*Wait* before you order your MBP - Unibody 17" Macbook Pro (9600M broken gfx card?)

[rknrolls]

Just so people are aware before placing their order of a 17" MBP:

I am surprised people are not posting issues regarding their 17" MBPs here..... the folks over at Apple Support discussion / forum are going *gaga* on this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1924473&tstart=0

It looks like there are SERIOUS issues with the 17" GPU on high performance mode and them heating up:

http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/17-inch-macbook-pro-unibodies-plagued-by-gpu-heat-issues-2009039/
http://www.hardwarezone.com.au/news/view.php?cid=6&id=12932
http://cultofmac.com/nvidia-chip-instability-spreading-to-17-macbook-pros/9343

I would hold on and watchout before ordering the 17" just now (even though its very tempting)... but the above is pretty concerning!

Just thought I'd let ppl / new mac buyers know ... I originally posted this in my thread here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/673450/

Worrying that Apple havent said *anything* yet.....

 

[genmic]

Apple is very.. very slow to react to things like this. I'm still holding out for a solution to the widespread screen flickering issue.

 

[derek1984]

Maybe I am wrong but it seems like most of these problems are occuring when people are running Windows and playing intensive games. None of which I plan on doing with my MBP anyways...

 

[fr4c]

Maybe I am wrong but it seems like most of these problems are occuring when people are running Windows and playing intensive games. None of which I plan on doing with my MBP anyways...

The point is whether if you could, not rather if you would. It someone pays over $2k close to $3k, the machine should be able to perform at the level that it is marketed at.

 

[James812]

I set my fan to 5000rpm and sometimes play games in windows for 8 hours. My Unibody 17" MacBook pro has yet to have any problems at all.

 

[iLog.Genius]

You're right, if you pay a premium price for a product, you'd expect it to work. But if it's software related, I don't really mind - it's possible to fix that, especially with computers, it's very hard to get it perfect. Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone, BlackBerry, all have problems when first released and problems are fixed in the future. When it comes to expectations, you can't expect it to be perfect on a software level, I expect it to be perfect on the outside (enclosure) but definitely not software.

 

[kastenbrust]

I have absolutely no issues with mine, and im a heavy graphical user, more heavy than anyone you'll ever meet. My 9600 is regularly running at over 90C and has absolutely no issues, no green lines, nothing. I think if you search the forums hard enough you'll find a problem with every component on every Apple device, people make posts about problems, not perfectly running machines.

 

[bossxii]

Too late here, already purchased, already enjoying it.

Every 10 people that post a problem there is likely 1000 without. Taking perception from tech related forums is such a small percentage of the user base it's hardly worth getting excited about.

People love drama so posting links and using CAPS saying it a "HUGE SERIOUS OMG PROBLEM" kinda loses it's effect after the 3rd or 4th time. Searching the forums for "9600 GT issues" would have shown you a couple other threads one out of the 10 or 20 people have an issue, the rest responding had zero issues.

 

[MattZani]

Seriously, calm down.

My 8600M GT is still going strong, and i regularly game on it under XP.

 

[rknrolls]

well...

I dont think I'd have the nerve to pay my hard-earned-post-tax-post-national-insurance-cash £2k for something that is reported by not just "10/100" users,.... but on tech news websites... not that they are something to swear by, but most of them have articles with dates of Mar 2009 which hardly gives me the confidence to bite the bullet.

The other (possibly controversial) notion being that mac owners seem to 'brush away' some issues under the carpet.... like "its only a small glitch to see GPU issues"......I think not. Unlike the PC dudes who would swear on Windows openly in public ... seems to be a need to 'protect the mac name' theme going on here, and I dont see a need for it.

I like what I see, but by the looks of it, Apple need at least 2 revisions to get things right .... which makes it harder for me cuz I really want the 17" now and will have to wait another 2/3 months for them to 'revise' the 17".

great.... my money is not going anywhere until they sort it out!

not to mention the screen freezing issue with the screenshot someone mentioned earlier today....

 

[Thunder82]

I have absolutely no issues with mine, and im a heavy graphical user, more heavy than anyone you'll ever meet. My 9600 is regularly running at over 90C and has absolutely no issues, no green lines, nothing. I think if you search the forums hard enough you'll find a problem with every component on every Apple device, people make posts about problems, not perfectly running machines.

