Apple Provides Firmware Fix for 17″ MBP Graphics Issues

Lonnie Lazar ()

Apple released a firmware update Wednesday for owners of 2009 unibody 17’ MacBook Pros meant to resolve issues with Nvidia graphics processors that have been causing display anomalies for some users.

Reports on March 6 described complaints related to the Nvidia GeForce 9600 graphics processor in new 17’ MacBook Pros that were causing lines to appear all over some users’ notebook displays, as reported in Apple support threads and in comments to Cult of Mac’s original post.

The firmware update released Wednesday applies only to 2009 model 17’ MacBook Pros. Users wishing to apply the firmware fix should consult Apple documentation for information on how to apply the update.

Let us know in comments whether the firmware solves the problem.

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About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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  • Chuck

    So far, so good. I haven’t had the “lines” issue, but I have had the screen flash/flicker (black across or full screen and redraw – just a flash or flicker). I’ve been tracking the problem for the last couple weeks and found I could consistently trigger the problem by putting the machine to sleep, then wake. I’d either see the flash/flicker right away, or soon after. This has been very consistent: As long as I don’t put it to sleep, I have no problems running the 9600.

    I applied the firmware update, then put the machine to sleep. For the first time since switching to the 9600, I did not have the flash/flicker upon wake. Of course, this single instance isn’t much of a statistic, but I’m hopeful.

  • http://torley.com Torley

    I’d like to see Apple acknowledge the ATI Radeon X1600 video distortion issues with the 1st-gen MacBook Pros, among others. Seems to require a logic board upgrade but it isn’t clear. I blogged about it recently and many have posted about it on Apple’s own forums: http://tr.im/h8Ce