tormirez

Q: Graphics Corruption in Some Apps - Problem with Geforce GT750

Hi

I am recently facing a graphics corruption problem with my 2013 MBPr. Yesterday I noticed that the window that shows the mail in Mail.app suddenly showed just some noise (just some strange colors). I restarted the app and it was gone. Then I installed a game named "Tales from the Borderlands". On the menu of the game I noticed the corruption again. Every time I would exit and rerun the game, the distortion would randomly change. Here are some examples:

Screen Shot 2015-01-24 at 9.10.15 AM.png

Screen Shot 2015-01-24 at 9.12.08 AM.png

The problem appeared throughout the game too.

Screen Shot 2015-01-24 at 9.34.02 AM.png

Then I forced "Integrated Only" using a gfxCardStatus to use Intel Iris Pro instead of Geforce GT750. I started the game and the problem was gone. I tried some more times again by switching GPUs and every time I noticed that the problem is with Geforce GT750 and Intel Iris Pro has no problem.

 

Any ideas what is causing the problem and what should I do? Thanks in advance for any help.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Jan 23, 2015 10:44 PM

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Q: Graphics Corruption in Some Apps - Problem with Geforce GT750

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  • by tormirez,

    tormirez tormirez Jan 25, 2015 12:20 PM in response to tormirez
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    Jan 25, 2015 12:20 PM in response to tormirez

    Is there any way to test my GPU, so I can find out what is causing the problem (a benchmark or stress test)? Today every time I switched the GPU to Nvidia, I felt I was facing some lags. Then I tried some games and none of them run correctly (they would not even load). Then I tried switching the video card to Intel and go back to Nvidia but I couldn't switching to it and after running a game again the system suddenly restarted. Then I went to Disk Utility and repaired my disk. Logged in again and the switching worked again. Then I loaded the same game as above (Tales from the Borderlands) and this time the game started without the distortion that was shown before (however I noticed some lags).

     

    So now I don't know that if my Nvidia chipset has really a problem or not. So I am asking you guys that do you know any way that I can test my Nvidia GPU to make sure that if there is any problem with that or not? Maybe if I knew the result for some benchmark for GT750 on MacBook ME294, I could test with the same benchmark and compare the result so I can find out is there any fault with it that has caused performance degradation.

     

    Any help or tip is appreciated.

    Thanks.

  • by kayazuki,

    kayazuki kayazuki Jan 26, 2015 3:21 PM in response to tormirez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 3:21 PM in response to tormirez

    Hi Tormirez,

    I can't believe my eyes.. I actually was afraid this might happen.

    Since I've been following the 2011 MBP forum after i had my MBP repaired (reflow by someone near Antwerp, Belgium), I've been learning some specific things about the very likely nature of these GPU issues.

    All these issues seem to be related to the replacement of leaded solder by nearly pure tin solder + not soldering according to the best profile (temperature vs time).

    The factor of time saving = money saving may very well play a role here.

     

    When you consider the nature of that leaded solder problem versus the soldering profiles, it's not hard to imagine that the problem isn't just in the 2011 model range, but may actually have started FROM that range...! I've already heard that some 2012 models also failed in a similar way.

     

    It may all be quite logical; tin solder needs a roughly 60ºC higher temperature to get into full liquid state then leaded solder.

    As the cheapest way to produce boards is probably rolling entire boards through ovens, melting the parts on it, it would require very precise monitoring of temperatures UNDER the CPU and GPU, to be SURE you have a full flow going on.

    But, at the same time, as you're cooking ALL components around 240ºC, they may have chosen not to stay at this temperature long enough. Or, maybe they stop at 240ºC, while 242ºC might be the minimum required temperature to guarantee full flow.

    Etc.. It's a very complicated mix of factors that determines if small or large batches of board could contain errors at all or not.

     

    But it may at least be called "bizarre" that these solder errors are found in tens of thousands 2011 MBPs, but also in 2012 models, and in the PS4 and also other brand Windows PCs!!

     

    If you want to test your GPU hard, download GpuTest OSX x64 0.7.0 from ( geeks3d . com / gputest ) and run the FurMark based stress test on HD resolution for 30-60 mins straight, then turn your machine off completely for 15-30 mins (until it's really cold, put it down on some cold stone floor might help), then repeat several times.

    If the same problem would be hidden in there as in the 2011 models, this is the way to get it triggered soon.

     

    If you ask me, this might be the first report of the same problem in the 2013 series.....

     

    Question; do you game a lot? If you answer yes, then it would pretty much make a connection to this similar problem I think!

     

    I'm curious about the results of the stress test!

