Macbook pro - Weird Graphics Card behaviour - Need HELP

[gogot]

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum and this is my first post. So please bear with me and help me if you guys can.

Here's my prob: I have a mbp (december 2007). Never had any probs with it before. I started playing prototype a few weeks ago and then yesterday, the game started lagging badly. It was running fine before then. I have played a lot of other games before on my mbp and they all worked fine.

Didn't install any new software. I run the games on an XP partition. Everything (programs, movies, etc..) else works fine. anything in Windows and OS X. I don't have any games in OS X to try but my guess is that any graphics intensive kinda game makes the card go awfully slow. All the games were working fine before but whenever I tested any of the other ones (apart from prototype - e.g. the sims3) there seems to be a lag in movement. There are no glitches or anything weird on the screen. It's just like the speed has been dropped. I'm pretty sure it's not a fan prob which could step down speed.

specs are:
mbp - 15" 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB of GDDR3
running both XP and Leopard

Hope you guys can help me out. Thanks

 

[NP3]

First you need to isolate whether the problem occurs on both your mac os boot and your windows partition. If so, then yes you probably have a major problem.

Also, please note that a game 'lagging' (greatly dropped frame rate) could be a number of things, don't assume its the graphics card. Your CPU might be tied up crunching through something else.

If its just on the windows partition, search through the windows forums for things that can slow down the system (indexing, virus management), and task manager is your friend.

And check to make sure you've scanned the disk & didn't pick up a virus on that day Hope this helps to start you out. Welcome to the Forums.

 

[gogot]

Thanks NP3,

I'll try to isolate the problem tonight and follow your steps after work.

Thanks

Any other ideas welcome...

 

[gogot]

Hey peeps,

need your help again. I did as NP3 suggested but still no clue what's going on. There doesn't seem to be any particular strange with with either the CPU or hard drive. They're not been hammered. The RAM seems to work fine.

I also deleted the XP partition, recreated a new one (after fixing permissions, repair, etc..) and reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows. After installing a game (Titan Quest - not too graphic intensive) the game still 'lags'. The graphics seem to just 'jump'. Note that the game was working previously fine on all settings to high. Now, even on low there is the jerky movement. Again, everything else works fine. Movies, programs, etc..

What do I do???

 

[rodman109110]

If it keeps happening you could take it into an apple store, although you may want to try and recreate the problem on the OS X side. My friend just had his graphics card fail on him and it was probably due to him stressing the graphics card.

 

[gogot]

any of u guys have any other tips? was just wondering if this is still covered by the nvidia warranty extension?

thx

 

[gogot]

Ok guys didn't get much replies from you but I'll give it a try again..

I just got a phone call from one of the guys at the Apple Store. They said that they couldn't find anything wrong with my graphics card. They said they performed extensive testing on both the graphics card and logic board (trying to find the issue with the 8600GT) but found nothing.

Now, if I want to perform any more tests they'll start charging me. The guys suggested that I buy new RAM and try it out if I could. If I wanted them to keep testing, he told me that's what he would be doing (but that would cost be a 100 bucks)

Could you please help me out here? Any suggestions welcome plzzz.

Thanks,

D