Screen turns black when gaming?

Has anyone tried the new firmware?

Does it fix the BSOD problem with games?
Anyone know if its underclocking the GPU?

I'm holding off going into Apple Service RE the problem till they have some sort of solution...

What do you doubt about my post?

I copied and pasted straight out of System Information.

I've gone through most of my games now and some new ones I installed, no crashes so far. I'm convinced it was a hardware issue because this machine, whilst not having as nice a display or keyboard as my first unit, neither gets as hot nor have I seen one BSoD.. And I've been working it as hard as I can to try to test it.

It definitely does not have the problem my first one did.

sjds, I didn't do any benchmarks with the previous system, I just saved the System Profiler report so I'd be able to compare with the new machine. I didn't think there would be any differences but as I already posted, there actually is.

The Momentus Seagate has as slightly less formatted capacity than the Hitachi did. I read the reviews for Hitachi and it got #3 on a list of drives from CNET, but I don't know how Seagate measures up. But that's off topic from the BSoD so I digress...

What I think I find the most interesting so far is that the fans really don't come on all that much on this one. They do ramp up, sometimes pretty high with max game settings on, but they don't stay on. Generally it seems to increase the fans slower and then they go to an inaudible level, coming back on later when screen action pics up a lot. Furthermore iStat reports temperatures never over 76C so far. I've tried dropping out of a game program right when the fans are really going and the graphics are working hard, and immediately checking iStat and like I said, never even hitting 80. The previous machine got all the way up to 100C quite speedily.

So I don't know if this is a matter of updated ROMs on the graphics chips and updated BIOS, or if it is just a matter of good chips and bad chips.

Keep in mind that this machine did not require any of the firmware updates the the first machine did when first running Software Update.

I've seen a few people picking up new machines from the store and not finding results that match mine. Mine is a completely CTO machine, which have a probability of being made more recently. Standard configurations are likely mass produced, shipped to distributors and outlets.. Who knows how recently a machine from a store is, even if you pick it up today?

Another thing I just noticed about this machine is that the battery is 100% with no cycles. My first MBP had a 95% Health battery with 2 cycles on it from the first time I powered it up.

Hi themacuser,

What happened was that I spent a couple of hours initially on the phone with an AppleCare representative at the end of November. He said they could repair or replace it but I said I wanted to know if it was a software/driver problem or if it was a hardware failure. I didn't have a lot of the cosmetic issues people were complaining about so I didn't want to risk a trade-in if it wasn't going to matter anyway. He said he was going to discuss it with Engineering and get back to me about the real cause of these blackouts. After a week he could not tell me an answer and just set up a very quick replacement. I could have still sent it in for repair, but I have a belief that if I get an electronic anything and it has a problem in the first month I should just get rid of it. They sent shipping labels via e-mail and they shipped out the new unit as soon as FedEx scanned my package when I handed it to them at the store. That was last Wednesday. I had the new one in my hands on Monday. So yes, a completely new freshly made (assumedly) machine. I have already outlined the differences in other posts in this thread so I won't go on about it again.

There were several people in the early days of this thread, and on other forums, who exchanged their machines and had no trouble after that. I was curious about their System Profile readouts but they never posted any.. Which is why I made sure to save the data before I sent my original back.

Well, I tried the new Firmware. But, I can not confirm it makes any difference, just because the black screen would normally appear totally at random and occurred only one time, just after a playing for a few minutes, where I had played the game (flatout 2) for a much longer time before on other occasions.

-----------------
Boot-ROM-version: MBP51.0074.B01
SMC-version: 1.33f8
9400M - ROM revision: 3343
9600M - ROM revision: 3343

Time to calm down.
I have seen no prove of reliable sources that NVIDIA has made a mistake in this case. This belongs to apple too.
Whenever you buy a brand new product, there is a slight chance of a mistake being around that will hopefully be fixed later on.

I had black screen as written earlier. Pushing the fans up solved the problem (is there ANYone who did not suceed with this??).
The new upgrades of Firmware seem to fix the problem - no black screen yesterday, much cooler temperatures are shown (so either the temp or the sensors were affected by the updates).

Just relax and try it out. And dont blame it on NVIDIA or Apple before you KNOW they are guilty. Just a matter of fairness...

I just installed it and tested FlatOut 2 in OSX, and got the BSOD after about 6-7 minutes of playing.

The fans seemed to behave a bit different, as described here earlier. They ramped up nicely, but spun down a bit after a while.

