Q: OSX Lion, Graphic Artifacts

Hi,

After the last Java update for Mountain Lion, my mid 2010 iMac "27 # now also have graphics problems. My looks like this. Is it the same problem as you experience?

This is how it looks on my machine:

Well, it looks like the 10.8.3 'update' has turned my machine back into a crash-prone mess. Glitches everywhere and GPU crashes (which bring the whole system down) occurring with alarming regularity.

Reinstalling 10.8 and upgrading to 10.8.2 makes the crashes stop - yet more proof that the problem lies with Apple's substandard graphics drivers. I still can't believe they haven't fixed this, or that they keep making it worse.

Thanks for letting us know. I was thinking about upgrading to see if those problems were solved, but now I'm just going to stick with 10.8.2.

Apple has really fallen short on this one.

I have been following this thread for quite some time now. I am running a 27" iMac 2010 2.93ghz with a Radeon 5750 HD. My problem has existed for around 6 months. I had followed Andrew's guide a few weeks ago and thought everything was running smoothly until a few recent updates brought all my problems back. I can also confirm that 10.8.3 is unusable on my end and 10.8.2 is much better (although artifacts still present). I was in my local apple store the other day contemplating on getting my card replaced. I'm not sure what to do at this point and I'm really surprised at the disinterest in this subject on apple's part. I mean, one of their main selling points is the correct software for the hardware they use.

Dude, I was there before. I've been posting on this thread for a while. I was YOHAN, I think. Anyway, I had my card replaced and would NEVER EVER put the display to sleep mode EVER again. And then it would work perfectly. It has for me so far.

I've done everything on this thread... like overclocking, etc... it only fixed the situation for a while. The only way is to NEVER EVER put the display to sleep. It messes up the GPU's configuration.

PS. NEVER EVER.

Thanks for the heads up. After getting your card replaced have the artifacts gone away completely? Also if I were to le my display sleep I'm assuming the artifacts would come back, permanently? Are you currently running 10.8.3 and if so is it running fine? Thanks!

Anthony, I'm now at 10.8. Haven't updated to 10.8.2 because 10.8 is stable for me - no glitches at all so far.

I'm not sure when it was introduced, but somewhere along the line Apple, presumably in an attempt to address problems just like this, threw in a kext file called AppleGraphicsPowerManagement - an extension which controls the power-saving features of graphics cards and tells them when (based on the idle percentage of the computer's processor) to switch to different power-saving modes. This kext overrides the BIOS settings, effectively unfixing the fix I'd found (way to go, Apple). As far as I can tell, all the problems we're seeing relate to the card attempting to switch to and from different power-saving modes.

I thought trashing the kext might work - it didn't. Still crashes galore in 10.8.3. Then I thought I might be able to tweak the values of the kext as layed down in its Info.plist file so that the card wouldn't switch modes at all (all the information on how to do this comes from the Hackintosh community - they're the only ones interested in the inner workings of OS X these days, Apple engineers included). That didn't work either and I got tired of stuffing around trying to fix a problem I shouldn't have to fix and simply went back to 10.8.

Ok, thanks Andrew I'm going back to 10.8 tomorrow and i'll post an update to confirm stability. My edited BIOS settings in reference to your guide should be still effective in 10.8?

Hmm... I tried going back before and reinstalling everything from scratch. The problem was still there. I figure that once it's out... it's always there lurking and waiting to pounce on you.

I'll check at home what version I have. All I remember is when I upgraded my OS from Snow to Lion... the problem started. Before that, it was doing okay for almost 2 years without a hitch. F(^&%K Lion.

My Mac is still okay so far since the GPU change. It's been more than 2 months now... and have never once entered sleep mode... so it's still fine. The problem now is that I can't just leave the computer on overnight.

I ended up selling my MacBook Pro that had the issue and bought a Mac mini, so far no recurrence on that.. Reading the above post is disappointing, on apple's part. The user should never have to do that much tech work on his computer, aren't these Macs supposed to be much better than this?? Tsk tsk apple...

I can "comfort" you that I have this problem on both Mac Mini and Macbook Pro, both mid 2010...  Both machines were affected after upgrading from Snow to Lion.

The weird thing however...  I have just recently scratched and reinstalled completely my Mac Mini.  I didn't have any 8GB memory stick, and my DVD-drive won't read or write burnt CD's or DVD's, so I had to use the Snow-reinstall DVD's I had and then upgrade to Lion from there again.  Now the problem seems gone.  I haven't seen any glitch for two weeks.  That is just weird...  (The DVD drive refusing to recognise burnt media is also a known problem of the machines from that time period...)

EDIT: Oh and my Mac mini has an insane run time.  It has been powered on more or less continuously for 2.5 years now, power saver enabled.

The weird thing is that lots of people having this issue complains about system instabilities and system crashes.  I can only remember 5-6 instances of weird ways my mac has gone down in 2,5 years, some in a really bizarre way, but that may just have beem something entirely unrelated.

2 BSODs, 2 "desktop reboots" and 2 complete lockups for a machine that runs 24/7 for 2.5 years, not bad really.  

The desktop reboots is like a really super-quick reboot after a forced shutdown.  Not just restarting finder, but also all running apps without actually going through a full reboot.  I have asked other super-users of Mac about this and they have never heard about anything like it either.

I've restored my HDD back to 10.8.2 (the last build I had on my time machine backup.) I'm back to a semi stable system. After I finish up my work queue I'm going to do a clean install to 10.8. So far I'm actually able to use my computer without any serious glitches. Has anyone had any luck trying to explain this issue to apple support?

For what it's worth, I had the same problem, I thought it was going to be my RAM (I recently swapped out the chips) until I saw the GPU crash messages in console.

My early 2011 MBP (ML 10.8.3) was crashing on wake and every other reboot would hang. The breadcrumbs in this thread suggested that it was the Radeon, so I turned off the "Automatic graphics switching" option in Energy Saver expecting things to get worse, but it seems to have fixed things. Wake and reboot seem fine now, and I didn't get any GPU crash messages in the console.