My 17" UMBP is the same way, as is my good friends. Neither of us have any issues with our notebooks, and were both fairly heavy gamers

 

[ayeying]

I set my fan to 5000rpm and sometimes play games in windows for 8 hours. My Unibody 17" MacBook pro has yet to have any problems at all.

I played nearly 12 hours of Sins of a Solar Empire @ maxed out settings in Windows Vista with automatic fans and no problems.

The fans were barely audiable throughout the entire game.

 

[jjahshik32]

I really want a 17" unibody mbp but man everytime I go to the apple support forums and see that huge thread about screen flickering/graphics distorted issues.. it turns me away.

The crazy part is that that thread about the gpu issue is so long it takes a minute to load the page and it still asks if you want to continue!!

Whats interesting is that reading from the thread, some people are having the gpu glitch issues from day 1 and others a couple weeks afterwards. But aparently the week 12/13 machines seems to be having less of the issues.

 

[ayeying]

I have week 8

 

[johndoe588]

I did a half hour of not too demanding flying in Flight Sim X yesterday in Vista in Boot Camp. Fans eventually spun up but not all the way, judging just by the sound. My early March 17" UMBP got pretty darn hot, there was some stuttering, then the screen went black. Came back in 30 seconds or so and I didn't feel like testing any more that night. Other than that the only issue is intermittent screen flickering at low brightness levels. If I don't use Fan Control in OSX the machine will happily heat up to 90C before the fans come off idle, which many feel is just fine but I don't.

So there are some issues, maybe yours will be perfect. I still like mine; I'll try SMC Fan Control to set the fans faster for Boot Camp. The Apple store I've been using has been wonderful about swapping machines to get one I'm happy with. But I think we may be waiting a long time for Apple to address any screen, heat, or graphics issues.

John B.

 

[simonpickard]

This is such a silly issue for apple.

ALL these problems are coming from the fact the fans aren't speeding up correctly. With all apple's resources you'd think some bright spark over there would work out that investing the time to write a new driver for the fans in both bootcamp and osx so the fans worked correctly would cost them WAY less than all these macbook pro's being sent back.

Personally my 17" MacBook pro was unusable under Vista64 after 10mins or so once the heat had built up. It was so hot I couldn't rest my fingers near the Esc key without them burning.

I've worked around it by installing fan control software but I bet there are a LOT of people out there who don't know about this and are just dealing with the problem.

Come on apple. We shouldn't have to use a 3rd party bit of software in order to control your hardware correctly! Get off your asses and release a new firmware / drivers to fix the sodding fans!

Regards,
Simon

 

[bossxii]

Looking through several "heat" realated threads on the 17" from various forums, it seems they are all linked to running Windows. What I can't find is a common statement is if this is while runing Windows under Boot Camp or VM or both?

I have held off installing windows on my MBP and don't want to but one annoying program for my work I can't seem to get to work with OSX that Crossover software as of yet.

Wondering which one has less issues...

 

[simonpickard]

The main difference is that via Bootcamp you can ONLY use the 9800GT card.
That and the fact the fan control drivers a rubbish.

Via parallels I had no such heat issues with my macbook pro 17". But then I was running the low end gfx.

Regards,
Simon

 

[johndoe588]

This is such a silly issue for apple.

ALL these problems are coming from the fact the fans aren't speeding up correctly. With all apple's resources you'd think some bright spark over there would work out that investing the time to write a new driver for the fans in both bootcamp and osx so the fans worked correctly would cost them WAY less than all these macbook pro's being sent back.

Personally my 17" MacBook pro was unusable under Vista64 after 10mins or so once the heat had built up. It was so hot I couldn't rest my fingers near the Esc key without them burning.

I've worked around it by installing fan control software but I bet there are a LOT of people out there who don't know about this and are just dealing with the problem.

Come on apple. We shouldn't have to use a 3rd party bit of software in order to control your hardware correctly! Get off your asses and release a new firmware / drivers to fix the sodding fans!

Regards,
Simon

You've said it perfectly! I think Apple's prime directive was as little fan noise as possible and they got a little carried away with themselves. It's silly, just a little more fan noise gets us much lower temperatures.

John B.

 

[bossxii]

The main difference is that via Bootcamp you can ONLY use the 9800GT card.
That and the fact the fan control drivers a rubbish.

Via parallels I had no such heat issues with my macbook pro 17". But then I was running the low end gfx.

