NVIDIA Chip Instability Spreading to 17″ MacBook Pros?
8:32 am, March 6th, 2009, Lonnie Lazar
Back in December we wrote about a potential land-mine of problems for owners of new MacBook Pro 15″ notebooks, related to possibly defective NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics processor chips that Apple may have knowingly shipped with some units in 2008.
So far, the major storm speculated about by the Inquirer in that report does not appear to have manifested. But new reports Friday regarding some threads in the Apple support forum indicate that some owners of the new MacBook Pro 17″ model are complaining about a persistent graphics issue related to the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 chip included in those machines.
Recently some NVIDIA notebook GPUs began failing that were used in many notebook computers from Dell and Apple among others. The GPU failures ultimately led to a lawsuit being filed against NVIDIA by some affected notebook owners.
The current issue manifests in green lines that appear all over the notebook screen. More than one user is having the same exact issue, even on new notebooks. The error appears to be limited solely to the 9600M GPU. At this point, if a replacement is needed for the GPU or a firmware fix will suffice is unknown.
Is your new MacBook Pro 17″ giving you graphics fits? Let us know in comments below.

Posted by Lonnie Lazar in Hardware, News | Comment on this article












I’ve had this anomaly on my 1st gen Macbook Pro with ATI X1600. I think it was after I upgraded to Leopard. But the green raster lines are horizontal, not vertical. It happens daily but I’ve reluctantly learned to live with it. Maybe that’s why I’m not changing to any new Macbooks yet, cos I’m disappointed with Apple’s quality control on graphics in recent years. I’m still scanning all reviews of any new Macbook Pros coming out of Apple.
As for desktops like the Mac Pro, they are fine. No anomalies of any kind! Just fast, reliable, dependable, etc. What else can I say? Mac Pros are the best machines on the planet!
Ron, on March 6th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I have a new 15″ MBP since 3 month and I see at least 4 times a day a flickering on the screen. It has gotten worse with the latest NVidia Firmware update. I have only owned MBP’s in the last couple of years, but never seen something like this before. Otherwise the MBP is a great machine.
Kind Regards,
Nitai
Nitai, on March 7th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Up to now I inferred the delay in the 17″ MBP had something to do with making the one-piece frame. I’m now thinking it may have been otherwise.
imajoebob, on March 7th, 2009 at 6:55 am
I am rocking the new 17 Macbook Pro and have no issues. Perhaps this is a slow news week for this site. Perhaps.
Yan, on March 7th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
My powerbook had a recalled battery that I was never contacted about, memory card slot problems that were covered on machines right after mine (but not mine), bad wifi, and a screen that broke. I was on the phone for hours trying to get help while everyone was busy selling phones. It seemed many on the net had the same problems,
my LAST APPLE was a LEMON.
bowdenski, on March 10th, 2009 at 10:08 am
I have this exact problem when runnign the 9600 discrete Nvidia card on my brand new MBP 17″ – it starte 10 minutes after 1st boot – and gets worse as the card heats up (e.g. when gaming/working the GPU).
Very very disappointing – my old 17″ MBP has none of this rubbish
Carl, on March 11th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Probably similar to Nitai, I see a really annoying flickering of the screen, but only when using the “better battery life” graphics card. After a while the screen refresh rate becomes so slow, you can actually see white screens between frame changes. Loging out and back in solves the problem. The “genius” guys claim it’s not a hardware problem, but firmware.
I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro.
I’m really really annoyed about such a basic bug in a 2500+$ machine…
Regards,
Mihai
Mihai, on March 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Just got my new macBook pro 17″ to replace my 15″, with 4GB of Ram, the fastest 2.93 Ghz intel core duo processor and the fastest drive. It works slower than my MBP 15″ which had similar settings. slow to move from one window to other in spaces, slow to get opening of softwares, getting the wheel too often….
Called the apple support, was asked to run the test from disk one on opening
all is normal…… any body could help would be great, apple cant!
Regards,
Pierre
pierre hivert, on March 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm