MacOSG: Serious graphics problem still exists in OS X 10.5.3? (video)

Posted by Daniel East May 31, 2008 at 7:22am

Many MacBook and MacBook Pro owners have been experiencing video problems for several months now. The problems seem to occur on Macbooks—with Intel’s GMA3100 graphics chipset—and MacBook Pros, with the NVIDIA 8600M GT chipset.

The symptom often distorts or block out entire window views, as well as cause momentary blackouts in videos. (see video below)

There are numerous threads (1, 2, 3, 4) from frustrated owners at Apple Discussions discussing the problem. Owners were hoping that the new OS X 10.5.3 update would solve the issue, but apparently, it hasn’t.

On May 28th Stephen Greenfield wrote, “As an Apple Developer, I’ve been posting that 10.5.3 has NOT corrected the problem. I knew this two days ago, and I notified Apple.

AppleCare techs—which claim to be completely unaware of this thread—made me go through the completely unnecessary step of replacing my entire LOGIC BOARD! The Apple Genius and I KNEW this wouldn’t help—but we had to do it.

The issue is now “escalated” to Apple Engineering, which is as high as it goes. I’m awaiting a response, however, the Apple Bug ID can’t be viewed by anyone other than the Apple Genius that escalated it (or someone at that level—AppleCare said they could NOT view the record).

This issue may be related to some sort of graphics driver memory leak. I’m guessing there will be another “Leopard Graphics Update” which will be created. But for now, NO ONE at Apple is saying jack—not even to me.

One note: I’ve discovered that logging out and logging back in SEEMS to reset the problem—at least for a while. So restarting may not be required.”

NotSoTechnical writes, “Only after 10.5.3 have I started having graphics issues on my MacBook Pro (Summer 2007). Never had a problem beforehand. This is frustrating, as I just took ownership of the laptop this past week.”

maaark writes, “What has worked for me on 10.5.2 (not yet tested on 10.5.3), is that BEFORE you close the lid of your MacBook, you press F11 (that’s the key for me, anyway) to see the desktop using Expose. THEN you close the laptop.

The next time you open it there won’t be any glitches. On my laptop the problem seems to be related with the laptop hibernating/sleeping.”

Daniel Warne writes, “The flickering on screen refresh is back, despite having updated to 10.5.3. Darn! I haven’t yet seen the on-screen corruption when scrolling, though, which was certainly the more annoying of the two problems. I just wish Apple would get this sorted! How hard can it be to get video display on the screen right? ”

JaseOD writes, “I spent a bit of time demonstrating the problem for a collegue today and we found the screen flicker was most noticeable when previewing the contents of events in iPhoto with your mouse—large white flickering rectangles would appear over the event. The corruption, when using two finger scrolling, was most noticeable in Safari.

The issues went away when the power was plugged in, and came back when running on batteries. Which leads me to wonder whether its actually an issue with power management—maybe the OS is not supplying the graphics card with enough juice to perform properly? I’ve tried fooling around with my performance settings with no improvement; I think the issue is deeper down in the OS.”

Below is an example of the persistent MacBook and MacBook Pros graphics problem.

Video courtesy of AppleInsider.

Mac Owners Support Group—aka MacOSG—was conceived by Dave Merten, the former ‘Focus on Mac Support’ guide at About.com. Since it’s humble beginning as ‘G5 Owners Support Group’ back in February 2004, MacOSG has become one of the world’s fastest-growing online Apple User Groups, dedicated to helping Mac users from all over the globe.

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