Regards,
Simon

Oh good to know, thanks!

 

[simonpickard]

You've said it perfectly! I think Apple's prime directive was as little fan noise as possible and they got a little carried away with themselves. It's silly, just a little more fan noise gets us much lower temperatures.

John B.

The only way to get this fixed is for EVERYONE to ring apple and kick up a stink about it. I rang up yesterday and submitted it as a bug and I suggest everyone does the same. It only takes 5mins and the more people that do so the more chance we'll get a driver fix quickly.

I rang up and it went like this:

Them: What seems to be the problem?
Me: In bootcamp after 10mins I can't rest my hand near the Esc key without burning it.
Them: Arhh... Windows.. hey... Humm, well.. we don't really support that.
Me: But you DO support the hardware working?
Them: Oh yes. Of course.
Me: I want a driver fix then.

It's been submitted to some tech guy and they are going to ring me back within 48 hours.

Please if you get a chance do the same. The more people that log this the better.


Regards,
Simon

 

[johndoe588]

Looking through several "heat" realated threads on the 17" from various forums, it seems they are all linked to running Windows. What I can't find is a common statement is if this is while runing Windows under Boot Camp or VM or both?

I have held off installing windows on my MBP and don't want to but one annoying program for my work I can't seem to get to work with OSX that Crossover software as of yet.

Wondering which one has less issues...

The real problems occur in Vista under Boot Camp, and then only when running MS Flight Sim X, the only reason I'm using Boot Camp. It's warm all the time in BC, extra hot to the point of problems when flying.

In OSX, running XP Pro or Windows 7 in Fusion, I have no problems, because Fan Control is set to start speeding up the fans at 50C instead of the Apple preferred temp of 85C or so. I also don't do anything too processor or graphics intensive under Fusion. On it's own, though, without third party fan control, the machine will get plenty hot in OSX running something like X-Plane.

If what you'll be doing doesn't require the full resources of the hardware and can run in a Windows install in a VM I don't think you'll have any problems. At the worst you'll need Fan Control or SMC Fan Control, but it's still a shame we have to resort to that.

John B.

 

[johndoe588]

The only way to get this fixed is for EVERYONE to ring apple and kick up a stink about it. I rang up yesterday and submitted it as a bug and I suggest everyone does the same. It only takes 5mins and the more people that do so the more chance we'll get a driver fix quickly.

Off to submit a bug report now. Please let us know what they have to say should they get back to you.

John B.

 

[ayeying]

The only way to get this fixed is for EVERYONE to ring apple and kick up a stink about it. I rang up yesterday and submitted it as a bug and I suggest everyone does the same. It only takes 5mins and the more people that do so the more chance we'll get a driver fix quickly.

I rang up and it went like this:

Them: What seems to be the problem?
Me: In bootcamp after 10mins I can't rest my hand near the Esc key without burning it.
Them: Arhh... Windows.. hey... Humm, well.. we don't really support that.
Me: But you DO support the hardware working?
Them: Oh yes. Of course.
Me: I want a driver fix then.

It's been submitted to some tech guy and they are going to ring me back within 48 hours.

Please if you get a chance do the same. The more people that log this the better.


Regards,
Simon

Why should I call Apple and complain about a problem I don't have? I have NOTHING that you described. I have no burning casing around the "esc" key no matter in boot camp or os x.

I'm sorry that you're having a problem with your system, but I can clearly see that many people do not who own these systems. The only reason you see a lot of the posts about problems is because people with problems make more noise then people without. Its common logic.

 

[bossxii]

Why should I call Apple and complain about a problem I don't have? I have NOTHING that you described. I have no burning casing around the "esc" key no matter in boot camp or os x.

I'm sorry that you're having a problem with your system, but I can clearly see that many people do not who own these systems. The only reason you see a lot of the posts about problems is because people with problems make more noise then people without. Its common logic.

I have no issues with heat either, the above post pretty much hold true for anyone without the preceived issues. I don't however run windows either. I don't buy a C2D laptop to game on built for OSX then expect it to run MS crapware perfectly either.

To many variable's with drivers, programs running to keep that pc of MS trash operating to make a blanket statement it's Apple's issue. 90C is within the limits and while yes that is hot to the touch, that's part of the trade off's when pushing a laptop it gets hot. It is within temp tolerances for the chip per Intel spec's.