What's wrong with my Mac? (Video Issues)

[AutomaTom]

These pictures below should make it pretty obvious what's happening with my computer. I'm wondering if it's: A) A Video Card issue with my Macbook Pro that I can never fix; B) Some sort of driver issue?; C) An issue with Ram (I messed with my ram a while back; D) Heat related.

When I reboot my computer, it's always fine at first, and then it continues to get worse and worse.

I truly appreciate any help y'all can give me. Thank you!

 

[Intell]

That is very likely a hardware problem with the GPU. If your machine is under warranty, they should replace it.

 

[AutomaTom]

I'm far past warrantee, sadly... Nothing I could do at home?

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Which MacBook Pro do you have?

If you are running Mavericks, have a graphics card which uses the system RAM (not dedicated graphics memory) and have relatively little RAM,
it may be a bug in Mavericks compressed memory where it compresses the memory used for graphics when it shouldn't.

If this is the case you could try running:-

sudo nvram boot-args="vm_compressor=1"

in Terminal, which disables compressed memory.
It will ask for your password, enter it blind (nothing appears to be typed), then press enter.

EDIT: You need to restart your computer after running the command for it to take effect

If this doesn't help you can revert by running:-

sudo nvram -d boot-args

 

[AutomaTom]

SOLUTION!

I love you. Is there something I should do next? Get more ram and then change that back again? What affect will that have on my computer overall?

 

[Dark Dragoon]

I love you. Is there something I should do next? Get more ram and then change that back again? What affect will that have on my computer overall?

Good to hear, though keep a close eye on it just in-case it's a coincidence.

As for what you should do next, if the compressed memory is the cause then it's up to Apple to fix the issue.
Hopefully a future update to OS X will sort it out, at which point you would need to re-enable compressed memory to test.

I would only buy more RAM if you really need it, though by having more the number of glitches and their frequency should decrease.

By disabling compressed memory it means that Mavericks can't fit so much data into the RAM,
though the difference to actual usage of the system should be pretty minimal unless you are running low on RAM.