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Faulty 9600M cards in all new 17 inch Unibody MBPs?!

T

Tinker11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 27, 2009
1
0
Hey--
Just purchased a new 17 inch unibody MBP. Read a thread on here that there were some issues with the 9600M Graphics Cards, and when I switched to the 9600 card on my computer (System Prefs--Energy Saver--Higher Performance) TROUBLE. Green lines appeared on my screen when viewing this picture among other high-res images.

Please check out this Wallpaper:

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/details/1808/a_view_of_paradise.html

And download the 1920x1200 Resolution to check it out. I made an appointment with a Mac genius for Sunday, but would like to see how many others are having this problem.

Thank you!

*Update* My brother has the same problem with his new unibody, as does my friend. This doesn't look good...
 
You know 3 people with this issue??? Man... I already sent mine back because of the green lines issue. :-/ I hope my replacement is okay.

BTW, my issue has been reported in a few of these forums before so you've probably seen it already.

Are these issues on the 17" only? Or the 15 too?
 
Oh wow, I am selling my Uni mbp 15" to fund the 17". After reading this I am not sure if I should do it.

So is the 17" considered Rev A?
I am sure the 17" is a great machine...but reading these threads makes me think twice.
 
Is this only with the 17-inch or does this happen with the 15-inch as well? Man, things like these make not want to buy a Mac. I can stand small bugs here and there but when it's something related to the logic board, it's kind of hard to ignore it and say AppleCare or Apple will take care of it...:(
 
Work your computer a little bit with the 9600 then look for the lines.

Work your computer a little bit with the 9600 then look for the lines.

On my computer the lines were intermittent. Only showing up when the computer was being fairly heavily taxed. Lots of restarting, loading software and I've heard it happened to others when they were burning DVDs in Toast.
 
I am biting the bullet again and trying a REV. A MBP...

My first one was a CD 15" MBP... Which had the whine and kernal panics galore... APPLCARE replaced it with a C2D 15, which has some strange shocking issues to this day...


And now with my 17, I have a dead pixel, and some flickering....
Its partly my fault to accept this, but Apple really should have figured it out already! Especially, since they have been "testing since late last year"


I still support Apple fully, even with these issues because I know they make a superior product... Just some of them fall into a hole and cant get out.
Too a fully working 17 UNI soon!
 
I just downloaded it on my 17" unibody (I run the 9600 all the time), set it as my desktop, and I see no green lines at all.

I've been DJ-ing with videos using Serato Scratch Live and its Video-SL plug-in, which is an application that hits the GPU really hard. So far not seeing anything looking like GPU-related trouble, either on this new 17-inch unibody or on the 15-inch unibody I had for a month before.
 
Whoa just 2 days and so far I've heard from 8-10 people about weird screen or graphics issues on the new 17" unibody mbps...

Not good. Even since the powerbook g4 17" 1.67ghz days up to just now, the 17" notebooks were almost always flawless with no issues whatsoever or any real complaints that I've seen around here that plagued only the 15" mbps..

I hope it all gets sorted out. I wonder if it had something to do with the little shipping delay of the 17"?
 
latempete said:
Work your computer a little bit with the 9600 then look for the lines.

On my computer the lines were intermittent. Only showing up when the computer was being fairly heavily taxed. Lots of restarting, loading software and I've heard it happened to others when they were burning DVDs in Toast.
Click to expand...

I can run CoD4 and not get any problems/issues. The 9600GT hits a max temp of 85 deg C for me under stressful programs. The CPU hits a max of 92 deg C under stress based programs. The fans never reach above 50% (3800RPM) on automatic settings.

sparkie7 said:
i can't seem to replicate the problem. what am i doing wrong?
Click to expand...

I don;t have the green lines either. I run my system constantly in 9600GT with the exception of running 9400M in class for note taking. I'm always using the system on battery, even at home because I;m never at my desk. I play CoD4 @ 1920x1200 w/ High settings regularly for hours at a time (Majority of the time on Battery unless the battery gets low... ya, my Battery has gone through 10 cycles already in just a few short days) also and never had any issues with the video card.

For the flickering issue, I took my system apart and re-seated the cable for the monitor. It seems like the flickering has stopped appearing but its so recent I don't know yet. The Screenshot freeze is a software issue with OSX. It should be fixed in 10.5.7 hopefully.

