Saturday, March 7th 2009
Some Apple 17-inch MacBook Pros Have Failing Graphics ?
A new rainstorm may be coming on Apple's head if the following scenario becomes as real as the previous one. Numerous owners of brand new 17-inch MacBook Pro are complaining that their video cards or perhaps notebooks are failing. The new $2,799 MacBook, which was debuted in January at Macworld, features both GeForce 9600M and GeForce 9400M mobile graphics cards from NVIDIA, that switch during operation depending on the graphics load. Owners are now reporting that their laptops have started to show random green lines and artifacts on the display - a certain symptom for failing video card. Users also believe that the issue occurs only when the second card - the GeForce 9600M - turns on. Both NVIDIA and Apple had very serious problems over faulty GPUs last year. A second NVIDIA fiasco over faulty mobile graphics, won't be good at all for the company. Hopefully, this time an update from Apple will fix the issue. If not, prepare for more lawsuits on our news page. A discussion in the Apple forums was also posted, direct link here.
Sources:
DailyTech, Engadget
23 Comments on Some Apple 17-inch MacBook Pros Have Failing Graphics ?
But god damn, I love how they make you pay the 1500$ price premium for this crap.
(Or possibly in this case, a memory swapping issue)
In fact it's this EXACT same type of failure that eventually wrote off my ATI X800XT.
( That's not to dismiss nVidia's recent poor form with regard to mobile chipsets :\ )
The 15" models can only use up to 6GB of RAM, while the 17" models can go up to 8GB, so there must be a firmware revision, a slightly different chipset or something similar.
My mate has an older Acer with an 8600mGT, and his has been giving him trouble. I think he had one of the affected chips, same as another friend with an m1530. Again, the 8600mGT is fubared, but mostly usable. It's a problem with Nvidia, not Apple. I don't enjoy Apple bashing any more (and not just because I own one :P since I've seen a lot of things I'd like changed on my MBP, and wish Apple had thought of), and I must say this is probably not their fault. If it is, there'll be a fix for it soon enough.
From reading the thread on the Apple forums, it seems it might be an SMC problem in the 17" models, so I figure a quick firmware upgrade should do the trick. Other than that, it might be a heat issue. Having looked at the iFixIt tear down, the way these new unibody machines have their coolers arranged means that there are two heatpipes touching, and they both go from the graphics chip, to the northbridge, to the CPU, then split off towards the heat displacement fins that are connected to the fans, that means any and all heat is dispersed amongst all the chips. If the 17" machine is running a slightly faster GPU core clock, it could heat up more, and the heat just wouldn't escape all that easily. But if that were the case, similar problems would be seen in the 15"ers.
To Steevo, I've skimmed it now, I forgot to read it earlier after posting. I got distracted (Oooh, butterfly...).
It seems those are all problems that affect earlier models, like the ones that were still using ATi graphics (I was going to buy a used one, but I'm glad I avoided that now). Really though, I've heard of far less problems in these newer unibody models than in the older ones, so I'm quite glad I decided to get a new machine.
There's no doubt about it, Apple f***s up, but at least they tend to get around to fixing it. I have my Applecare to fall back on if a problem occurs (student discount means I got mine for a ridiculously low price, so it was a great purchase).