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Maury

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 25, 2008
459
27
The 8800GT upgrade for the "old" Mac Pro arrived yesterday. Since then I've seen problem after problem. I hope I can return it, I'm really unhappy.

To start with, when I started up Halo I noticed that the bounding boxes around objects would periodically show on screen. Not badly, but annoying. And some of the tiling is off.

But then today I notice that the color palette of the desktop is going disco on me. It's just two colors of the thousands, so it's almost invisible. But very worrying nonetheless.

And now it's getting louder. The fan is definitely spooling up, and for the first time I can actually hear my machine.

Does anyone else have this thing yet? Am I just the unlucky guy that got a bum card?
 
I have been using my new 8800 GT for a couple of days, and no problems so far. Everything looks great in OS X and Windows, including games such as Crysis, Supreme Commander, Age of Empires III, Universe at War, etc. As you said, you might have gotten a bad card.
 
I have been using my new 8800 GT for a couple of days, and no problems so far. Everything looks great in OS X and Windows, including games such as Crysis, Supreme Commander, Age of Empires III, Universe at War, etc. As you said, you might have gotten a bad card.

Can you try this one thing for me?

I have my machine set to go to sleep after 15 minutes. This doesn't seem to happen, instead the screen is turned off but the machine keeps running.

When I wake the machine back up, there are odd colors on the screen.

Can you try this? No, using "go to sleep" doesn't trigger it, that works fine.

Maury
 
Video Defects

In the first few days that I put in an 8800 in my 2006 Mac Pro, I had thousands of small dot-like bright clusters across 1 of 2 monitors, just like a similar defect reported years ago with the 1900. I was very worried, but I have not had this problem recur in 5 days. i did make sure everything on th computer was up to date and ran Onyx to clean out any junk in the caches. No problems at all since then.
 
i am also pretty unhappy with my new 8800gt... after having problems with my x1900 i brought it in for repairs at an apple store.. they replaced the card, and after i picked it up, my 8800 had arrived.. after quickly ensuring the new x1900 was ok, i popped the 8800gt in. upon entering world of warcraft, i immidiately noticed an overall blur, not as clear as my x1900. i figured maybe i could tweak some settings... but after a while of trying to deal with it, i ultimately put the radeon back in.. i am so glad i did.. i didn't notice any improvement in frames, nor did the text ever appear clear and it flickered upon highlighting when i moused over. there are also horizontal lines, almost like it was rendering alternate lines at a time, like interlaced? not even sure i know what that is, or how to describe it, but it was extremely annoying. not standing out a lot, but enough for me to put the old card back in.. i'm not sure if it's the card, or the drivers.. i heard it was the drivers that are available.. currently they're not what they should be.. people were even saying when they loaded up boot camp, the card actually was a lot better.. well i'm sorry but i'm not going to use boot camp, the whole point of the card was the improve gaming for me in os x. anyway, just wanted to share my experience with anyone who might be considering buying the upgrade.
 
I installed Counter-Strike Source. Everything was orange, square, numbered and had lines around them. It's the only computer game I play. I didn't even bother to look up what was wrong or if it could be fixed.
 
I installed Counter-Strike Source. Everything was orange, square, numbered and had lines around them. It's the only computer game I play. I didn't even bother to look up what was wrong or if it could be fixed.

On Windows or Mac? Works great on the Mac under CrossOver.

Maury

upon entering world of warcraft, i immidiately noticed an overall blur, not as clear as my x1900.

Note that installing the new card had the side effect of resetting the resolution in several of my games.

That said, WoW was not one of these. WoW looks fantastic on my 8800.

Maury
 
I have mixed emotions about the 8800GT in my 1st gen Mac Pro. It does run COD4 better, allowing faster frame rates than I was getting with the 1900XT, but I periodically get the old "dancing green pixels" problem in both Mac and Windows XP When it boots up. It only happens on one of the two 30" ACD's I have hooked up. And, periodically, the #2 monitor boots up black-screen-only in Windows.

So, I don't know if it's a bad card or bad drivers. I've seen this dancing pixel problem reported with others who've switched to the 1st gen 8800GT too.

What are you guys using for drivers? For the Mac side, I didn't do anything - it's using whatever driver is installed natively. On the Windows side, I had a hard time finding an Nvidia driver that would install on XP/Boot Camp. The latest Windows XP driver on Nvidia's website wouldn't install -- "not compatible with your hardware" or something. I finally was pointed to Forceware 174.93 beta driver which I downloaded and installed. That at least allowed one monitor to run, but still left me with the problems above.

I'd like to know what XP drivers any of you are running under Boot camp with this card, if any of you are doing so.

Thanks,
 
Note that installing the new card had the side effect of resetting the resolution in several of my games.

That said, WoW was not one of these. WoW looks fantastic on my 8800.

Maury

I appreciate your comment, but I am not a tool, and I know to check the video settings. In fact I did like 14 times because I wanted this card to work so badly. Sucks this card isn't what I was hoping.
 
So, I don't know if it's a bad card or bad drivers. I've seen this dancing pixel problem reported with others who've switched to the 1st gen 8800GT too.

From now on I will use the term "dancing pixels" as well, I like it. I have also found numerous reports of this problem.

I'm going to exchange my card and see if the replacement fixes it. I'll let everyone know either way.

Maury
 
In the first few days that I put in an 8800 in my 2006 Mac Pro, I had thousands of small dot-like bright clusters across 1 of 2 monitors, just like a similar defect reported years ago with the 1900. I was very worried, but I have not had this problem recur in 5 days. i did make sure everything on th computer was up to date and ran Onyx to clean out any junk in the caches. No problems at all since then.

