Hello all,
I tried searching for this scenario here, at the EA Spore forums, and the Apple support forums.
I have a 2.4GHz Aluminum Macbook, completely stock (2GB of RAM).
I've noticed that when playing Spore that the Macbook will heat up to the point where the video display will go completely dark. The game is still active on the CPU, but since there is no video, it is impossible to gracefully exit the game when this occurs. The graphic response rates seem to become slower and laggy until this failure occurs. It is most prone to this when in the Space age segment of Spore, and takes about a couple of hours to lose video. I have the current updated version of Spore for the Mac.
The Macbook is attached to a wall charger, as well as to a USB optical mouse. It is on a plastic surfaced table with nothing obstructing the back of the MacBook. I've also tried elevating the Macbook for better cooling but it doesn't seem to help.
After a hard restart, I'm noticing temps of about 70 degrees C, but the fan doesn't go beyond 2000 rpm.
(During this period, I had noticed a couple of scenarios when the Macbook was closed to sleep, it seemed to be in a thermal runaway situation even without the mouse attached. The overheating during sleep problem seems to have remedied itself when I reset the SMC. But I have to wonder if a thermal runaway has damaged something.)
So, given the above info would you say that this is due to:
A. Spore being a bit buggy (Are other folks experiencing this?) or
B. Some hardware defect with the Macbook
TIA
I tried searching for this scenario here, at the EA Spore forums, and the Apple support forums.
I have a 2.4GHz Aluminum Macbook, completely stock (2GB of RAM).
I've noticed that when playing Spore that the Macbook will heat up to the point where the video display will go completely dark. The game is still active on the CPU, but since there is no video, it is impossible to gracefully exit the game when this occurs. The graphic response rates seem to become slower and laggy until this failure occurs. It is most prone to this when in the Space age segment of Spore, and takes about a couple of hours to lose video. I have the current updated version of Spore for the Mac.
The Macbook is attached to a wall charger, as well as to a USB optical mouse. It is on a plastic surfaced table with nothing obstructing the back of the MacBook. I've also tried elevating the Macbook for better cooling but it doesn't seem to help.
After a hard restart, I'm noticing temps of about 70 degrees C, but the fan doesn't go beyond 2000 rpm.
(During this period, I had noticed a couple of scenarios when the Macbook was closed to sleep, it seemed to be in a thermal runaway situation even without the mouse attached. The overheating during sleep problem seems to have remedied itself when I reset the SMC. But I have to wonder if a thermal runaway has damaged something.)
So, given the above info would you say that this is due to:
A. Spore being a bit buggy (Are other folks experiencing this?) or
B. Some hardware defect with the Macbook
TIA
