Screen turns black when gaming?

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.

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

shauny, you're a lifesaver, I haven't had any crash problems so far after a good few hours of playing. Thanks so much buddy 😀

Although the beta drivers fuzzed up my card so I went back to the boot camp default.

Gearoid, call Apple and get a replacement. Their customer service said that they'd only fix mine if the black screen was happening on os x but it wasn't for me so they wouldn't help. Some people have said that a new laptop has fixed the problem so maybe it's just the first batch that have such a hardware issue.

Are those of you experiencing this problem noticing the fans not speeding up when you are gaming? I believe the SMC is not increasing the fan speed when the cpu/gpu gets hot which then leads to the crash to a black screen. Even when my cpu is at 90C and gpu and 85C, the fans on my mbp are not spinning any faster.

I have a workaround that doesn't involve underclocking the card, but rather getting your fans to ramp up sooner.

The problem that is appearing on OS X when gaming and connected to an external monitor happens when the temp spikes and before the fans have a chance to spin up to cool it down. Look for an application called SMC Fancontrol. It's free, very simple, and although it doesn't believe it's made yet for the new MBP, I have had no problems with it.

What it does is lets you set a new minimum RPM for your fans. It can also be switched to and from default mode on the fly. Also, this is only a new minimum speed. Once temps reach a point where OS X wants to ramp up the fans even more, it always cedes control back to the operating system. You can never lower the fans more than OS X wants to run them, so it's safe.

What I do is right before I launch my game, I switch to "High RPM" mode. This sets the fans at 4000 RPM (above the 2000 RPM resting default). The temp never spikes, and the machine NEVER crashes anymore. It quickly warms up to above the standard 4000 RPM level, so the system very quickly takes over control again, so it's not like you're really stressing the fans any more than you normally would. Just restore it back to default mode when you're not gaming.

The application has the option to launch on startup, and you can make custom configurations. It displays in the top system area next to your Synch or Time Machine icons and, nicely, displays the temp and RPMs. Right-clicking on it gives you the options to change everything on the fly.

Folks may still want to exchange their machines. But in the meantime, this works very well, and I'm quite happy with it. I'll be calling Apple support, of course, but since they would need to ship me a new machine (Apple retail store won't do a simple exchange), this would be a very workable, easy interim solution.

Hi JVTM - have you resolved this yet?

I'm debating whether to return my new Macbook Pro Late 2008 2.53 Ghz, too, since Dead Space crashes randomly in Boot Camp - black screen with repeating audio -

Sometimes it'll go for an hour or two, othertimes it crashes within 5 min - totally don't know why.

Additionally, do any of you have Vista installed in Bootcamp and notice that sometimes there's a black artifact that covers the bottom of the screen for a quick moment on the login screen for Vista? I get that pretty frequently and I'm scared it's indicative of a bad graphics card.

Pandachi,

Mine just crashed again despite my underclocking of the card. I think I'm going to return it, I'll just tell Apple that the crashes happened in OS X so they give me a new one...

How recently did you buy yours? I hoping it's only the early batches so a replacement MBP would fix the problem. Fortunately I have a cooling pad which I bought for my old Acer laptop that overheated, I'm typing this 2 minutes after the MBP gave me a black screen of death and now it's on the pad it's pretty darn cold; sad thing is it now sits a few inches off the desk so is hard to use.

I'm having the same black-screen problems in Boot Camp. Trying to play Half-life 2 and Oblivion. They seem to keep crashing in the same places. I've got the latest driver 180.47 from laptopvideo2go. I'll try to play with some more settings, maybe find something that works. I've got the 2.8, so I can't just take it in to be exchanged... guess I'd have to go through AppleCare. Hopefully someone will figure this out.

Hey, yea, I've tried the newest drivers from laptop2go and everything - the weird thing is none of my other games crash in bootcamp (Crysis and COD4), just dead space, so I really want to think it's a driver issue -

Also, I downloaded the Tomb Raider legends demo for Mac OS X and the comp gets REALLY hot but it didn't crash, so I dunno...

Then again, I've had it crash while browsing the web on Vista, too, although I've read that it happens to others in this discussion board, too

I could return it, but it'd be a pain since I've already installed SO MUCH STUFF and setup my computer exactly the way I want it...

Tell me if the new macbook you got fixes it - I have applecare so I'm not in a super hurry -

Hey, yea, I've tried the newest drivers from laptop2go and everything - the weird thing is none of my other games crash in bootcamp (Crysis and COD4), just dead space, so I really want to think it's a driver issue -

Also, I downloaded the Tomb Raider legends demo for Mac OS X and the comp gets REALLY hot but it didn't crash, so I dunno...

Then again, I've had it crash while browsing the web on Vista, too, although I've read that it happens to others in this discussion board, too

I could return it, but it'd be a pain since I've already installed SO MUCH STUFF and setup my computer exactly the way I want it...

Tell me if the new macbook you got fixes it - I have applecare so I'm not in a super hurry -