I've had this exact same issue happen maybe 3-4 times since recieving my mac pro. A reset of the computer makes the problem go away, but makes me weary as to why/what is going on with the 8800. I've been planning to make an Apple care phone call, but since it is completely random what should I expect?
 
So weird that there are these probs. I've built quite a few systems with 8800GT (mostly from EVGA, XFX and Asus) and so far not one has acted up :(
 
I've had this exact same issue happen maybe 3-4 times since recieving my mac pro. A reset of the computer makes the problem go away, but makes me weary as to why/what is going on with the 8800. I've been planning to make an Apple care phone call, but since it is completely random what should I expect?

Ok, everyone in this thread, PLEASE TRY THIS EXPERIMENT:

1) Go into your control panel and select Energy Saver
2) set the display to go to sleep after a short period of time, say 2 minutes
3) now do nothing for 2 minutes and let it put the display to sleep
4) wake the display. Green Shadow?
5) repeat (4) two more times. Green Shadow?
6) POST YOUR RESULTS HERE, ALONG WITH YOUR MONITOR MODEL

Repeating (4) and (5) will eventually cause this problem 100% of the time on my machine. SOMETIMES it will also reset the problem, making the Green Shadow go away.

If my hunch is correct, the people that say they're having no problems don't have their display set to go to sleep before the machine as a whole. If this is the case, we have a driver problem, not hardware.

It is also possible this only happens on the CinemaDisplay 30, although I doubt it. That's the reason for step 6.

Maury
 
Ok, everyone in this thread, PLEASE TRY THIS EXPERIMENT:

1) Go into your control panel and select Energy Saver
2) set the display to go to sleep after a short period of time, say 2 minutes
3) now do nothing for 2 minutes and let it put the display to sleep
4) wake the display. Green Shadow?
5) repeat (4) two more times. Green Shadow?
6) POST YOUR RESULTS HERE, ALONG WITH YOUR MONITOR MODEL

Repeating (4) and (5) will eventually cause this problem 100% of the time on my machine. SOMETIMES it will also reset the problem, making the Green Shadow go away.

If my hunch is correct, the people that say they're having no problems don't have their display set to go to sleep before the machine as a whole. If this is the case, we have a driver problem, not hardware.

It is also possible this only happens on the CinemaDisplay 30, although I doubt it. That's the reason for step 6.

Maury


I get the dancing green pixels on one of my two 30" ACDs once in about every 5 bootups - always the same monitor (monitor #2). It doesn't appear to be a sleep problem - the tests above were negative for me. It either boots up with the green pixels, or not. If not, they won't appear.

I doubt that it's the monitor itself, since if I switch monitor plugs into the 8800GT, the green pixels are on the other monitor. This problem never occured with my 1900XT.

I also get the green pixels on the same monitor occasionally on the Windows side when XP is booted via Boot Camp.

These things make me suspect a driver problem. I suppose it's possible that it's an 8800GT firmware problem, but I'd like to find a different driver that will work on XP under Boot Camp first.
 
Further info! I have received a replacement card, and it has the _exact_ same problems.

I'm considering returning it for a refund, but considering this does appear to be driver related, should I wait?
 
It either boots up with the green pixels, or not. If not, they won't appear.

Same here. The only difference is that I seem to be able to trigger it with Sleep as well. But it is, as you say, either on or off, it's not like it's overheating over time or anything like that.
 
Further info! I have received a replacement card, and it has the _exact_ same problems.

I'm considering returning it for a refund, but considering this does appear to be driver related, should I wait?


It's clearly not a hardware issue since another one has same crap.
Not sure how it warks on Pro (still waiting for mine to arrive) but do you remove drivers upon installing new ones or you simply plug it in and run the new setup?
I would try to back up all your data and run a clean OS X install with the 8800 inside.
My friend has the 2x 3.0GHz duo Mac Pro and recently he installed the 8800 and even he didn't have any crazy issues with it he went for a clean reinstall. Works like a charm now and he's extremely happy.
 
I just tried your test, and I get no green shadows regardless of how many times I let the displays sleep. I've got two 20" monitors–one an Ultrasharp 2009WFP, the other a 207WFP.
 
It's clearly not a hardware issue since another one has same crap.

Yeah, that's where I'm going too.

Not sure how it warks on Pro (still waiting for mine to arrive) but do you remove drivers upon installing new ones or you simply plug it in and run the new setup?

No setup at all, just plug it in and go.

I would try to back up all your data and run a clean OS X install with the 8800 inside.

You know, that's not a terrible idea...

To the other user having the same problems as me, do you happen to have EyeTV?

Maury
 
I just tried your test, and I get no green shadows regardless of how many times I let the displays sleep. I've got two 20" monitors–one an Ultrasharp 2009WFP, the other a 207WFP.

Ok, thanks for this report! I really appreciate all of your help MacR people, I realize you're all doing this as a labor of love.

This does seem to suggest the problem requires a 30" Apple monitor to trigger it.

Maury
 
The dancing pixels issue is the fault of the monitor rather than the card. I'm on my third 30" Apple display and they have all suffered from it - I've just given up returning them now! I've used the monitor with PCs and Macs with a variety of different video cards with the same result.

There is a thread about it on the Apple forum going back nearly 3 years with hundreds of posts, which for some reason has now been anonymously locked. Apple, predictably, claim ignorance when you call them about it, despite the huge number of people on that thread who, like me, have been through several monitors with no real resolution.

It seems to affect people with ATi cards just as much as Nvidia cards and seems to happen when the monitor changes power state, ie from power save, sleep or from a reboot. Sometimes switching screen res fixes it, sometimes you just have to reboot and keep your fingers crossed. Very annoying and looks very unprofessional when you're trying to show something to a client. :mad:
 
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