Screen turns black when gaming?

Same here.

The BSoD was a bit different though. The sound didn't continue and loop, everything just went dead. And as you said there was a crash report after reboot.

I'll test more, but it seems they've at least changed some things to allow data to be collected for a crash report.

I have NOT installed 10.5.6 yet.

However, I did do the firmware update. Before I was blasting the fans SMC style to regulate temperature. I never did get the BSOD, but things would get very hot, and eventually games would freeze after extended play.

I never heard the fans come on before.

With the firmware update, I've been able to game for hours, the fans do come on, and they seem intelligent even in XP, dialing up in frantic gameplay, and dialing down when idle or not doing a whole lot.

Highest temperature I've seen so far is about 83C...

This compared to 90 and 100C+ before the firmware update.

I don't know if this was just a fans issue, but in this case, it's working.

Thanks kallepau. Yeah, sorry Robert, I should have been more specific. I was referring to software as a general term but I'm mainly interested in any firmware or driver changes that may come along with the update (not sure if any actually do).

I stated above that I had gotten the BSoD after 10.5.6, but I'm not so sure anymore.

The "BSoD" was a bit different, the sound stopped abruptly and I got to do a crash report after report.

After reboot I played FlatOut 2 for a long while, then moved on to Spore for a good while too. Not hours of gaming, but yet.

I then rebooted into Windows and played Trackmania for a while and then Warhammer on max setting. Fans blazing throughout, but no BSoD.

So no classic BSoD yet, before the patch I would have gotten it by now for sure.

Now, after the firmware patches I didn't actually run Windows to see if the problem was still there, I just ran FlatOut 2 which promptly crashed, so didn't bother to switch to Windows gaming.

So in a quick conclusion (for now), there might be changes in 10.5.6 that makes the BSoD occur in a slightly more "controlled" way, maybe also more seldomly.

The one crash I got wasn't a classic BSoD, it was mutated. Please pay attention to this from now on, when you report here.

I'll keep testing.

My MacBook Pro came with the firmware update. 83C is about what I have experienced also (87C once or twice). Looks like that might have been the extent of apple's attempt to address the issue thus far.

I will say this though: in a search for some different forums discussing 9600 GT temperature, a lot of folks said that 80C+ was still very hot for a graphics card of this kind.

I'm curious to see this kind of data:

Purchase date.
Updates applied.
BKSOD or not.
Tried SMC?

Me first:

Oct 20.
EFI, SMC and 10.5.6
BKSOD remains a problem in XP (do not use 9600M in OSX)
Yes, and even 6200RPM wasn't enough.

Message was edited by: DLC_UT

November 18
EFI-SMC-10.5.6
BSOD in OSX and also winXP
Yes, seems that it fixes the problem... I've played Call of Duty 4 for hours without any problem. Altought, I have called Apple for a replacement...

Sorry but it looks like maybe you didn't understand me; what I meant is that switching to the max the fans with SMCFanControl helped to prevent BSOD, but I don't think that this can be a real fix for the issue... also, any of the last updates helped anyway, I'm having the same problem from the first day.

Yesterday I finally had the time to do some more testing.

First of all I tried a couple of games in OS X. I played Call of Duty 4, the Flatout 2 demo, Nexuiz, UT2004 and World of Goo. I've played all of them for at least half an hour (or let a replay run for half an hour which is also GPU intensive) and all worked fine.

Next I switched to Vista. First time I tried to play a game (Counterstrike Source) within 2 minutes I got the black screen of death while the fans were still running at 2000 rpm. After a PRAM reset I tried again. Usually for me the fans respond quickly enough after a PRAM reset. I tried a GPU benchmark program first. The temperature stabilized at 80 C. I also played Counterstrike Source for about 15 minutes and Fallout 3 for about 50 minutes. I had Speedfan open on a secondary monitor to check the temperature. Both times after a couple of minutes the temperature stabilized at about 79 or 80 C and everything worked well. In the end I tried Dead Space again (the game in which I discovered the program) and after a couple of minutes the temperature gradually increased to about 86 degrees followed by the black screen of death.

So, of all the games I played only Dead Space is a problem for me. Two weeks ago I called twice about the problem, the first guy said he couldn't help me since it was only in Vista and the next time they referred me to an Apple Service Center. I decided I'm just going to wait since most games work fine for me and I don't really want to wait a couple of weeks to get a new one. I guess it will be quite difficult for me anyway to get a new MBP since for me the problem only occurs in Windows. I really hope this problem gets fixed in a firmware update or that the problem is officially acknowledged so that it will be easier to get a new logic board.

