issue or hardware issue that can be fixed via softaware patch (ie. firmware update for 9600GT that disables/changes something).
It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm Nvidia part appears to be defective. It is not a question of yes or no, but how defective each line is, and what the failure rate for each one is. We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens per cent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs, so this is not a quibble over split hairs.
To make matters worse, Nvidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting, and it looks like Nvidia isn't keen on helping you figure it out either, that would cost too much.
Yeap. This situation looks crazy so let's just hope that it's not as bad as it seems. Apple answered to one apple.com forum member and told that a software fix is being made. In a couple of days we should know more about this mess.
WoW shouldn't be all that slow on a late-model Macbook Pro... that kind of hardware far exceeds the recommended system reqs.
The previous generation (2.16 GHz c2duo) Macbook Pro is very slow with WoW, you have to set all the graphics settings down to minimum, and limit your play time to avoid overheating the computer. The white Macbook is tortuously slow running WoW, basically unusable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TBaggins
Oh wow. An excerpt from that story:
It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm Nvidia part appears to be defective. It is not a question of yes or no, but how defective each line is, and what the failure rate for each one is. We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens per cent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs, so this is not a quibble over split hairs.
To make matters worse, Nvidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting, and it looks like Nvidia isn't keen on helping you figure it out either, that would cost too much.
...
Does this affect the 9600 that comes with the Mac Pro? Or the "GeForce 9500 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card" on my PC? It seems like I have a big exposure to Nvidia problems.
I bought my CTO MacBook Pro 2,4 ghz on Nov 21 and I have tested it with prey and Far Cry, both at very high settings and the maximum i got was 80°C from the cpu. Haven't had problems yet.
I'm not having any issue with my new macbook, despite that I am let down by the original 5400rpm hdd after trying out a WDC Scorpio Black 7200rpm hdd. I switched back to the original one because the new macbook is too nice to have any noticeable vibration for me.
Any help would be appreciated!
You might want to try the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 5400 rpm 8MB cache drive. It is 40% faster than the stock drive and uses the same power , only 1 DegC heat increment, totally silent and vibration free!. I had it in my new MBP 2.4 Unibody. Brilliant size and speed. Speed with vibration on the Scorpio Black is just not tolerated in such a nice machine!.
I just wanted the 1-2 second BLINK on external monitor fixed when using the IGP 9400M graphics. It is totally annoying, but using the 9600GT fixes this problem. My cable is DP-to-VGA, external monitor is Samsung 24in LCD. There is no difference in colour fidelity between the 2 graphics cards. But GPU temp of the 9600GT is 20 DegC higher than IGP. It also drags the CPU temp up another 5 Deg C.
IIRC some Apple official stated that they're constantly reading apple.com forums and fixing things. That might just be something they say every time but i'd like to believe they're now following closely cause of these larger scale problems people are having.
Comments
I have a lesser version of this problem on my MacBook aluminum. ("Aluminium" for our British friends... very amused to see all the fuss over the is/are issue, as I'm a professional editor and have long been familiar with this non-issue.)
I'm using a 22-inch Dell external LCD monitor, and every so often (random intervals thus far), the Dell goes black for about 5 seconds, then snaps back on. Doesn't seem to be affecting the built-in LCD, and doesn't affect system stability... I keep on typing and eventually the display comes back and shows everything I've typed.
Another symptom: the Dell is a 1360x768 pixel display, and that's how it's set in the Monitors preference panel, but it's clearly displaying at some slightly distorted lower resolution that doesn't match what the Monitors setting says... changing resolutions and then back again has no effect. There are occasional vertical bands of pale grey running through some solid white or light grey areas, and the fonts display really badly, no matter what antialiasing settings I choose.
Clearly something is significantly wrong here. <g>
I'd love to report these symptoms to Apple to help them with troubleshooting, but Apple is aggressive about hiding any obvious way to report problems via their Support site, so I haven't been able to do so. Given that it's U.S. Thanksgiving, there's not much point trying to get through to their support lines today.
Just bought my MBP 2.4 CTO (with 4GB Ram and 320GB HD) today. As i play WoW, i'm going to check if the black screen issue manifests on my machine. I'll post a reply with what happens as soon as i can get my hands on it. Came directly from the store to work, so i didn't have a chance to unbox it. Btw, this is my first mac and i'me very happy to be a switcher :-P
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
I was browsing using Safari. Then I got a kernel panic. Surprised, but I thought it was just the software locking up very badly. I reset my computer, but could not boot anymore. I heared the MacBook turning off automaticly.