If you're having issues, no matter how small, talk to apple. Posting here won't help.
 
im having the same problem

Spent 2 days loading software and testing the machine.. put it onto the 9600 chip and bam.. green lines everywhere.. I have a nice background image and its seen in there.. put it back to the 9400 chip and gone.

Surely we can't ALL have broken cards?
 
bronksy said:
Spent 2 days loading software and testing the machine.. put it onto the 9600 chip and bam.. green lines everywhere.. I have a nice background image and its seen in there.. put it back to the 9400 chip and gone.

Surely we can't ALL have broken cards?
Click to expand...

I dont have any issues at all when im running on my 9600 card in my 17" :)
 
jmark said:
I just downloaded it on my 17" unibody (I run the 9600 all the time), set it as my desktop, and I see no green lines at all.

I've been DJ-ing with videos using Serato Scratch Live and its Video-SL plug-in, which is an application that hits the GPU really hard. So far not seeing anything looking like GPU-related trouble, either on this new 17-inch unibody or on the 15-inch unibody I had for a month before.
Click to expand...
Good to know Serato runs well on the 15" , still waiting for rev B for my mobile Serato set up update though
 
just like the 8600 problem, every card is not defective. am sure there are many 17" and 15" models that are not defective..unfortunately or fortunately most people only come to the forums if they have issues.

if its true, which it prolly is anyways, then a software work around /smc ***** etc will not help in the long run and the card will finally die..

the point ive noticed from all the other forums especially http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1882489&tstart=0

is that apple has knowingly sold defective laptops...



ayeying said:
I can run CoD4 and not get any problems/issues. The 9600GT hits a max temp of 85 deg C for me under stressful programs. The CPU hits a max of 92 deg C under stress based programs. The fans never reach above 50% (3800RPM) on automatic settings.



I don;t have the green lines either. I run my system constantly in 9600GT with the exception of running 9400M in class for note taking. I'm always using the system on battery, even at home because I;m never at my desk. I play CoD4 @ 1920x1200 w/ High settings regularly for hours at a time (Majority of the time on Battery unless the battery gets low... ya, my Battery has gone through 10 cycles already in just a few short days) also and never had any issues with the video card.

For the flickering issue, I took my system apart and re-seated the cable for the monitor. It seems like the flickering has stopped appearing but its so recent I don't know yet. The Screenshot freeze is a software issue with OSX. It should be fixed in 10.5.7 hopefully.

If you're having issues, no matter how small, talk to apple. Posting here won't help.
Click to expand...
 
>>>>>>Just thought I'd update again. Even after David's solution of the SMC reset temporarily working, I decided to be more proactive about things and call Applecare.

When I got an Applecare tech on the line I repeated pretty much everything in the forum. He said he had not heard of the issue but asked me to wait on the line while he researched it. Surprisingly, when he came back on the line he informed me that Apple was aware of the issue and that the purchase date (Dec. 01 2008) fell in line with, "the faulty video cards (9600 series) that Nvidia initially released". He advised me to have my machine sent in for a logic board replacement. I let him know that others in the forum have done this and the issue remains. He agreed that this was unacceptable and that if my machine comes back and still has the issue I need to ask for a "Tier 4 replacement".

I hope this helps anybody. I haven't sent in my machine yet but I'll let you know if it comes back fixed or otherwise. If others have sent in their machines for a logic board replacement with no results I would ask for a brand new machine.
 
After all the issues that came up with the previous generation of MBP's I was really surprised that Apple chose to keep using Nvidia in the new models. I was really hoping they would go back to using ATI cards.
 
now they're gone...

I'm guessing its a heat thing because i've just opened the lid after 10 mins and the lines have gone.

I also noticed that the lines went when i changed the desktop background to a simple plain colour.

I'm wondering if its because its using an hi-res image from my Aperture library and there's some sort of issue with the file size...hmm..
 
green lines = defective video board..is it really so hard to believe ?

bronksy said:
I'm guessing its a heat thing because i've just opened the lid after 10 mins and the lines have gone.

I also noticed that the lines went when i changed the desktop background to a simple plain colour.

I'm wondering if its because its using an hi-res image from my Aperture library and there's some sort of issue with the file size...hmm..
Click to expand...
 
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