I'm really hoping its just not the nature of the 9600 to heat up this much, but it could very well be. Since I saw temps over 100C on mine, I brought it to the shop since it could very well be a defective chip or a mis-applied heat-sink causing my issues. Who knows, whatever the case, I'm getting a new logic board.

Also, the turn around time for a repair isn't a few weeks (unless maybe you mailed it in). My apple store didn't even have the parts in but said they would get them in a day or so.. Probably looking at a 4 day turn around.. Not too bad.

I'm hoping its something as simple as a firmware issue, but as for drivers, I can't see that since it spans 2 OSs completely.

Personal opinion is that these things are just heating up way too much to a point I don't think apple even expected.

Update 3.0:

The problem continues post 10.5.6. I updated as soon as I arrived at home. Started up a game and not 5 minutes I got a BSoD; however, this time upon power down and back up I was able to see a error report log that stated:

Mon Dec 15 20:39:03 2008
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x00405DEB): "NVRM: Read Error: GPU 0, PCI 0x00000200, BAR0 0xe4000000 0x5941c000"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.9.59/iokit/Kernel/IOLib.cpp:724
Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x4b20fc38 : 0x12b4f3 (0x45b13c 0x4b20fc6c 0x1335e4 0x0)
0x4b20fc88 : 0x405deb (0x49da40 0x58ad1280 0x4b20fccc 0x4b20fcbc)
0x4b20fca8 : 0x588a24f7 (0x58ad1280 0x58ad1280 0x58a95c88 0x0)
0x4b20fce8 : 0x58b59d1a (0x7430c04 0x7860804 0x61002c 0x588deb13)
0x4b20fd28 : 0x58b6d79a (0x7860804 0x61002c 0x4b20fd68 0x588de9af)
0x4b20fd48 : 0x589d4881 (0x7860804 0x7961804 0x51580000 0x7457804)
0x4b20fd68 : 0x58a0705d (0x7860804 0x7961804 0x1 0x0)
0x4b20fec8 : 0x5898617e (0x7860804 0x0 0x4b20ff18 0x4b20ff14)
0x4b20ff38 : 0x588a30a5 (0x7430c04 0x431a0004 0x0 0x0)
0x4b20ff58 : 0x5888e1f0 (0x431a0004 0x258f96a0 0x4b20ff78 0x1a336f)
0x4b20ff78 : 0x13eed2 (0x7486c00 0x431a0004 0x0 0x0)
0x4b20ffc8 : 0x1a017c (0x0 0x0 0x1a30b5 0x90b8f20)
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.nvidia.nv50hal(5.3.6)@0x58ae6000->0x58d3afff
dependency: com.apple.NVDAResman(5.3.6)@0x58889000
com.apple.NVDAResman(5.3.6)@0x58889000->0x58ae5fff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(1.7.1)@0x5887b000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.5)@0x51286000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(1.7.1)@0x5885e000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Mac OS version:
9G55

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:37:00 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBookPro5,1

I experienced the same type of BSoD. Black screen with looping audio. The strange part about this report is that it looks like its reporting a Kernel Panic but usually those give you a screen with a message telling you to power down. Anyway, I'm sending this over to the T/S specialist I was working with. This is really getting old fast though I won't lie. This shouldn't be happening on Apple's top model laptop. If anything these should work perfectly for the money we paid.

My Pro was purchased online in early December. Everything was working fine for about 4 or 5 days and viola, first BlSOD. Happened in the Windows XP (Boot Camp) side while running a 3dMark 06 Benchmark test. Now I feel like everyone else does... this is a major disappointment.

so, after reading through this entire thread i'm wondering this.... does it seem fair to say that these freezes happen largely on the bootcamp/windows side of things?

i'm especially curious of this because i'm considering a new macbook pro but plan on using it for osx exclusively. if osx works ok then it's a no-brainer for me

sorry that so many of you seem to be having problems...

It happens just as much in OS X. I don't use Windows in any form, and the first MBP did the BSoD dance with every single game new or old in OS X. People tend to play games more in Windows, it seems.

You can scroll back through this thread and look at all my posts documenting my experience.

Replacement machine never gets to 80°, original machine got to 100° right away.

My own experience and one or two other people here that got replacements and put the hard drive image from the previous machine onto the new machine and found no problems on the mew machine proves it is a hardware issue, does it not?

"proves it is a hardware issue, does it not? "

possibly? too many variables really. what might be quite helpful is if everyone who is having problems would post their manufacture dates. that way we could at least suss out if it was an earlier batch of bad hardware or ... not.