Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Need to upgrade my first gen broken Macbook. I am looking at the MBP, but this is scaring me! Hopefully all is good in another month or so
 
I wonder when Nvidia states that its the "older generation" gpu's that the 8600m GT cards from the 07' is the culprit.
 
Thats what it means. The 8400 and the 8600.

I'm just curious if they mean the 8600M GT cards that were inside any brand laptops manufactured in 2007 not 2008.

But this doesnt make sense because even since Jan to now the dell 1330 and the 1530 has been getting new motherboards with the 8400M GS card which are still failing at a high rate.

Another common sense, Nvidia doesnt want to give out the name of their specific gpu that has problems so they just release a new driver which just came out a few days ago now and just added all the 8 series name to it, which is really meant for the 8400M GS.
 
My friend, who bought a Nvidia 8600 Macbook pro the same day it was released: His Nvidia card failed 360 days after purchase. Here in Sweden, we have warranty for 365 days. Almost like Apple timed the computer to crash :).

Now we know why. It is a Nvidia problem.
It is quite a expensive repair, since they have to replace the whole logic board on the macbook pro. To be safe: Get Applecare. I don't trust Apples extended warranty.
Had a alu powerbook with Withe spots. Apple did not replace the LCD.
 
When I saw this thread I instantly thought of something that happened to my Macbook Pro a few times. When getting it back out of sleep the screen just gets all color, and is totally unreadable. A reboot fixes it every time until now, except for once. That time I had to to a repair of OS X (it killed some of my user files so I couldn't boot it up anymore).

To give you an impression of how it looked:
MacbookProWow.jpg


Could this be caused by the defective nVidia GPUs?
 
When I saw this thread I instantly thought of something that happened to my Macbook Pro a few times. When getting it back out of sleep the screen just gets all color, and is totally unreadable. A reboot fixes it every time until now, except for once. That time I had to to a repair of OS X (it killed some of my user files so I couldn't boot it up anymore).

To give you an impression of how it looked:
MacbookProWow.jpg


Could this be caused by the defective nVidia GPUs?

One thing to question is that when the mbp is asleep and if I remember correctly the mbp gets very very cool or cold.

My question is why would a graphics card have issues after a sleep when the gpu is not even being used and couldnt have overheated?

I would think this is a different issue on its own, maybe just a defective card not related to heat issues? Or just a hardware/software type of clash?
 
When I saw this thread I instantly thought of something that happened to my Macbook Pro a few times. When getting it back out of sleep the screen just gets all color, and is totally unreadable. A reboot fixes it every time until now, except for once. That time I had to to a repair of OS X (it killed some of my user files so I couldn't boot it up anymore).

To give you an impression of how it looked:
MacbookProWow.jpg


Could this be caused by the defective nVidia GPUs?
Looks pretty similar to mine, except that it happens on mine when i open up the iTunes visualizer and screen saver preferences panel, and some windows will just corrupt whenever I move/resize them..
 
I don't really know what do say, except I wouldn't worry too much about this; I think the issue here is a lot of people are expecting their computers to be defective which is a really pessimistic way of thinking; how about thinking you computer has no issues? Why keep finding ways your computer can mess up? Does this give you gratification?

Think on the bright side; it might just have affected many of their older lines like the 7-series, 6-series, 5-series, and since the 8-series is quite current, it wouldn't be a "older" product yet.
 
7-series, 6-series, 5-series, and since the 8-series is quite current, it wouldn't be a "older" product yet.

I think you are wrong on that. The 6-series and 7 series are both a over 2 years old. The 8 series is over a year old. The 8400 and the 8600 are both pretty old now. They are have to be the ones affected by it. The 8800 is also getting somewhat old now. I think you will see that the 8400 and 8600 are the ones with the problems.
 
