24" iMac Screen Freezes since 10.6.3 update - pls help!

My personal feel on this as a software developer, is that it is a hardware or firmware errata which causes problems with the new drivers. When apple replace the GPU, they replace it with either a newer revision GPU, or a newer firmware, which makes the problem go away.

I'd be interested to see the "Revision ID" and "ROM Revision" from people here with affected 2400/2600 GPU's, and those with 2400/2600 GPU's that work OK. You can find this information in System Profiler, on the "Graphics/Displays" section

I'd like to add that the freeze ups also occur with NVIDIA GeForce 130 cards as well. I had mine replaced once but the problem persisted. Not until I sped up my internal fan using 'fancontrol' for Mac did my computer cool down enough to run without freezing. I know others have dismissed my theory of running a cooler temp CPU. But it worked for me. I can run flash now as well.

Hi jaycee1980, here comes the data of my affected imac8,1 with ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250L-259

Just to add my 2 cents as an Apple tech, If a machine were to come into my office with these issues, First thing I would suspect is a bad GPU.

Obviously I would test the unit with diagnostics and see if it faulted of one of my OSs, but my gut instinct would say that many here have one of 3 things wrong with their systems: faulty GPU, faulty logic board or faulty RAM. Best thing to do is to get the machine serviced.

To those who have had service only to have the problem return: believe me, it frustrates techs as much as it frustrates customers to see a machine that was fixed come back a few days later with the same issue 🙂

combrains, the frustrating thing is, my affected iMac (with Radeon 2400) has no GPU issue in 10.6.3 or in Windows 7 - I have thrashed it with several GPU "torture" tools under Windows, checked VRAM, and everything is fine, no graphics corruption, no freezes. The GPU is definitely working hard as the fans spin up and the machine gets a lot warmer than normal.

Also, if the GPU was faulty, the issue would not go away when you revert to the earlier kext's. It is quite clearly a driver issue perhaps caused by some hardware/firmware errata, but it IS fixable. Apple are simply not interested and want people to buy new hardware, which is unacceptable.

My affected GPU is: Vendor: 1002, Device 94C8, Revision 0

ROM revision 113-B22503-X26C

Hi Jaycee

Have been getting the freezes since 10.6.3. Now I have 10.7.1 - same problems, solved with the Kext fixes.

Here's my computer specs:

iMac 7.1

Graphics card: ATI 2400

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250A-207

I was getting the freezes every day (at cool CPU temps). Now "resolved" by running OS X 10.6.8 in 64-bit mode with the 10.6.2 Kext fixes.

My affected machine (same as Tardigrada):

iMac 8,1

Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250L-259

Here is the info for my affected iMac 7.1:

ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2400

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250A-207

Working fine with Lion 10.7.2 and kext 10.6.2.

Mine is iMac 8,1

Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00

SMC Version (system): 1.29f1

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x9583

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250L-259

EFI Driver Version: 01.00.259

System Version: Mac OS X 10.7.2 (11C74)

Kernel Version: Darwin 11.2.0

ATI extensions all 7.2.9

8d and 18h now. But very disappointed to hear that no one else seems to have shared this unexpected

stability without the 10.6.2 kexts or bumped up fans.

😕

Thank You! This worked for me :-)

Has anyone checked out this article?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1293

The update can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL71

I would recommend reverting to the original kexts for your OS after running the update. I can see a couple of you who have posted you profiles here have not yet run this update - hopefully this should fix for most of you 🙂

HTH

This update is for iMac 8,1 only, and it looks like all of those reported here are up-to-date.

I tried the newer 1.0.2 variant, but it says my iMac doesn't need it …

BTW: Is it possible to downgrade the firmware? Who knows, maybe the problem is a firmware regression.

Tardigrada wrote:

I tried the newer 1.0.2 variant, but it says my iMac doesn't need it …

Somewhat interesting, the log entry says:

Installer[49873] Package Authoring Warning: Package reference does not include required hash for package id auto.

Is that update broken?

Thanks, combrains for the idea. According to my ROM Revision, I've already got it applied to my iMac 8,1 -- which makes sense because I've always installed whatever Software Update served up to me. I also remember another graphics update becoming available and being disappointed that it wasn't offered to my iMac... it must have been the 1.0.2 variant, as I specifically remember it as being "advertised" as applying to only some iMac 8,1 systems.

Hi Jaycee,

I have a ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with the following:

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B2250L-259

EFI Driver Version: 01.00.259

I've contacted Applecare again (twice) and I'm still waiting to hear back from them after the support specialist said he would check with his "engineers" after I sent videos of my frozen iMac and a description of the kext fix. That was almost 3 weeks ago now.

Still waiting...