Remember though, these firmware updates did not promise a fix for the BSOD problem.

Installed both updates and make no difference on my system so far. While installing one of the updates the fans were blowing like there is no tomorrow but once the system booted, I switched to dedicated graphics and put WoW at full detail. I had less than 20 fps and the temperature started to get high, but fans did not go faster than the usual 2k rpm, until finally it crashed after 15 minutes of gameplay.

I was expecting that these updates make a difference but it's very dissapointing that after paying 2.5k euros they just ask me not to play games... In Spain it's impossible to get a replace because they say they have no stock and the only chance is leave the computer there and wait, something that I cannot do because this little piece of aluminum is my way of living.

My system details are:
Before the update
ROM MBP51.0073.B02
SMC version 1.33f6
ROM revision (both nvidias) 3327

After the update
ROM MBP51.0074.B01
SMC version 1.33f8
ROM revision (both nvidias) 3343

Bad Apple, bad...

same thing here, both updates installed launched wow and got bsod 4 minutes later: fans at 2000 rpm while cpuA temp at over 100 celsius and gpu diode >95 celsius.

Versione Boot ROM: MBP51.0074.B01
Versione SMC: 1.33f8
Revisione ROM: 3343
Versione gMux: 1.7.3

I hope it gets fixed in 10.5.6, I'm not even in my country now, so I can't ask for a repair/replace and my (bad) mbpro is well over 1 month old. I can't believe this.

Hi Kevenly, thanks for your response. It does not matter if you have not done any benchs on the old system, we can find the scores for those on the net and compare with the updated systems to see if there is a difference in score.
I'm particularly interested to see if graphics benchmarks have been affected, that would indicate a reduced core speed for the 9600.

Yesterday i tried all evening to produce a bsod but without sucess. My temperature went up to max. 96 °C but everything was still working. I used different GPU Benchmarktools and GPU Stresstestutilities. Today i will try some games (like crysis or half life 2 which seems to be a better way to get a bsod)
But i also realized someting odd:
I installed rivatuner ( http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner ) and every clock was according to spec except the memory clock:

Official: 9600M GT 500/1250/800 core/shader/mem
Mine: 9600M GT 500/1250/792 core/shader/mem

Does anyone also this slighly reduced memory clock?
Regards,
ToM

small update: I did a SMC reset, booted in without usb mouse plugged and started wow in performance mode. cpuA got up to 108 celsius and gpu diode to 95 when fans started to speed up to 4600rpm and temp got down to 85-90 in about 2 mins, played for like 15 mins and logged out without a problem. the bad thing is that if I reboot with usb mouse plugged (or I plug in the mouse while osx's up) I still get the bsod even before reaching such high temperatures. To fix I need another smc reset. maybe there is something wrong with some usb devices / ports, since I got at 108c without a bsod and when using mouse system locks up way before, or it's just coincidence I don't know for sure. Don't have time to test it more now, just wanted to share my exp so far.

Some info from my simple testing...

Background - Purchased Unibody MBP in November, had Black Screen issues when gaming with WOW within first 10 minutes of gaming. Duplicated several times. Went to Apple store and exchanged machine with no issues. New machine had same problem, although it took about 15 minutes of gaming to trigger. Fan Control on default showed no fan speed increases with temp...temps hitting 98C and higher.

Post EFI and SMC Firmware - Over 1 hour WOW gaming on max detail, windowed at max window size. Highest temp seen was 91C...typical temp about 82C and fans are spooling with temp...in fact they are doing a pretty good job over all. No crashes at this point...will continue to monitor

One of the questions the Apple rep asked me during our talk was if I had any USB devices plugged in. Sounds like they're looking into this issue as well.

For the record, my USB devices are:

Apple wired keyboard
Logitec Wireless mouse
Belkin Glove game controller

Another follow up.

I was able to game on the replacement machine last night with graphics set to performance and had no issues. Prior to going to bed, however, I did a software update check and downloaded the software and firmware updates that were released yesterday. This morning I logged into WoW (graphics set to performance) and lasted somewhere between 2 - 5 minutes before I got the BSoD.

On my original machine I didn't always get the BSoD, but I have to admit I was hopeful that I would not experience this problem at all with the new machine. I think a machine that is touted as powerful and great for gaming and running graphic-intensive applications should not be giving us these problems. I truly hope this issue is resolved very soon.