Screen turns black when gaming?

I had this exact same problem when playing World of Warcraft, the screen would go black after a few minutes and the machine required a power off to reset it. The issue only occurred when using the 9600M GT chip, and would not occur when using the 9400M integrated chip.

I returned the machine to the Apple store for an exchange, and the new system is working properly (so far). I used it for a couple of hours last night and had no video issues.

I hope this isn't indicative of an issue with the NVidia chips, since there are a few people on the World of Warcraft forums complaining about this as well.

My advice would be to take it back to the store as soon as possible for a replacement. If you have the problem with the replacement system, keep exchanging them until you get one that works.

I was reading these forums last night and ran across this page, and just 5 minutes ago this happened to me, it has happened once before, but I don't think I was gaming. This time I was playing Tomb Raider and it was going trough a cutscene, then bam, dead. I bought it at Best Buy, being as I work there. If I swap it out my only concern is either I'll get one with a hinge problem or other type of problem, or that I won't be able to swap my hard drive out with it. Because the rest of my machine is flawless. Any thoughts on this?
-Micro

Same here. I bought 3 days after announcement, and within 2 days, the screen would go black during World Of Warcraft and Ages of Empire III...usually within the first 20 minutes.
At first I thought it might be from the thing getting confused when I plugged and unplugged it ( since enabling the 9600gt involves that Energy control panel), but this is not the case.
It became more frequent and faster. I took it in for exchange, and the new one works fine...though the **** loose hinge thing is annoying, and I have had one full system freeze. Otherwise, the black screen thing is gone, seemingly, for now.

My system has been fine since I swapped it for the new one. No hinge issues so that was never a concern. There definitely seems to be some sort of problem with some of the 9600M GT chips in the new machines, so it will be interesting to see if this becomes enough of a problem to trigger some sort of repair or replacement policy on Apple's behalf.

Hello,

I do not have the GT activated and I get a black screen. The screen is actually still on (the backlighting) but completely black with the mouse pointer on it. I was able to go back from that state using cmd-opt-esc (force quit). I do not know why, but I guess this is software related...

I am not playing any games and it occurs.
Kind of hard to go to the store and show them as it is fairly random.

One question like that, do you guys have the screen saver lock (password to go out of the screen saver)? The behavior is pretty much similar (black screen etc) and I wonder if it might not be the cause.

Thanks,
Julien.

My experience has been that no mouse pointer remains, and a force quit does nothing. You can't even see if a force-quit box has appeared. Also, background sounds start repeating, as if the game has crashed. You may be having a somewhat different issue than the rest of us.

For me, this also occurred during World of Warcraft after just a few minutes of play the first time I tried it with an external monitor. The first time, it was cool enough that the fans weren't cranked up. Second time, a couple minutes later, they were running. The game played fine for an extended period using the GT card without an external monitor, keyboard or mouse.

I haven't had a chance to use the integrated card yet to see if that performs OK, as others have mentioned. I'll be calling Apple Support, probably Friday because of my schedule. I also posted a thread on the WoW forums, as the Mac techs there tend to play-test the game on various hardware (and have connections with Apple and NVIDIA) and may have some insight as to whether it is a batch of bad cards that requires a replacement machine or if there is a driver fix or something forthcoming that might resolve the issue.

I'll write back if I hear anything or see anything trolling other Mac sites.

If this is a new machine I would suggest taking it back for a replacement as soon as you can as opposed to trying to wait and see if this is a driver issue. I had the exact same problem and a new machine resolved the problem.

The screen would go black when using the 9600M GT chip with World of Warcraft, usually within 2-5 min of starting the game. I could still hear audio but the video was blank and the system required a power-off to reset. The problem did not occur with the 9400M chip, which led me to assume an issue with the 9600M chip. It happened enough within the span of 2 days that I decided to return the system for a replacement.

I suspect that this indicates a potential quality control issue with the NVidia chips, since there have been several reports of this on these forums and also on the WoW forums, so it's not a "rare" problem. It might not be common, but it's obvious that it's happening to more than just one or two people.

If you return it you might get a machine without the issue. You'll still have to deal with the Genius guys, but at least you can let them know the nature of the problem and request a replacement. If you wait too long you'll likely just end up without your machine for a week or so while they repair it.

Just my $0.02

hey all, I've got the same thing happening whilst I'm playing seas space using bootcamp. At times of crashes after a few minutes, other times it doesn't at all. However, I have no problems with spore on os x. Could this be a software issue? Or is this more likely hardware related?

Haven't tried OS X gaming yet but having had windows xp sp2 installed for less than 12 hours via boot camp, I've already had 3 black screens of death from the nvidia 9600gt card whilst playing Command and Conquer: Kane's Wrath, Oblivion, and Company of Heroes. I will call Apple tomorrow to try to negotiate a replacement but I'm well bummed that my week old laptop is already practically broken. I will let you know if the new one (which they will hopefully deliver) is any better.

It seems that the graphics card heats up too much in windows. After installing new drivers and underclocking it, I've had no crashes while so far while playing dead space..

I called Apple and because it was a Windows problem they said there was nothing they could do... Better get cod4 os x, crank up the graphics and then see what happens.

Could you please tell me how to underclock your card? I have no experience with stuff like this.

I've tried Call of Duty 4 on osx and I have no crashes whatsoever with all graphic settings on high.

I underclocked the 9600m GT on the windows side and so far no crashes with dead space running all graphics on high.

Here's a solution u guys can try:

Uninstall your current nvidia driver.

Go here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp/180.43

download the driver AND the modded INF file.

Open the downloaded exe file and extract the files

Place the INF file into the extracted folder and run the setup installer located in the folder.

Reboot and download rivatuner and install it.

Run rivatuner and click on the "power user" tab.

Under nvidia/overclocking, set enableperflevelforcing 1

Go back to the main tab and under driver settings, there should be "forceware detected"(or something like that). Click the arrow next to an click on the little graphics card icon. This should bring you to the overclocking page.


Tick enable driver level overclocking, tick the allow separate 2d/3d clocks and reboot.

Run rivatuner again and head back to the overclocking page. Go to (most important part) Force constant performance level choose Performance 3D.

Play around with the sliders. I have mine set at around 400/800/600 and have been playing games without any crashes so far. Once you've found a setting u like, u can save it and choose to let this be the default clock speeds everytime u boot windows.

I hope this fix works for all you guys. Happy gaming after!!! =D

Why does this have to be done on the windows side if you're playing it on Leopard? Just curious?

Gaming on leopard is ok. It's on windows where i get crashes.

Oh darn. I was hoping this was a fix for Leopard 😀 - My Call of Duty 4 crashes 2 seconds after I open it. I can't figure out how to fix it?