Bizzarre Macbook screen artifacting problem

[nickux]

Strange issue I'm having with my 2007 Macbook. Running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. The screen begins to glitch out whenever the OS displays the shadows around window boxes and I get these bizarre artifacts.

I made a Picasa Gallery to show all the screenshots I took demonstrating the problem. What do you think? Please help this is a very strange thing that appears to happen almost randomly. Rebooting fixes it temporarily.

http://picasaweb.google.com/nickux/MacScreenArtifacts?feat=directlink

Colleen Kelly (of TWiT fame) contacted me through Twitter and said it could possibly be an issue of the GPU overheating and/or going back. If this is true does anyone know how much this kind of thing could cost to fix? Or is my Macbook totally screwed? A real shame too it's only been 3 years.

 

[OzyOly]

Strange issue I'm having with my 2007 Macbook. Running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. The screen begins to glitch out whenever the OS displays the shadows around window boxes and I get these bizarre artifacts.

I made a Picasa Gallery to show all the screenshots I took demonstrating the problem. What do you think? Please help this is a very strange thing that appears to happen almost randomly. Rebooting fixes it temporarily.

http://picasaweb.google.com/nickux/MacScreenArtifacts?feat=directlink

Colleen Kelly (of TWiT fame) contacted me through Twitter and said it could possibly be an issue of the GPU overheating and/or going back. If this is true does anyone know how much this kind of thing could cost to fix? Or is my Macbook totally screwed? A real shame too it's only been 3 years.

Try resetting your PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379 first.

Other than that, I would say it's your graphics card overheating too.

 

[nickux]

I will reset my PRAM. The overheating seems likely given yesterday was very hot where I was operating the Mac (90 degrees F). If the GPU is overheating I wonder if it's an issue I can avoid by limiting heavy use in a hot room or if it's just doomed to fail.

 

[nickux]

update

So far I have reset the PRAM, reset the sys management, verified the disk through Disk Utility, and created another Guest account. The problem occurred on that too. I noticed it happens when I watch YouTube which is odd. That is a sure-fire way to trigger this. But I noticed it doesn't happen if I watch a Quicktime video. Very strange!