  • by D3us,

    D3us D3us Jan 26, 2015 3:24 PM in response to tormirez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 3:24 PM in response to tormirez

    Has that mac been opened to add, replace or service something?

  • by tormirez,

    tormirez tormirez Jan 26, 2015 4:49 PM in response to D3us
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 4:49 PM in response to D3us

    No D3us, it wasn't opened. It's less than a year old.

  • by tormirez,

    tormirez tormirez Jan 26, 2015 5:28 PM in response to kayazuki
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 5:28 PM in response to kayazuki

    Hi kayazuki and thanks for your answer. Well, first of all, I play games but I am not a heavy gamer. I think I played with my rMBP at most 100 hours since I bought it (about 9 month ago). But when I use parallel to run windows 8.1 on it sometimes gets hot and I use parallel more often.

    I don't know if stress test is a good idea 'cause I live in a country with no official apple support. I have a local guarantee but I don't know if they are capable of fixing my notebook if the board is broken. I have some sort of insurance that they will give me a new MBP if they can't fix it but it costs a lot too (something between 10-20% the price of a new MBP). But if it is going to die eventually in one or two years I may have no choice except to stress test it.

    I used the GpuTest before and got some results for FurMark benchmark (not for long periods) and I was thinking if someone that had the same model as me (ME294) could run the test too, we could compare results and find out if the performance of the discrete GPU is degrading or if it has any problems. The following is one of the results I got earlier on my MBP.

    Settings:

    - 1440x900 fullscreen

    - antialiasing: Off

    - duration: 60000 ms

    1216 points (FPS: 20)

     

    If anyone can tell me if it is a good performance or not I would really appreciate that.

  • by D3us,

    D3us D3us Jan 27, 2015 2:17 AM in response to tormirez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 2:17 AM in response to tormirez

    Hope this one survives censorship...

    If it's less then a year old, claim your warranty before it gets worse.

     

    For that error, like said, claim your warranty first asap.

    It might be the GPU, but also something not related to gpu but video out.

    Bad shielding, something shorting to shield or gnd, videoram.

     

    Seen it once, fixed it by cutting of a small lip of the shielding.

    But again, claim your warranty first before doing something else.

  • by tormirez,

    tormirez tormirez Jan 27, 2015 2:37 AM in response to D3us
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 2:37 AM in response to D3us

    I told in my earlier post that there is no official apple support in my country. So it is not a easy choice for me. And I don't really trust the local guarantee with my MBP and it's been a day that it is acting normal so proving the problem existance is hard too. I don't play heavy games with my MBP. Mostly some Telltale games or minecraft or something like that. They are all playable on smart phones and don't need strong GPUs so they shouldn't cause any problem.

  • by kayazuki,

    kayazuki kayazuki Jan 27, 2015 2:54 AM in response to tormirez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 2:54 AM in response to tormirez

    Hi again!

    In which country are you anyway?

    A good machine can simply easily handle stress tests, because all that happens well the limits of it's capacity. Don't forget that those components are actually baked through and through till about 240ºC/464ºF, so it SHOULD handle approx 90ºC/194ºF really without actually damaging anything.

    Search for Macs Fan Control by Crystalidea and you'll be able to monitor what's happening temperature wise and even control the temperatures a bit better then the default control.

  • by tormirez,

    tormirez tormirez Jan 27, 2015 3:25 AM in response to kayazuki
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 3:25 AM in response to kayazuki

    Hi kayazuki. Thanks, I'll look into it. But how should I find out if there is a problem when I am stress testing? Should I wait for something unusual like restart or distortion or something like that to happen or is there any other way to find out if there is a problem?

    By the way I live in Iran.

  • by kayazuki,

    kayazuki kayazuki Jan 28, 2015 5:00 PM in response to tormirez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 5:00 PM in response to tormirez

    Hi, wow, that's quite a drive

    I understand your concern now about trusting the local warranties...

    Ehm, IF you'd have a soldering issue, then a good way would be to run that stress test for half an hour (so the GPU gets nice and hot), then let it cool off really good (run for some time, doing absolutely nothing, use some fan tool to let the fan run higher rpm's to blow out the heat of the GPU fast) and when it's cold, run the test again for 30 minutes, etc.

    Instead of just letting it do nothing, you could also turn it off completely (after first letting the high rpm fan blow out the heat forcedly).

    Letting the GPU heat up + cool down repeatedly, works like a catalyst on solder issue problems.

    A good machine is not affected by that, a bad soldered GPU would...

     

    And indeed, if there i something wrong, you should see weird results clearly.