Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

jrichman63

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
100
1
Pacifica, CA
This is a screenshot of my background of my new 27 i7 SSD iMac. Is this a bad GPU or Lion bug? The artifact disappeared after a restart.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot Artifact 2011-09-25 at 11.41.09 PM copy.jpg
    Screen Shot Artifact 2011-09-25 at 11.41.09 PM copy.jpg
    449.4 KB · Views: 165
  • Screen Shot Artifact 2011-09-25 at 11.41.09 PM closeup.jpg
    Screen Shot Artifact 2011-09-25 at 11.41.09 PM closeup.jpg
    18.2 KB · Views: 93
If you were able to take a screenshot of it, that would mean a lion issue. Otherwise, all of us wouldn't be able to see it, only you on your computer.
 
Lion bug. Happened on both 2011 27" iMacs I had (3.4ghz, 4gb, 256ssd+1tb, 6970m 2gb). It happened whenever I watched a hd video on youtube, quicktime or itunes.
 
I get the same artifact on my rig from time to time.

I suspect it's driver-related.
 
I used to get artifacts like that when my PC's GPU and vram heats up too much from over clocking. I suspect it could be an overheating issue or driver related problems like jackoatmon said.
 
Pretty sure it's not heating issues. I did a good amount of testing and managed to get artifacts under low workloads/low heats.

The reason I speculate that it's driver related is that it seems to be most easily activate by putting flash video into fullscreen mode (not the Lion native fullscreen, but a non-native one version - say a video player on a website or whatever). This points to a firmwear issue rather than a hardware issue.

Hence, I wouldn't worry about it. It will likely get fixed in some future combination of OSX/Radeon drivers.
 
OK this is good news. At least for me, because I would hate to have go though the hassle of the exchange process for my new iMac. The screen is perfect on this one.
 
I get similar artifacting. Like others stated, mostly when watching HD videos. I found that logging out and then back in corrects the issues. IMO it's a driver issue.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.