Graphical tearing issue on 2012 Macbook Pro?

[Osarkon]

Based on this image, is there an obvious way of knowing whether it's a hardware fault or a software one?

The issue doesn't come up all too often, but the pixels go really weird.

Very much hoping it's a software issue?

The machine doesn't get any intensive usage out of it, mainly Safari and iTunes these days.

 

[tylamb19]

Based on this image, is there an obvious way of knowing whether it's a hardware fault or a software one?

The issue doesn't come up all too often, but the pixels go really weird.

Very much hoping it's a software issue?

The machine doesn't get any intensive usage out of it, mainly Safari and iTunes these days.

I had this exact problem with my 15" 2012. I upgraded my RAM to 16 GB and the issue went away.

I think that the problem was my old RAM failing since that screen issue would only appear when using the iGPU. The iGPU shares memory with the system's RAM, so that is what made me suspicious.

Upgrading/replacing RAM is easy enough in the cMBP models, so I would suggest you do that and see what it brings. If you have a retina, then you might just have to live with it since the RAM is not replaceable in rMBP models.

 

[Osarkon]

It's

I had this exact problem with my 15" 2012. I upgraded my RAM to 16 GB and the issue went away.

I think that the problem was my old RAM failing since that screen issue would only appear when using the iGPU. The iGPU shares memory with the system's RAM, so that is what made me suspicious.

Upgrading/replacing RAM is easy enough in the cMBP models, so I would suggest you do that and see what it brings. If you have a retina, then you might just have to live with it since the RAM is not replaceable in rMBP models.

It's not a retina model thankfully, but has 8GB of RAM which I would have thought should be ample..?

 

[tylamb19]

It's


It's not a retina model thankfully, but has 8GB of RAM which I would have thought should be ample..?

8GB is perfectly ample. I just was using my upgrade as an example. If you don't want to deal with the issue, you can try replacing your 8GB of RAM.