Overheat? The fans revved and suddenly I could use nothing but the cursor. Had to hold down the power switch to kill all and then re-power & startup. I wasn't doing anything unusual, but I had 7 apps open and was amid an auto-backup to TimeMachine.
Just a little disillusioned and concerned, wondering if anyone else there has experienced a hard freeze like this.
Everyone who experiences a crash take note of the time and go /Applications/Utilities/Console then see if there is a crash log. If there is, find the name of the .crash file that was created at that time.
I've got one of the 2011 models which is running without a hitch.
From my experience with other computers, this sounds like bad memory, or memory not seated correctly. To avoid the inconvenience of replacing the machine at the store, I would probably investigate the memory first.
Isn't there a memory / hardware diagnostic if you boot using the OS disk?
There is a very good memory tested included on most linux boot media called memtest86.
..
Or I might grab a '00 Phillips screwdriver and re-seat the ram. I believe this does not void the warranty.
Well, I have been running some tests here tonight and everything seemed fine,
maxed out 8 cores at 1 hour, no problems, handbrake encoding, noisy fan but really quick.
But just when it all started to feel great, i changed the After Effects Multi core setting to use all 8 cores with 0.75gb allocated ram for each core, and the CPU raised to 92 Celcius, wich I was expecting... but the fans rpm were too slow to catch up on the sudden increase... so another system freeze, only mouse cursor moving... hard reboot.
So, there u have it, all is well with the new macbook pro´s 2011, its just this glitch with the fans not able to react quick enough when the CPU cranks up from 50 to 92 celcius in a matter of 5-10 seconds...
I believe this is the case with all new macbook pros, its just that most of us dont push ALL cores to the max really quickly, therefore some of us will never notice this problem...
I did change the After Effects CPU to use only 6 cores with 1 GB allocated ram each, that worked really well, fans stayed at 5000 rpm and temp ever rose above 85 celcius.
Summary: Reinstalling the snow leopard OS as suggested by Apple Support did nothing.
Not being a techno, can you shut off some of the cores globally? It's rather annoying to spend all this money on all these cores and not be able to use them. In your opinion; is this something that can be fixed with a firmware update?
Interesting that you mention this, I almost want to say that it has something to do with manufacturing on some of the units, I say this because the black panel where the Macbook Pro wording is connecting the screen to the bottom was lose and I had to press it in to snap it back together. I was having the fan issue but I have not had that happen for a while now and I noticed it with small tasks and when I have multiple programs open. I don't know what happened but it is working just fine now, as if the system recreates itself based on uses. I've had to reset the computer one time now but ever since that has happened I do not get the freezing anymore. I sold my 27 inch i7 2.8 for this and I do not regret it one bit Absolutely love my MBP....I know ppl are not suppose to love a thing but man it's hard not to.
I'm placing my bets on a video card or driver problem. I've been rendering in modo and have had a half-dozen freezes in the past two days on my brand-new 2.3 GHz machine. Today, I looked up the menu extra "gfxCardStatus" so that I could disable graphics switching and just run on the integrated graphics for a test, and this afternoon I've been able to run numerous rendering tests without the machine crashing. I've had iStat Menus 3 installed to watch the temps and have seen 90+ C temps, but the fans are running and the machine is working fine.
Hopefully, someone else can install gfxCardStatus and run on the integrated graphics to see if your machine behavior changes when the automatic switching is overridden and one or the other graphics subsystem is used.
dnakad wrote:
I did change the After Effects CPU to use only 6 cores with 1 GB allocated ram each, that worked really well, fans stayed at 5000 rpm and temp ever rose above 85 celcius.
That might be the case, I will disable the hyper threading tonight/tomorrow and run similar tests.
On a side note:
I once read that disabling the hyper threading actually improves after effects renders, i tried it
on my Mac Pro 2010 at work without any differences in speed though..
Sitting in the Apple store now. Brought my machine in and getting a new one and data transfer. Hope this fixes the problem but somehow i doubt it. What a waste of a day.
I have the same problem with my 15" quad-core i7 machine. When rendering video using Screenflow, the fans quickly begin to ramp up in speed and then the machine seems to freeze. In most cases, the cursor can be moved around the screen but you cannot click anything or type on the keyboard.
