Video Artifacts on Mac Pro?
I think my video card may be melting down (or something). This morning I noticed a lot of strange video artifacts on my Mac Pro. It’s running an ATI 2600 card. Up until today, there weren’t any problems. Curious to know if other folks have experienced these video issues.
Thanks!
-Krishna
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Brad C
March 11, 2009 at 12:30 pmI had a similar problem with my Macook Pro. I traced the problem to coverflow. I would use it to surf through files. If my computer had been on for a while and I was flipping through files via coverflow it would randomly spaz out and it looked just like what you have up there. I never found a fix, I just didn’t keep coverflow open all the time on my finder.
jenni
March 11, 2009 at 12:31 pmI saw a discussion on MacWorld that the graphic cards in the new MacBook Pro’s are faulty, or something. Maybe it’s the same thing with the Mac Pro. Wish you luck!
qka
March 11, 2009 at 12:36 pmIs it just the one window that is showing artifacts? To me, it looks to be the case. If so, then, in order of likelihood:
1) Corrupted data in the file being worked on by the program with the corrupted image (it kind of looks like a half downloaded JPG file, except that the diagonal stuff I have not seen anything like that). What app is that window for?
2) Incompatibility between hardware and the app in question If it has worked OK before, have any settings changed?
3) While OS X is extremely stable, some programs have memory “leaks”. (Safari, with lots of windows and lots of tabs, left open for days, can cause problems for me.) Logging out and back in usually clears those up. Rebooting is the more extreme fix for the problem.
4) Bad RAM, either system or video card. Run hardware diagnostics on optical disk that came with computer. To do that, shut down. Then boot while holding the OPTION key. As for video RAM, RTFM, sorry I can’t be more specific. If you added RAM, did you go for cheap or quality. Bad RAM causes problems in all computers, regardless of OS.
Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
krishna
March 11, 2009 at 1:24 pmI wonder if it could be related to dust. It’s been a while since I’ve looked inside and cleaned the MacPro…
qka
March 11, 2009 at 2:07 pmDust is one of the last things I would suspect. Over the years I have seen computers that were dustier than you would ever believe that worked just fine.
Of course, a good cleaning doesn’t hurt.
Antoine
March 11, 2009 at 2:19 pmI was about to suggest to clean it up! For me it is the 1st thing I think of because the dust would avoid the fan to work properly, therefore overheating the card.
Most of the time, the dust would affect the card to the point removing the dust wouldn’t be enough.
stan
March 11, 2009 at 7:32 pmI think this is a gone case issue with the graphic card. If it is still under warranty. your best bet is get it fixed at apple care centre. coz they will change the whole board as there is no way to fix it.
Will P
March 11, 2009 at 8:19 pmI had this problem twice before, and both times my logic board was fried. Same machine, too. If I were you I would check your AppleCare before seeing the Genius, because that’s the only thing that kept me from paying $900, twice.
Krishna
March 11, 2009 at 8:43 pmI cleaned card out with compressed air – put the unit back together again. The video artifacts seem to have disappeared. I’ll monitor the situation over the next few weeks. Luckily, the Mac Pro is under warranty (and has AppleCare coverage, to boot).
Brett
March 12, 2009 at 12:02 amDo you have all your updates installed? We ran into this at work and think Apple fixed it in 10.5.6. At least the release notes refer to
“Includes fixes for possible graphics distortion issues with certain ATI graphics cards.”
and I don’t think I’ve heard of any problems since then.
Brett
krishna
March 12, 2009 at 7:44 amhi Brett, thanks for the info. I’m running the latest and greatest version of Leopard. I’m thinking the problem may have been dust related. I saw an article on Macworld recently that suggested too much dust covering the video card’s fan can cause it to display strange video artifacts…