10.8.3 Forcing Discrete Graphics With Dropbox and others

Thanks Clinton!

I've already read about this, but I do hope and think that I'm personally not affected by this issue, because I've just had 1-2 kernel panics in the last 2 1/2 years. (But sometimes I see some diagonal strips when playing hd-videos, but just for some milli-seconds and nothing crashs...).

Is there a way to reproduce such a kernel panic, so that I can see if my MBP is affected?

Do you think it really might be a hardware failure & not a MountainLion thing? Sounds bad 😟

Sitting, waiting, wishing...

Hi aburger,

As stated above, I have the same problem on a mid-2010 17'' MBP with an i7 2.66 Ghz processor, and I don't think I'm the only one with this hardware and that problem. The 330M video card might actually be (part of) the problem, but who knows, really?

Cheers,

T

I also have a 2010 MBP, 15 inch with i7 2.66. My problems started by the time of Snow Leopard, it was ok with Lion and now with ML it came back.

The first screenshot is taken with my mobile phone, using SL at the time.

The second screenshot is taken inside Mac OS while I had that scrambled graphics. As you can see it is blank.

The 3rd one is taken during a resize window of Excel with the latest update to Office 2011 in ML.

In Denmark there is no official Apple Store, just premium resellers. I went to one of them, they tested it shortly, they could see scrambled graphics on the screen. Recommended to hand it in for service, but it takes 8 to 12 days to stay in service. No way. And funny thing, they tested using a fresh copy of 10.8 and after telling the computer to shut down, the screen showed a ghosting effect, which never ever happened during 2 years and a half since i got the mac. Weird.

The problem is with the Nvidia and the Intel cards.

Let's not conflate several unrelated issues here. This thread is about OS 10.8.3 forcing certain apps to use the discrete GPU, whereas the same apps used the integrated GPU before the 10.8.3 update. The issue is with the driver for the integrated Intel GPU, and not the discrete NVIDIA GPU.

from the macrumors forum I got this

rosh325

Unfortunately based on this I wouldn't hold your breath:

http://developer.apple.com/library/m...id/DTS40010791

Apple fixed a "bug" in that the 2010 MBP is no longer allowed to use integrated for OpenGL. Such BS!

I suggest using the feedback link to report this to Apple and let them know that sacrificing your battery life for this "fix" is not in the best interest of the user, especially when 10.8.2. showed us these programs could work just fine with the integrated

source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1556998

to stay on subject: i have been coresponding the Growl team and this is their answer:

http://code.google.com/p/growl/issues/detail?id=578

long story short, they cannot fix it because of the changes Apple made with the 10.8.3 update and most likely their are not going to fix it

So, where do I join the class-action?

Knows anyone a simple Hack or so?

here's a nice blog entry that summarize the facts:

http://www.jackenhack.com/battery-draining-applications-macbook-pro/

I really hope that Apple will fix that "problem". Please write feedbacks to apple!!!

Here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

@Momai

At the moment the only possibility to use integrated graphics while using Dropbox & co. is to close all apps using Nvidia-card, then go to gfxCardStatus, click "only integrated" and restart Dropbox & co.

Now i'm using Dropbox with Intel graphics, but I really hope Apple will change this, because this procedure is pesky!

Maybe I'll give Apple-Support a call this week!😠

At the moment a i have the same procedure as you, but this no solution for the problem. I'm on your side, Apple have to solve this bug or problem whatever...

Is strange. I downgraded to Dropbox 1.6.18 as is mentioned here around one week ago:

http://www.jackenhack.com/battery-draining-applications-macbook-pro/#dropboxresp onse

I noticed that Dropbox has been updated to 2.0.0 again but not it doesn't force discrete graphics. Intel graphics remains, so I would suggest people to try to downgrade Dropbox and wait until is updated by itself to see if this "solution" works.

Dropbox will auto-update only if "include me on early releases" is checked in your account settings on the Dropbox web site.

Dropbox did release a new experimental update, yesterday, version 2.1.5. This new release DOES fix the discrete graphics problem (yay!). Note, the experimental updates are released, in parallel, to the stable releases. Dropbox recommends using them for testing and not production. I installed 2.1.5 on my system and it seems to be working just fine. Or, you can wait for the next stable release which will, surely, implement the fix.

Thanks a lot Cerebro for your information about 2.1.5!

It just works again 😉

I've just noticed that Airport Utility 6.2 also forces nvidia to turn on, so it's even a problem with some of Apple's own software!