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2011 MacBook Pro Freezing under load

petrolhead360 said:
I bought a MBP 15" i7 2011 2 weeks ago and am disappointed with the performance.
Sorry no technical details as I am a fairly light user but I often get the spinning beach ball while using Finder and iTunes. Time machine is sometimes the only process I can see running backing up to a time capsule using WiFi.
I have had 1 experience of screen corruption waking from sleep and have had to reboot on a couple of occasions to reset an app from not functioning correctly. Handbrake 64 is much quicker than on my old macbook and has not crashed .


The overall performance is nothing like the reviews have said and, so far, I was happier with my 4 year old white macbook.
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I suggest a clean install. My 2.2 is lightning fast but I've had the hard freeze a few time when taxing the GPU.
 
Just going to chime in with my 15" high res 2.3ghz mbp

I've encoded several films.

Ran some terminal stress tests.

Have not run into any freezing under load.


I will say that I did reapply thermal paste with AS5 a few days after I received my laptop as well as using a scary amount of water to apply a bodyguardz skin a week after.
 
I think it should be noted that the issue isn't always consistent (unless one deliberately causes crashes using the methods outlined in the Wiki). I've also encoded films and processed RAW-files on my MBP without experiencing any crashes. It still froze twice so far when I put it under heavy load. There have to be some variables at play we're somehow not considering.
 
amoergosum said:
I just did a test with my Mac Pro (early 2009) and Macbook Pro (2011).
I started a RAW to JPEG batch conversion with Lightroom and played
a 1080p .MOV file with the VLC player.
The Mac Pro didn't have any problems with it.
The Macbook Pro (2,2Ghz, 8GB RAM) couldn't handle it...during playback the
video froze every couple of seconds.
That can't be right, can it?
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haha, I just did the same thing last night. Loaded up 1800 raw files and converted them to jpg in lightroom and watched avatar in 1080p with VLC.

No hiccups, during the entire process.

I'm on a 2011 2.0ghz w/ 8gb of ram.
 
Also, based on my observations so far, it seems the 2.0 ghz CPU is rarely, if ever, affected. This obviously doesn't make sense, since we have to assume that the whole thing is a GPU problem, but it's definitely something I've observed. Thoughts?
 
From what I have read on the Apple discussion forums, Windows 7 seems fine?

So remove OS X and install Windows on it or bootcamp it untill an EFI update comes.
 
Tyrion said:
Also, based on my observations so far, it seems the 2.0 ghz CPU is rarely, if ever, affected. This obviously doesn't make sense, since we have to assume that the whole thing is a GPU problem, but it's definitely something I've observed. Thoughts?
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Yea I noticed that too, didn't see any 2.0ghz affected... only the 2.2 and 2.3 folks.

I ran the stress tests and did a few other things as well, no hiccup.
 
I have to say though, I'm currently running the dev null test (with photobooth open, obviously), and it's been going strong for about five minutes (CPU is at 95% according to Activity Monitor), no crashes at all. This just keeps getting weirder.

EDIT: Ran the dev null test with Photobooth open for the past ten minutes - no crash. The fans were blowing at full tilt, as soon as I entered the killall-command, they slowed down.
 
Just curious. I've read this thread and the one on the Apple forum. I can understand the frustration of having the computer freezing while using the applications that you normally use. However, I wonder why it would be necessary to "make" your computer freeze just to see if it would, when you haven't experienced any freezing issues. I haven't experienced the type of "freeze" described in the post, and I'm hesitant to try to "make" it freeze. Naturally, I'd not hesitate to call Apple if it ever becomes a problem for me. I wish more people that weren't having a problem would also post a comment and I'd also like to know if the replacement machines were any better. Good luck to everyone. BTW, I have the 15 inch mbp with 2.3ghz.
 
Longtime lurker, First time poster.

Hi Macrumors,

I've just popped my Macrumors cherry.
I had to finally voice my opinion about this topic as I've had similar experiences.
My current unit is a new 13-inch: 2.7 GHz Macbook Pro.

I purchased this a few days after the launch.
At the first boot it already froze after a while and I had to conduct a manual restart.
Whilst migrating (migration assistant) between another Macbook (using WiFi) my Macbook blacked out and I had to restart it manually. After this I was unable to even boot my Mac.

"A grey screen of Death" some sort of Kernel Panic error.

I went to the Macstore and received a replacement. The new Macbook had totally bricked itself in less than 7 days!

The replacement unit has also started to play up acting incredibly slow...

On another random topic:

Why has Apple not flagged the "firewire" connection as a security flaw. At the Macstore the technician used a firewire to connect my laptop and his. He proceeded by booting my Macbook into Firewire mode and received instant access to my files. There was no need for any password. He managed to wipe/copy everything in an instant... This means that I/anybody can boot any Mac into Firewire mode and by using a Firewire cable, fully copy or delete all of their files. I felt like this was a major security issue. Is there no way to BLOCK this kind of connection?

Kind regards,

bokchoi
 
sandylp said:
Just curious. I've read this thread and the one on the Apple forum. I can understand the frustration of having the computer freezing while using the applications that you normally use. However, I wonder why it would be necessary to "make" your computer freeze just to see if it would, when you haven't experienced any freezing issues. I haven't experienced the type of "freeze" described in the post, and I'm hesitant to try to "make" it freeze. Naturally, I'd not hesitate to call Apple if it ever becomes a problem for me. I wish more people that weren't having a problem would also post a comment and I'd also like to know if the replacement machines were any better. Good luck to everyone.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the computer might just freeze when you happen to tax it rather heavily, i. e. at a moment you definitely DON'T want it to freeze. This is why it's important to show that this is a real problem that can be reproduced. Although I just happen to be unable to reproduce it using Terminal :confused:
 
Ok, was playing with the OpenGL "shark" test in chrome, and got a hard lockup after a while. (No mouse movement this time).

I was able to ssh in and "sudo reboot". After a minute or so, the fans spundown but the screen remained frozen. After another minute or two I was back at my functioning desktop.. almost didn't even realize it had restarted as I never saw the apple logo or hear any of the usual restart noises (It did, I checked the console logs). Was really really weird.

I'm sure a "shutdown -h now" would work too; both are likely a lot better for your machine/data/hdd than holding the power button!
 
I'm currently converting a 720p MKV with Handbrake, I'll let you know how it goes :D :D
 
Well I'll be holding off on the purchase of a new Macbook Pro 15" for a while. Hopefully it's just a bad driver issue and not a hardware issue, which is what it looks like.
 
I just ran the following test without any problems >>>

Running at the same time:

- batch conversion (RAW to JPEG, 21 Megapixel files) with Lightroom
- batch conversion (RAW to JPEG, 21 Megapixel files) with Photoshop
- 1080p movie with QT

Is that ok or should I run a different test?
 
I've had my MBP 2011 for two weeks and it has crashed several times whilst playing Football Manager 2011 specifically during that match part of the game which puts the computer under heavier stress.

The computer freezes, i can still move the mouse but i can't click or do anything. It forces me to shutdown the computer and restart.
 
Regarding the "running cooler for Internet" part:

I have noticed that, before the update, whenever you launch chrome or firefox the graphics card switches to the discrete one, even if you are only on the about:blank page. After the update if you do not visit pages that ostensibly needs a lot of graphics power, the card remains on the integrated one.

In my opinion this is a big improvement in their algorithms for choosing which card to use, especially for those people who do not want to install gfxcardstatus: on my macbook pro the battery barely lasts four hours on the discrete card, but 8 hours, even 9 hours, is not a problem when on the integrated card.
 
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