Adding to that theory, other users note the problem also exists on NVIDIA-based iMacs, but does not show up on the MacBook Air with integrated Intel graphics or iMacs with ATI graphics cards.
Ok, I have a 24" imac 3.06Ghz with 4GB ram and nVidia 8800 gfx. What exactly are 'wave like' distortions as I dont see anything like this when I scroll. ??????
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
Well... I'm thinking of installing the game just to see how it runs and I think it will run faster than on my desktop pc that only has a 7600GT. However, i'll keep playing the game on my desktop pc because it runs good enough for a god game play and only on the laptop when i'm not at my place. The main goal was not getting the mbp to play WoW but to do all the other things. I still have the idea that a laptop is not a gaming machine. Yes, you have gaming laptops but they tend to be heavy, thick, big and that makes the portability questionable.
Playing games on a laptop kind of blows, even if you don't have this issue. WoW is just slow on laptops, both Mac and windows.
WoW shouldn't be all that slow on a late-model Macbook Pro... that kind of hardware far exceeds the recommended system reqs.
(Note that I don't mention the minimum or 'liar' sys reqs, as I like to call 'em. I've definitely learned from hard experience that when Blizzard says 'minimum', they mean, "It'll run, but it'll run like a drugged-up sloth"
It is a four-year old game, after all (release date, not players' ages).
...
it is a CTO coming from manufacture, so quit recent one.
And when upgrading the driver to the last one I had black screen under WAR.
But returning to the old boot camp driver hopefuly removed the crash.
Whence, I don't think last version of MBP and first are "Hardware-different"
Hope it helps.
By the way, Mukei, it's 'hence,' not 'whence.'
Not singling you out, but judging by most forum posts I see, the state of education (or at least English grammar) in the United States must be simply atrocious. Kudos to those brave grammar queens/nazis/etc. who try to do something about it. We express our thoughts through language. The better our language ability, the clearer the expression of our thoughts and the more nuanced our thinking in general.
Peace out.
Jake
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...55nm-parts-bad
I think this hasn't been posted yet... It's quite dissappointing news. I'm an owner of a new macbook pro and this definitely doesn't look too good..
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...55nm-parts-bad
Yep.
It's hard at this point to tell if this is a driver or HW issue. But the Inquirer was pretty much spot on with the 8600 so I would tend to believe them at this point and assume its a HW issue.
I think this hasn't been posted yet... It's quite dissappointing news. I'm an owner of a new macbook pro and this definitely doesn't look too good..
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...55nm-parts-bad
Oh wow.
It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm Nvidia part appears to be defective. It is not a question of yes or no, but how defective each line is, and what the failure rate for each one is. We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens per cent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs, so this is not a quibble over split hairs.
To make matters worse, Nvidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting, and it looks like Nvidia isn't keen on helping you figure it out either, that would cost too much.
...
WoW shouldn't be all that slow on a late-model Macbook Pro... that kind of hardware far exceeds the recommended system reqs.
The previous generation (2.16 GHz c2duo) Macbook Pro is very slow with WoW, you have to set all the graphics settings down to minimum, and limit your play time to avoid overheating the computer. The white Macbook is tortuously slow running WoW, basically unusable.
Oh wow.
It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm Nvidia part appears to be defective. It is not a question of yes or no, but how defective each line is, and what the failure rate for each one is. We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens per cent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs, so this is not a quibble over split hairs.
To make matters worse, Nvidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting, and it looks like Nvidia isn't keen on helping you figure it out either, that would cost too much.
...
Does this affect the 9600 that comes with the Mac Pro? Or the "GeForce 9500 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card" on my PC? It seems like I have a big exposure to Nvidia problems.
I'm not having any issue with my new macbook, despite that I am let down by the original 5400rpm hdd after trying out a WDC Scorpio Black 7200rpm hdd. I switched back to the original one because the new macbook is too nice to have any noticeable vibration for me.
Any help would be appreciated!
You might want to try the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 5400 rpm 8MB cache drive. It is 40% faster than the stock drive and uses the same power , only 1 DegC heat increment, totally silent and vibration free!. I had it in my new MBP 2.4 Unibody. Brilliant size and speed. Speed with vibration on the Scorpio Black is just not tolerated in such a nice machine!.