Snow Leopard Graphics Corruption

Yeah I'd say your right. I think we just have to hope that Apple finds this thread and fixes the problem.

Alright, so:
Mostly MacBooks, at least one iMac. All Intel GMAX3100 GPUs as far as we know.
Occurs most often with Flash, movies, & running another VM.
Can happen immediately on 10.6 clean install.

What has been tried to resolve it?
I saw early on a guess at rolling back to 10.5 drivers; has everyone tried that? Did it work for anyone?
Has everyone checked the 10.1 beta for Flash? We all know Apple & Adobe aren't playing ball so well right now...
Bringing computer out of sleep mode resolves issue for short time.
Logging out & back in resolves issue for short time.

What else am I missing?

Personally here is what I've got:
VirtualBox & VMWare Fusion v2. Running Win 7 Pro, Linux Mint, & openSolaris.
Play various movies & TV series from HDD or DVD in VLC and QuickTime.
Do not have Flash 10.1 beta.

Message was edited by: gregory.jones

I had the Flash 10.1 Beta installed and it happened very frequently even once I downgraded to the stable version of Flash. So than i decide to do a clean install of Snow Leopard and only install the stable version of Flash. I haven't had the problem since (about 2 days), however I can tell that it hasn't been fixed because when I mouse over the dock you can notice small black flickering around the edges of the dock. I haven't tried rolling back the drivers (because I haven't got access to any Leopard drivers)

I am also running a beta version of VMware Fusion 3.1 however I think the problem was happening before I was using the VMF 3.1 beta

I have several Macs hence the G5 reference, now changed for the iMac which has this issue.

Chipset model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. 128 MB VRAM.

MPB,
Try switching your dock to 2D from the 3D.

RJ,
Run Apple h/w diags or Tech Tools if you haven't. Since you have a dedicated GPU I'd like to see if that maybe pulls up a GPU error.

I have done an Apple Hardware Test and it said that my hardware is fine.

gregory.jones wrote:
MPB,
Try switching your dock to 2D from the 3D.

RJ,
Run Apple h/w diags or Tech Tools if you haven't. Since you have a dedicated GPU I'd like to see if that maybe pulls up a GPU error.

You got me mixed up MPB. I wanted you to switch your dock to 2D.

I wanted *R J Kerr* to run the graphics test because the 7300 is a dedicated GPU.

But since I have you; the Intel is an integrated chip but how much shared memory is it? Mine says I have 144MB shared on mine; but yours is a 3,1 while mine is 4,1.

Sorry lol.

It appears to have gone when I'm using the 2D dock, but returns after i switch it back to 3D. And yes mine too has 144MB of shared memory.

If you have istat pro (or some other way to check your temps) tell me what it says. I'm wondering what the temperature is between the 3d & 2d dock.

Ran extensive tests last night with no reported problems.

Ok, RJ cool. Switch your dock to 2D from 3D to see if that changes anything.

OK, I now have my Dock in stunning 2D. Will let you know how it goes. This distortion issue happens from time-to-time and it's been a day or two since the last event but I will be back as soon as it happens, if it happens, again.

Thanks for your time.

Just wanna help. Though it would be totally awesome if I could find a temporary solution until Apple releases updated drivers, hahaha. I'm going to cut my 3D dock on (I've pretty much never used it since a couple months after I got this MacBook). The 2D dock seems more responsive & uses a little less RAM than the 3D.

Anyway I'll see if the graphical errors pop up on my system & let yall know.

Want to add another MacBook with the X3100 GPU that gets distortion constantly.

Turned off the 3D dock as suggested above - Problem went away. So far so good.

I've got a friend that works at an ASP service center. He says they get about ~150 MacBooks & haven't seen this issue yet but will keep an eye out.
Let me also ask this at his suggestion: are these units running the stock RAM from Apple or 3rd party RAM?