iMac mid 2010 graphics issues after installing Yosemite

At the store now. The have indeed replaced the logic board, the graphics card and the power supply. Sitting here for the past 45 minutes playing with the machine and talking with the guys, there's been no occurrence (yet) of the video corruption/checkerboard pattern that we've seen previously.

That said, the wake from sleep issue where the graphics subsystem is notably sluggish (Applications folder opens sluggishly, WoW goes from 45 FPS down to 4-12FPS), is still very present and very repeatable on-demand.

My ask is going to be that they roll back to the previous version of OS X, we see what the on-wake behavior looks like, put it back to Yosemite and then escalate it to engineering as an OS problem (which we know is.)

More to come.

Left it with them over lunch to take the 10.10.3 update as well; still has the sluggish graphics after wake from sleep going on. Waiting for a tech to come back and discuss next steps, which are likely to roll back to 10.9 -- but we need to have a conversation about that because who wouldn't want 10.10? 🙂

Ultimately they cried uncle regarding the sluggish graphics on wake-from-sleep, claiming it to indeed look like an OS X Yosemite issue even after taking the 10.10.3 update and claiming that engineering is aware of it and it impacts the 2012 and older line of iMacs.

If engineering recognizing that it's an issue is lip service or not, I don't know.

I had them configure a 950GB partition with 10.9.5 and a 50GB partition with 10.10.3. I'll make 10.9.5 my daily driver until I see that 10.10 gets an update that claims to fix the wake-from-sleep issue.

Hardware wise, the machine has a brand new ATI card, a brand new logic board and a brand new power supply and I've yet to see the video corruption errors that were plaguing me before and rendering the machine unusable.

I'll continue to keep the thread updated as time goes on with what I see. We've all been frustrated by this and it *****.

Interesting; then this update hits today

The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Supplemental Update fixes a video driver issue that may prevent your Mac from starting up when running certain apps that capture video.

Guess I'm going to have to go to the 10.10.3 partition and take that update to see what, if any, impact it has with the sluggish graphics on wake-after-sleep.

THANK YOU to all you folks who have been following and posting to this issue. I was about to go buy a new Macbook Pro because this issue has been driving me CRAZY and I thought my graphics card was just "going bad". I have the exact issue, groups of colored squares appearing intermittently upon a wakeup from sleep. Sometimes it will just flicker a little, sometimes it gets much worse and eventually locks my mid 2010 iMac up and I have to reboot. Upon reboot I am usually fine until my mac goes to sleep again.

I just turned off the Transparency and hope that will slow the problem down.

Haven't seen any change in the sluggish graphics performance after wake-from-sleep (still convinced that is an 10.10 issue).

Thus far, there have been no traces of graphics corruption since the replacement of the graphics card (for the second time), the logic board and the power supply.

I've been letting the machine go to sleep while running 10.10.3 and periodically coming back to it for light productivity work - web browsing, mostly.

Frustrated that the wake-from-sleep issue that started this thread is still there, but happy that the video corruption issue has not yet surfaced. I still struggle thinking that across iMac and MacBooks that the graphics issue is all hardware failure related, but at the moment the hardware replacement seems to be pointing in that direction.

Checking in with the thread to report that there are still no video corruption issues, have the iMac set to sleep, have NOT altered transparency, have the external Drobo connected via FireWire and thus far, all is good sans the sluggish graphics on wake-from-sleep.

Glad to hear at least half of the issue was resolved for you. It seems to me there should have been some sort of recall for this if the video cards are failing. I have a 2008 MacBook that is still running like a champ (I had to install an SSD to get it back up to speed, but still...).

If it's not too much to ask, Kevin, were the costs of the repairs worth it as opposed to just buying a new iMac?

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

Well, the video card was originally around $250, and a new logic board would be around $550, making the entire purchase close to $800.

In my case, they ended up crediting me the cost of the video card against the logic board, claiming that the logic board was bad to begin with and that they shouldn't have replaced the video card in the first place, so my out of pocket total was around $550 all up, which is definitely cheaper than buying an entirely new iMac.

Considering that my performance on this machine with 12GB of RAM is pretty good, I can't justify dropping another $2,000 or so on another fully configured iMac, so the $550 to me seemed worth it.

The diagnostics, if I recall correctly, are free other than the time you spend at the Store. I'd say let them have the machine for a week, tell them what you're experiencing and let them run diagnostics on it to determine if it's graphics card or logic board (or both.)

I'm anxious to see how stable this machine is after we press it hard playing WoW for a bit 🙂

Just to chime in here with what is, possibly, the same or a related issue.

I have a mid-2010 iMac with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and ATI Radeon HD 5750. I upgraded to Yosemite shortly after it was introduced last fall and subsequent updates, including 10.10.3.

Starting about a month ago (before 10.10.3, I think), my screen has been going black at seemingly random times. When the screen is black the system still seems to be running, but the only action that I can take is a forced restart. There is no indication in Console or other logs of a system crash, it doesn't seem to be related to running any particular program, and there appears to be no relationship with CPU/GPU temperature.

I chalked it up to an old iMac that will soon need to be replaced (not for awhile, I hope), but then came upon this thread, and I'm starting to wonder if it is related to Yosemite in some way and not a hardware problem.

FWIW, I also found the following <iMac (Mid 2010): Using the correct Mac OS X system software - Apple Support>, which has a recent modification date (Feb 2015). Anyone tried this? Seems odd that Apple would recommend downgrading to a (very) old system, and then upgrading to the latest OS.

Hope, as one reply said, Apple engineers are working on this.

I'm running Yosemite on my Mid 2010 iMac and i'm experiencing similar symptoms.

I've got Radeon HD7970M GPU and after boot it's running at 850Mhz and after waking up from sleep it's at 450Mhz.

:F

Wake up from sleep by mouse/keyboard event (usb & bt):

HD5750 157Mhz core clock instead of 628Mhz

HD7970M 450Mhz core clock instead of 850Mhz

Wake up from sleep by power button press:

HD5750 628Mhz core clock

HD7970M 850Mhz core clock

From where are you getting the timings?

I'm using clGetDeviceInfo (CL_DEVICE_MAX_CLOCK_FREQUENCY) OpenCL API call. There is a strong correlation between the value and actual performance.

Also, when I changed my GPU to 7970M, I had trouble with the GPU overheating. There's clearly something wrong with the fan management code as the fan would not kick in, even tough the GPU temp got really high. I resolved the problem by moving the temp sensor, that was taped on the cd-drive, to the GPU cooler. It doesn't make much sense, as the GPU radiator is ABOVE the cd-drive, to control the fan mainly by the temperature below the radiator. When a Radeon GPU overheats, you're expected to see all kinds of artefacts on screen. So, all of you who had your GPU break down, do send your sincere thanks to Apple. 👿