Hello
My trusty late 2006 2.0 GHz core2duo white macbook, 3Gb of ram as a pair of 2Gb sticks, 120Gb Samsung 840, running OSX 10.7.5, connected up to a Samsung SyncMaster S19B150 as a second display, plus often my ipad 2 with airdisplay, has not been appearing entirely happy of late.
Pdfs made up of well defined text appear and scroll as smoothly as ever, anything not seeming to be text based is often however incredibly jerky to move or scroll. Window surrounds often pixellate substantially or appear as a sort of colourful noise for want of a better term. This is a new problem appearing over the last few weeks. My hardware and software arrangements have not to my knowledge changed.
Attempts to screenshot the colourful noise produce a screenshot of what should be present, not what is displayed. These problems have been appearing far more often on the external monitor than the macbook screen itself, but as I use the extra screen space as my primary display I am uncertain if this could be due to screen problems with the extra display rather than my computer.
As the problem has developed within a previously stable and well behaved configuration my best and only [complete] guess has been that perhaps the GPU is struggling somewhat and that perhaps this could be the result of the thermal paste on its heat sink starting to die. Could these symptoms be compatible with such pathology? Is leaving any therapeutic intervention to the paste till after my thesis submission in late August safe, or could such symptoms be prognostic for impending total failure?
Additional information that may be of note, it has a tantrum if asked to use my other half's ipad 4 as a display, demonstrating very slow refresh rates and significant fan use (hence my wondering about the comfort of the GPU)
Any thoughts or advice offered on dealing with this diagnostic conundrum would be gratefully received.
Kind Regards
Will
My trusty late 2006 2.0 GHz core2duo white macbook, 3Gb of ram as a pair of 2Gb sticks, 120Gb Samsung 840, running OSX 10.7.5, connected up to a Samsung SyncMaster S19B150 as a second display, plus often my ipad 2 with airdisplay, has not been appearing entirely happy of late.
Pdfs made up of well defined text appear and scroll as smoothly as ever, anything not seeming to be text based is often however incredibly jerky to move or scroll. Window surrounds often pixellate substantially or appear as a sort of colourful noise for want of a better term. This is a new problem appearing over the last few weeks. My hardware and software arrangements have not to my knowledge changed.
Attempts to screenshot the colourful noise produce a screenshot of what should be present, not what is displayed. These problems have been appearing far more often on the external monitor than the macbook screen itself, but as I use the extra screen space as my primary display I am uncertain if this could be due to screen problems with the extra display rather than my computer.
As the problem has developed within a previously stable and well behaved configuration my best and only [complete] guess has been that perhaps the GPU is struggling somewhat and that perhaps this could be the result of the thermal paste on its heat sink starting to die. Could these symptoms be compatible with such pathology? Is leaving any therapeutic intervention to the paste till after my thesis submission in late August safe, or could such symptoms be prognostic for impending total failure?
Additional information that may be of note, it has a tantrum if asked to use my other half's ipad 4 as a display, demonstrating very slow refresh rates and significant fan use (hence my wondering about the comfort of the GPU)
Any thoughts or advice offered on dealing with this diagnostic conundrum would be gratefully received.
Kind Regards
Will
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