Screen turns black when gaming?

I'm having this issue too with my MacBook Pro late 2008 (manufactured in week 43 - October) when I'm playing WoW.

I called a local Apple reseller about 1,5 week ago and told him about the problem. He advised me to do a Mac OSX reinstall, with the 'archive and install' option.

I did a reinstall immediately and everything worked fine...until last Sunday, when I had the screen problem again.


I think the problem could be caused by one of the software updates, because after my reinstall I gradually installed the software updates to see if it had any effect on my problem.

What I did: I installed a few updates and played Wow for at least 30 minutes, to check if the problem occurred again.

This went fine, until last Sunday when I installed the "Software-update for MacBook, MacBook Pro" (1.2). Right after the update I played Wow...and the black screen problem was back.

I don't know for sure if this update causes the black screen, but I thought it was worth posting it here.

Same thing here, I'm very happy to have found this thread!

I just bought it a few days ago, so will hang on to it for a while while this pans out.

I'm promoting this thread on my various networks, you all should do the same.

Boot ROM Version: MBP51.0074.B00
SMC Version: 1.33f6

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0647
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3327
gMux Version: 1.7.3

Just called UK Support, first person I spoke to logged the fault and didn't say anything about it. I was then put through to someone else, I guess 2nd line support. He just asked a load more questions and said he wasn't aware of a known problem with black screen during usage.

Overall a 38min phone call with the outcome that it's being escalated. They now want me to send them a Capture Data log when it next happens.

Very helpful, very nice and very sure they'll resolve the problem in one way or another.

Boot ROM MBP51.0074.B00
SMC 1.33f6

Final update:

Just to let you guys know I've cancelled my MBP replacement order and gone with a Mac Pro desktop instead since given the issue I'd rather get something I know works. Best of luck to you guys on this issue - hopefully Apple fix it soon.

Hi friends

I'm really new to Apple and Mac Book world and some days ago when I looked at Apple website I found New Alum Mac Book (Not MB Pro) a good point of start to apple world for myself.

Today I noticed a topic about Black screen of death on Appleinsider and I found this discussion and now I'm in doubt whether to buy new Alum Mac Book or the old White Mac Books.

As reading I noticed that most of people had problem whith MBP and not Mac Book. Is there anyone with this Problem happened to his Mac Book?

I have exactly the same problem|

When i play Flatout the screen goes black and only any commands works. No solution, i only have to shut down the macbook pro.

I hope that Apple fix this problem or change my Macbook Pro. I pay it 2500 euros!!!!!

Message was edited by: Dreamarco

There's no solution yet but as the thread says a above, Apple seems to be aware of the problem and is hopefully researching it as we speak.

What you can do is inform your social networks about this problem, get it out there. Point to this thread if you will.

If you call Apple, post their response here.

If you manage to get a new laptop from your shop, post here wether it has the same problem or not.

I got my new MBP last week (after almost a month waiting for shipping) and have been having this problem in both OS X and Win XP, however it doesn't seem to occur all the time. For instance, I played Half-Life 2 (XP) for upwards of 3 hours solid with no issues, yet Halo 1 will often crash within 5 minutes of gameplay (Mac).

This is annoyingly random. I dont really see the point in just picking up a replacement if they are likely to have the same issue given the hassle. As I mentioned before this is both OS X and Windows thats doing it. It could be that there is the same driver problem with both and a software update could fix them.

Some update from apple on this would help as for the price of the thing its incredibly irritating to have an issue like this. You would think they would have done some stress testing before release and it would show up this problem.

Late 2008 MacBook Pro here, having the black screen in Boot Camp running Lord of the Rings Online under Windows XP SP3 using the drivers off my OS X disc. Installing Vista SP1 seemed to make the problem go away, and when I switched back to XP, other games like IL2-Sturmovik and Flight Simulator X seem fine. The error message that occasionally showed up in Event Viewer post-crash, if it matters, was something to do with nv4_disp going into an infinite loop, and the stock standard "either your display driver or hardware" is flaky, "check with the vendor," yada yada.

Any further news whether it's software or hardware specific?

Oh yeah, no sign of it under OS X, but I'm running all my games under XP.

