[UnixMac]

Gentleman (and the occasional lady!),

I've had about 1 year of trouble free operation with my MacPro with 30" display and ATIX1900 (see sig for more details)..

Recently, I started having my 30" display just go blank! non-responsive. At first I thought it might be the display, but I'm starting to be suspicious of the ATI card.. I get these lines on the screen now that only appear on the 30" display that almost looks like a "seem" or something.. They're about 1 pixel wide and stretch across not the entire screen, but just a window or application (so it's more to do with the drawing, than the displaying). I have since upgraded to 10.5 and I'm not sure if this made it worse as I don't recall these lines before the upgrade.

I also had the screen go blank again this morning (my 20" remained on), and I got a spinning beachball, the computer went non-responsive and the 30" screen's power LED started to blink 3 or so times, and then pause for about 20-30 sec.. over and over.

Of course I called Apple Care and they're "Busy" and the recording says to call back later!

Has anyone seen any of these symptoms?

[Cold Warrior]

If you have Windows under Boot Camp -- do these problems persist there?

If you got a hardware test disc with your Mac, that might test your graphics card, among other items.

[UnixMac]

I don't have windows or bootcamp installed..

Also, I saw on the Apple site that three short flashes means that the resolution is unsupported or something and to reset the EPRAM.. but the problem is with my computer I can't get it to do that! I tried over and over to boot and hold down those keys (for that matter any key's I hold, C, T, etc..) all don't work! I'm using one of the new plug in keyboards (But I recall this occurred on my last keyboard).

[UnixMac]

I just took one of the windows with the line across it and dragged it over to the other 20" screen and the line remained, so I'm assuming it's in the graphics card or something software/OS related?

I had read someplace on this forum or another that the 1st gen X1900XT's had some problems, anyone know where that thread is?

[OreoCookie]

Please don't use flashy words in the title, hoping to get more attention.

[reader50]

It does sound like the graphics card. Can you lay hands on a cheap 7300 for test purposes?

[UnixMac]

thanks reader... I'd read they were causing problems. I'm now getting constant (total) system freezing, not even a Kernel Pannic, just freeze. I am trying to re-install 10.5 now to see if that takes care of it, but even running the Diglloyd stress test didn't cause the memory to fail, so I'm sure it's not that.

I've got a call into a product specialist at Apple and Monday I'll see what comes of this.

[Oversoul]

Any update on the lines and freezing issue? I think I'm developing similar symptoms on my Mac Pro, Quad-3.0Ghz, X1900, Leopard.

Thanks in advance.

[Big Mac]

This is a classic GPU thermal problem. The exact same symptoms occurred on my G5 when my 9800XT's GPU fan died. Unfortunately, I have read that a lot of X1900s have had cooling issues.

[all2ofme]

What everyone else is saying. I've got a replacement x1900xt on its way for my Mac Pro/30". The problems got a damn site worse under 10.5, though of course time marching on for the video card must play its part too

I've had:
- seemingly stuck pixels (that go away when I've had the computer off for a few hours (temp related?)
- glitchy lines (IIRC only horizontal ones, and always in lovely variegated form)
- polygons extending off to infinity on the occasional time I'm in Bootcamp for a bit of gaming
- black screens (but all working behind the scenes still - music still playing etc.)

Was putting up with it for a while hoping they'd release new cards that I'd talk my way into, but they problems have got so bad recently I caved in and called Apple. v2 card on the way!

Good luck with yours.