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What are the symptoms of a potential graphics card failure?

I am having issues where the mid-2011 iMac will crash when switching desktops, flash pixellated images at random locations on the screen, etc. I cannot do a screen capture on this since it will only capture what the screen should look like, and will not show the issue. I have uploaded two pictures of the display.


User uploaded fileUser uploaded file


Any help appreciated.

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2), null

Posted on Feb 20, 2018 8:20 AM

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Feb 20, 2018 11:30 AM in response to stmccann

Is your graphic card a AMD Radeon HD 6970M? That year iMac had bad cards in some of them and had a recall on them instigated. The recall time frame has long lapsed but I'm guessing you have a bad card. You can verify that by taking your iMac to the nearest Genius bar and getting a free diagnostic.


My card went out a few years ago just within the time frame and I got it replaced free.


User uploaded file

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Feb 20, 2018 5:30 PM in response to Old Toad

You're right abut the card no. Mine was a 2011 27" iMac. The screen looked quite similar to what you're experiencing.


You an try booting into Safe Mode, Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode, and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't it could be caused by 3rd party software.

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Feb 20, 2018 7:15 PM in response to stmccann

stmccann wrote:


Thanks for the info. I did try the Safe Mode a while back and it didn't appear to help the problem. I am now accessing different user accounts and am not having the same issues with those accounts. Any ideas?

Yup, the GPU has failed. So your choices are repair or replace.

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What are the symptoms of a potential graphics card failure?

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