Complete novice to all of this, so simple question

First, I have to say that I am not at all technically literate and following this thread alone has been a challenge - but I would really appreciate some advice. I was planning on buyuing a 17" MBP this weekend and then I got on this website, looking to see if there are any soon to be released updates to the machine, and came across this issue. Having read as much as I can on this topic, I still can't figure out if this is indeed a problem with the "older" units, or an ongoing problem that would affect the computer I would buy now. I am an amateur photographer and decided to change from my Dell XPS to a MBP which I'm planning on using to edit photos in Photoshop and use for Powerpoint presentations for work. I don't need to get the computer immediately, but my Dell is on its "last legs" and my extended warrantly has expired so I'm getting very nervous every time it freezes up.
So, if you were me, would you feel confident in buying a MBP this weekend or would you wait - and how long? Thanks.
 
the problem is minimal, 150 ml to 200 ml is nothing, no more than 1 ml bad gpu, and considering all the laptops out there with nvidia gpus...
also, by now apple would have released these VIDEO drivers if any macs were affected but they didnt, and also....

looking how many little responses this thread got... compared to how many mac users use these forums.., looks like apple is not affected at all by this, or we would be at page 10000 by now
 
...
So, if you were me, would you feel confident in buying a MBP this weekend or would you wait - and how long? Thanks.

Buy one right now :) Wonderful machine in both hard- and software. GPU issues as stated here shouldn't be in the new units. You get a one year warranty for sure so I wouldn't worry too much. The chance of getting a defective GPU is very small.

I wonder how many old(er) notebooks are affected in total by this issue.
 
the problem is minimal, 150 ml to 200 ml is nothing, no more than 1 ml bad gpu, and considering all the laptops out there with nvidia gpus...
also, by now apple would have released these VIDEO drivers if any macs were affected but they didnt, and also....

looking how many little responses this thread got... compared to how many mac users use these forums.., looks like apple is not affected at all by this, or we would be at page 10000 by now

As usual...people start getting paranoid when these things happen. That being said, if the problem was "minimal" it would seem strange that Nvidia would put out this press release. Why do a big announcement that is going to result in a hit on your stock? Sounds like damage control is starting early. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Keep in mind that the MBPs have only been using the 8600s for about a year now and debuted early last summer with the new SR MBPs.

Generally speaking, people running Mac OS X aren't going to be running into the same heat issues unless they are doing something GPU intensive like playing a game in Boot Camp. Back when I was really into PC gaming, any video card related issues related to overheating would only manifest themselves during gaming (i.e. artifacting, crashing to desktop, etc.)

To the person who said that the Nvidia GPU must be why the MBPs run so hot...the first MBPs used ATI GPUs. They had the same heat issues (i.e. not being able to use it on your lap when not wearing pants). :p
 
Generally speaking, people running Mac OS X aren't going to be running into the same heat issues unless they are doing something GPU intensive like playing a game in Boot Camp. Back when I was really into PC gaming, any video card related issues related to overheating would only manifest themselves during gaming (i.e. artifacting, crashing to desktop, etc.)

Yeah, games aren't good :cool:

The annoying thing is though that if you want to play a game in Mac OS X, it's optimization is most likely worse than that of the equivalent Windows version. Therefore much more heat. A game is what killed my G4 PowerBook #arg# too. That said, Windows laptops probably get very hot too.

Generally I like to leave my computers on "reduced" performance all the time. My G5 on lowest is more than enough for my needs and stays pretty cool around 28-50°C. My now dead PowerBook would hurt to touch most of the time just doing iMovie…games would burn you.
 
When I saw this thread I instantly thought of something that happened to my Macbook Pro a few times. When getting it back out of sleep the screen just gets all color, and is totally unreadable. A reboot fixes it every time until now, except for once. That time I had to to a repair of OS X (it killed some of my user files so I couldn't boot it up anymore).

To give you an impression of how it looked:
MacbookProWow.jpg


Could this be caused by the defective nVidia GPUs?

that happened to me this morning...first time I saw it on this computer...weird. I do play quite a bit of games via Bootcamp (tf2, cod4, etc.). last night I was editing photos i took on the 4th of july and i did notice the computer running somewhat sluggishly (lightroom and photoshop open). I woke it up this morning and saw what you posted, the cursor seemed to freeze for a few seconds then start moving again.

nothing helped so i had to do a hard reset.

edit: i noticed you had photoshop opened too. Could it be related? I was doing some panoramic stitching with .tiff (lightroom's "edit in PS" format) in PS CS3.
 