Message was edited by: mattpeckham

It seems you have to play games to set it off. Some might speculate that it stresses the system. Maybe so, but all my games are quite old.
Again, I only use OS X, no Boot Camp or Windows. Postal 2, Eternal Lands client, 4x4 Evo 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and the FlatOut 2 demo. It usually strikes in less than a minute. Yet no movies, screen savers, iTunes visualizers... None of that sets it off. Quite strange, because I would think the iTunes visualizer would tax the GPU more than some of those very old games.

is there still no official statement from Apple, that they maybe have discovered the issue?

I'm thinking about buying a MBP next week, and was wondering how the warranty is on this kind errors, if the error turns out to be hardware and not only software?

I have seen a problem very like this, on multiple (non-apple) systems with Nvidia display adapters.
In all cases, the problem was software generated (but hardware failure). I first saw it with products from Turbine (Dungeons and Dragons Online, then later in Lord of the Rings Online), but then started seeing it with Blizzard's ten ton gorilla World of Warcraft as well.

In the Turbine products, the fix was VERY simple. In advanced graphics settings, there was an option 'Sync to refresh rate'. With it unchecked, in less than a half hour I would have the entire system lock up hard, with an audio loop or a loud screech, and initially totally corrupted display that went to black when the monitor put itself to sleep. With it checked, I could run for 24 hours straight (tested) without an issue.

In World of Warcraft, I had the issue when running full screen. Again, a looped audio or piercing screech, hard locked system, display artifacts followed by the display shutting down/going to sleep (for black screen). In this case, I found no software settings that seemed to affect it directly. By running in Windowed mode (not fullscreen) it stopped happening.

Some time after that, One of Blizzard's patches (or one of Nvidia's) seems to have corrected the issue. Currently, I can run fullscreen with the same video card and not have the screech and halt come up.

I have NOT seen this come up on my MacbookPro 17" yet, but I only play Warcraft in OSX mode, not boot camp, and I play it windowed there anyway.

YMMV, but I wanted to post this. When I helped Turbine troubleshoot it, they actually put an entry in their FAQ for me. 🙂

THe 'hardware failure' seemed to be related to the video being overdriven by software settings, until it thermally locked up (or locked up in a way consistent with thermal overload). Powercycling the computer would temporarily solve it, but unless there was some time between restart and running the offending game, your time-to-lockup-screech would drop reboot to reboot until it would fail the instant you ran the game/logged into the game world.
--
Paul

Download nexuiz, a free and open source 3D game which runs (also) on OS X.
http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/
It gave me a black screen of death as well.

Also: Warcraft III at OS X and Fallout 3 at Windows XP Home SP3 gives me the black screen of death, usually after 5 - 10 minutes of playing.

I tried to
* run other laptopvideo2go Nvidia drivers -> did not work
* force my fans at maximum speed (6000 RPM) with SMCFanControl -> did not work
Other people are suggesting to underclock my video card -> I refuse to do this, I want it to run at full speed. I shouldn't bother with these things ..

This is unacceptable! I paid 2500 EUR for this laptop (2.8Ghz, 320GB @ 7200 RPM)!

I called the apple shop where I bought it, and they didn't want to give me a new machine. They said I had to wait because Apple is preparing a software update.
I did not believe this, because I'm fairly sure it's a hardware problem (because not all MBP's have this problem AND it happens in both Windows and OS X).
I went to the shop and demanded them to return my MBP to Apple and either repair it or give me a new unit. They've now send it to Apple Brussels.
I hope it get fixes really quick, or I'm going to ask my money back.

This is a shame Apple, a real shame! So is 2500 EUR worht this ****?!
This is my first Mac 'experience', nice huh?! 'It just works' my ***!

That's really interesting Azraphael.

I partly tested this this morning, leaving Warhammer logged in in windowed mode for about an hour while I got ready for work.

The fans ramped up fine and the game lasted through the whole thing.

I'm going to do some stress testing in Boot Camp/Trackmania now, where it has proven to crash very quickly. I'll se if I can enable vsync too and test it in fullscreen.

Of course, this is not a solution, but some good data for the eventual solution. It's also indicative of a software problem, rather than hardware.