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9400m Nvidia screen flicker

This is a followup to a previous thread about "9400M display flicker on Snow Leopard" The previous topic was marked "Solved" and archived.

This problem is not solved.

Macbook Pro 5,1 2008 with 2.4GHz and nVidia 9400M + 9600M GT, OS X 10.6.4.

I continue to have the intermittent main display flickering exactly as described in the previous thread. This is not a back-light problem, and the flicker is a momentary blanking, about as fast a blink of the eye, of a portion of the screen and affecting the top half of the built-in display.

Additional notes:
- Apparently random, between 5 seconds and several minutes cycle.
- No symptoms occur when running Energy Saver > Better Performance, 9600M GT
- The top of the display is more affected than the bottom.
- The portion of the display affected varies.
- Sometimes occurs at the same moment the display turns on, while the system is booting.
- If using a mini-display port to VGA connector, the external monitor will loose then regain sync about once an hour, occurring less frequently than the built-in display flicker.
- If using a mini-display port to DVI connector the external display always works properly regardless of built-in display flicker.
- The built-in display flicker is independent of any external display behavior.
- These symptoms are not affected by swapping out system RAM.
- SMC reset does not fix this problem.
- Didn't waste time resetting the PRAM, it has nothing to do with the situation.
- The effect is not thermally correlated, it happens hot or cold.

(see text of topic), Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 2, 2010 12:41 PM

Reply
46 replies

Nov 13, 2010 7:11 AM in response to Wire Moore

There is a US class action suit decision on NVDIA chips in 2008 MBPs. See http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/ .

If your Mac falls within the affected model ranges Apple will fix it free of charge.. they fixed mine! I am not sure if this applies to "non-domestic" Macs, though.

Manufacturer: Apple
Platform or Model: MacBook Pro (15-inch)
Purchase Date Range: May 2007 through September 2008

Nov 14, 2010 12:46 PM in response to Wire Moore

Having the same problem, but my model was purchased just outside the date range. (Purchased in December 2008) Anyone else have this issue outside the specified date range.

Screen flickers every 2-5 minutes when using onboard 9400M chipset. The problem is resolved when using the 9600M external card. The flickering seems to grow in frequency when the computer is under load. Thanks for feedback.

Nov 25, 2010 7:01 PM in response to ravivmg

So I finally took my MacBook Pro in and had it repaired last week. They installed a new logic board and the system worked fine for a day and a half then started blinking again. Now the screen flicker occurs with higher frequency than before (sometimes 3-5 times a minute). I'm not sure what is going on and if it is a hardware issue. Anyone else have their board replaced but still have the same issues?

Dec 24, 2010 5:13 AM in response to Merged Content 1

same here guys.

"better performance" setting 9600 GPU -> completely freezes my system at random
"better battery life" setting 9400 GPU -> screen flicker on top of screen

this is extremely annoying as you all know 🙂.

My guess is that we all have some sort of video driver problem. For me in the first year I owned the macbook it didn't happen. So I suspect the Snow Leopard upgrade to be a problem.

Can everyone confirm that they have snow leopard 10.6.5 or not?

9400m Nvidia screen flicker

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