Nvidia Series 8 problems

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I have noticed while playing steam games I see a lot of flickering and color abnormalities. Would this be a bug? IF so would apple care fix it?
 
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yes that will be the problem, apple care should attend to this but the problem is Nvidia still has no idea whats wrong... so apple is really waiting for Nvidia for a solution.
 
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No problems here. I play games every once and a while and also do some vidoe editing.
 

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The problem with the 8400 and 8600 chips is actually an overheating condition that results in a damaged GPU - when and if it happens, your video card is essentially toast.

To answer the direct question, no - there has not been any reports of this happening with a MacBook Pro on this board, nor have I read of it occuring with an Apple product of any kind. With that said, I have heard about incidents with Dell owners.
 
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Mine overheated once, which I talked about in this thread. My friend's 15" MBP overheated a little over a week ago and she doesn't play video games or do video converting (which I do). Supposedly the larger heatsinks in the 17" models allows their GPUs to run a little cooler than the 15" models. So far, I've only had one occurrence of it happening and my MBP still runs fine so it didn't get hot enough to fry it completely. However, getting it fixed by Apple would be a waste of time (unless it completely fried) because they would just replace it with the same logic board carrying the same defective GPU at this point. If they do come out with a hardware fix, then I'll be at the Apple store ASAP getting my computer fixed.
 

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Mine overheated once, which I talked about in this thread. My friend's 15" MBP overheated a little over a week ago and she doesn't play video games or do video converting (which I do). Supposedly the larger heatsinks in the 17" models allows their GPUs to run a little cooler than the 15" models. So far, I've only had one occurrence of it happening and my MBP still runs fine so it didn't get hot enough to fry it completely. However, getting it fixed by Apple would be a waste of time (unless it completely fried) because they would just replace it with the same logic board carrying the same defective GPU at this point. If they do come out with a hardware fix, then I'll be at the Apple store ASAP getting my computer fixed.

Note that this is unrelated to the defect announced by NVIDIA. When this particular problem occurs, the GPU is toast - your machine has no display whatsoever.
 
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i see... thanks for the input guys, maybe the problem is more on an issue between directx10 and nvidia since series 8 is the first directx10 GPU that was released for nvidia. since apple is using openGL it may less likely to happen in a mac, unless you run bootcamp more on your mac for gaming. Again thanks for the feedback guys.
 

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i see... thanks for the input guys, maybe the problem is more on an issue between directx10 and nvidia since series 8 is the first directx10 GPU that was released for nvidia. since apple is using openGL it may less likely to happen in a mac, unless you run bootcamp more on your mac for gaming. Again thanks for the feedback guys.

It really doesn't have anything to do with the API. It's a hardware defect in the way the core heats up and the compounds used to bind the chip together. It's really too early to tell how this will impact Apple's products, if at all.
 
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Unless your doing some gaming under Vista that actually requires the use of DirectX 10, I wouldn't worry about it. I play some Crysis and COD4 and it seems ok, it does get pretty hot, but I have it on a stand and hooked up to my 22" monitor so it stays cooler. I have 3 years of applecare so I'm not extremely worried about video card failure, while I have heard a few reports of failing video cards in MBP's. It would be an extreme inconvenience to have my only computer shipped out to apple for a week or two though.
 
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Hey all,

ive never had any problems with mine. I dont play a lot but i do work on videos, and never noticed a thing. it could very well happen that it burns or fails tomorrow I know.
But I doubt that apple will take back a laptop that had that kind of problem. most likely, what they should do is see how they can fix the issue with Nvidia...
 
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thanks again for your replies. im confident now that it wont affect mac's as much as it will with dell or hp laptops.
 
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I'm confident Apple will try to cover it up until such a point comes that they have to offer a recall. If you have a problem and say the right things to the right people, they'll cover it for as long as you're within warranty. If you say the wrong things or get the wrong people, you'll get screwed just like my sister.

Here's what I saw when I opened my late 2007 Macbook Pro last night.


Click for full size - Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

Is this indicative of a video card failure, or would it be more likely to have been caused by a memory or software error?
 
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I'm confident Apple will try to cover it up until such a point comes that they have to offer a recall. If you have a problem and say the right things to the right people, they'll cover it for as long as you're within warranty. If you say the wrong things or get the wrong people, you'll get screwed just like my sister.

Here's what I saw when I opened my late 2007 Macbook Pro last night.


Click for full size - Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

Is this indicative of a video card failure, or would it be more likely to have been caused by a memory or software error?

Wow what game is that?!?







Its a video card failure.
 
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The upper-right greenish portion of the screen is my adium chat window. The bottom-right greenish rectangle is adium's buddies list. The other greenish area is a finder window or something. I also had firefox or at least itunes and mail open in the background, but I guess only special windows get the green-static treatment.

I'm going to take pictures of it every time it happens. If it get's too crazy, I'll raise a stink. I still haven't bought applecare, but I've got a few more months to worry about that.
 
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That staticy mess hasn't reappeared since my original posting. I guess it's not really any sort of issue at all?

I don't know, but I'm definitely going to get applecare for this thing before its warranty expires. I've noticed the GPU gets really hot sometimes when it seems like there shouldn't be anything using it.

Like right now; I've got Firefox open with three simple tabs, iTunes playing an audiobook without any visualizers or anything, and Mail and Adium open in the background. My GPU is at 65˚C, and the surface of my Macbook Pro is giving off a gentle warmth.

There have been other instances in which a similar load has produced temperatures as high as 83˚C and possibly higher. At these times, the case of my computer gets too hot to touch.

Truly perplexing :\
 

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