First, I have to say that I am not at all technically literate and following this thread alone has been a challenge - but I would really appreciate some advice. I was planning on buyuing a 17" MBP this weekend and then I got on this website, looking to see if there are any soon to be released updates to the machine, and came across this issue. Having read as much as I can on this topic, I still can't figure out if this is indeed a problem with the "older" units, or an ongoing problem that would affect the computer I would buy now. I am an amateur photographer and decided to change from my Dell XPS to a MBP which I'm planning on using to edit photos in Photoshop and use for Powerpoint presentations for work. I don't need to get the computer immediately, but my Dell is on its "last legs" and my extended warrantly has expired so I'm getting very nervous every time it freezes up.
So, if you were me, would you feel confident in buying a MBP this weekend or would you wait - and how long? Thanks.

If you buy now, you take the risk of having turn your machine into warranty and waste time with all the issues that come with known broken hardware. The breakage is not totally serious, but a certain string of operations that you do with video, quickview, and other stuff (read apple discussions thread, which is much more thorough than this), WILL crash your machine. The complete set of such operations IS NOT known, I've had the thing blow up running a Java UML modelling app.

I can't do much, since I already bought it end of last year, but to try to turn it back in, which I'm seriously considering doing. My work environemnt has never been Mac specific and I can run my life the same way on Mac, Linux, or even Windows (thanks Mozilla and all the other cross platform technologies). Then I would wait until the post-Penryn machines come out - AFAIK there is NO current MBP revision or model out that doesn't suffer from this. Or is there? I would definitely wait for an official statement about a model revision that is confirmed to either get a new set of 8600 chips or get a completely another chip.
 
are my temperatures abnormal...?

i'm just watching a dvd and here are the temperatures

this is from istat pro

cpu A is 76 degrees
cpu diode is 80
heatsink -70
heatsink a 69
heatsink b 51
enclosure base 39
mem controller 52
airport card 55

fans running around 3000 rpm
 
My 11 month old MBP 2.2 seems to get to 80c doing some heavier tasks, like running handbrake, and it will stay in that range for a few minutes, then the fans kick on and get it down to 70c. I am not sure how much this will play into the life span of the computer, but I planned on keeping this MBP for as long as possible, and probably 4-5 years as my main computer.

This is my first notebook computer, and I never expected it to run this hot. The amount of heat that comes off the keyboard and the palm rests, much of the time, is a bit disturbing.
 
$310 is pretty cheat. But, why would you want to spend $310 on a 1 time repair...when you can spend $200 on AppleCare and have unlimited repairs for 2 years??

Why would you want to spend ANY money period? A repair is unfortunate, but doesn't always happen. AppleCare is a guaranteed loss of money on an already way overpriced piece of hardware. You can get a cheap laptop these days for $300. Let's see...AppleCare or a 2nd laptop to keep in the car...hmmm.
 
I think you are wrong on that. The 6-series and 7 series are both a over 2 years old. The 8 series is over a year old. The 8400 and the 8600 are both pretty old now. They are have to be the ones affected by it. The 8800 is also getting somewhat old now. I think you will see that the 8400 and 8600 are the ones with the problems.

I don't really care if I'm wrong; I'm trying to get people to be optimistic.

So much for that. :eek:
 
Why would you want to spend ANY money period? A repair is unfortunate, but doesn't always happen. AppleCare is a guaranteed loss of money on an already way overpriced piece of hardware. You can get a cheap laptop these days for $300. Let's see...AppleCare or a 2nd laptop to keep in the car...hmmm.

I would rather spend money on AppleCare then be slammed with a huge repair build. If you get a LB replaced...you could pay over $375 with sales tax and shipping. Right there for 1 LB you could have bought Applecare for $200. It makes sense to protect your $2000+ investment. I think the best are the people here who buy a new Mac and after the 1 year warranty, something happens and they have to get it repaired and have to pay tons of cash. You could have just bought AppleCare and saved money!!

Who wants a piece of crap $300 Windows laptop that is probably will break in a month?
 
I think you are wrong on that. The 6-series and 7 series are both a over 2 years old. The 8 series is over a year old. The 8400 and the 8600 are both pretty old now. They are have to be the ones affected by it. The 8800 is also getting somewhat old now. I think you will see that the 8400 and 8600 are the ones with the problems.

From reading and searching constantly it seems mostly the dell 1330 and the 1530 with the 8400m gs are almost gauranteed to fail. But for the 8600 gt card it seems the 2.2 ghz model (im guessing referring to the older model of the mbp) with the 128mb vram 8600m gt has the issues.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.