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Simon · Dec 11, 2007, 01:54 AM

Ever since I upgraded to Leopard I've been seeing what seems to be a bug in the Nvidia driver. It happens on my 2.4 GHz MBP but not on my 2.33 GHz MBP as you'd expect since the 2.33 GHz has an ATI GPU.

Sometimes when I open the lid and wake the MBP the screen stays dark. It will remain dark no matter what I do. After a bit less than a minute the screen will come to life.

The system.log file then has this to say:
[codex]Dec 10 03:33:04 ******** kernel[0]: NVDA::setPowerState(0x4737400, 0 -> 2) timed out after 45147 ms
[/codex]

Apart from that I also see other entries in system.log that look similar:
[codex]Dec 10 05:19:15 ******** kernel[0]: NVDA:: powerStateWillChangeTo(0x459fc00, NVDA, 2 -> 1) timed out after 10111 ms
Dec 10 05:20:06 ******** kernel[0]: NVDA:: powerStateWillChangeTo(0x472cc00, NVDA, 2 -> 0) timed out after 10103 ms
[/codex]

Has anybody else been experiencing this bug? Is there any way around it or will we just have to wait till Apple updates the drivers with a 10.5.x update?

pat++ · Dec 11, 2007, 04:46 PM

Did you report the problem to Apple?

http://bugreport.apple.com

Simon · Dec 12, 2007, 01:28 AM

You betcha.

PaperNotes · Dec 12, 2007, 05:02 AM

The ATI drivers are too good either. In that last two days I found out that the ATI driver for OS X shows much less colors than the Windows drivers. Remember that whole issue about 6 bit screens? Well I have a full screen image that shows millions of colors across a perfect gradiented spectrum/color gamut. On a MBP in Leopard there is quite heavy banding in the oranges and greens. Under Windows on the same computer the banding isn't there at all, just a little grainy. Dithering works fine is drivers are up to the task and OS X's drivers aren't.

Simon · Dec 12, 2007, 11:43 AM

I downloaded the full 10.5.1 update and applied it just to be on the safe side. Not that I actually believe it will change something, but you gotta keep the faith.

Simon · Dec 17, 2007, 08:15 AM

Ever since I re-applied the 10.5.1 combo update I haven't seen the screen stay black. Also no more NVDA error messages in system.log. Go figure...

jam-t · Dec 19, 2007, 05:50 PM

The new MBP drivers really don't preform either. My Ati based MBP is way faster than my 2.4 nividia MBP in terms of FPS in call of duty 2. I also experiance the posters problem.

Simon · Dec 20, 2007, 02:11 AM

I noticed that as well although I haven't repeated the comparison since I switched to Leopard. The ATI in my 2.33 GHz MBP tested quite a bit better in OpenGL than the Nvidia in my 2.4 GHz MBP.

OpenGL benchmark: 265 frames/s vs. 170 frames/s

It appears it's mainly a OpenGL problem though since other graphics related benchmarks performed better on the Nvidia than on the ATI.

Cipher13 · Dec 27, 2007, 12:58 AM

In addition to this, has anyone noticed how quickly the battery drains while the machine is "sleeping", and how hot it gets? It actually seems like when the machine is put to sleep, all that happens is the screen is disabled and the sleep LED goes on.

Anyone else noticed this?

Simon · Dec 27, 2007, 03:41 AM

Originally Posted by Cipher13

Anyone else noticed this?

No. Mine sleeps just fine.

jam-t · Dec 28, 2007, 05:35 PM

Has anyone heard if this will be addressed in 10.5.2?
any word of an opengl or nvidia update?

travodude · Jan 1, 2008, 04:48 PM

Hey all,

I've been having the same OpenGL performance hits on my Quad G5 with the 7800GT ever since upgrading to Leopard.

The nice folks at nVidia claim they don't make drivers for nVidia cards in Macs

so they're saying it's up to Apple.

Here's hoping *someone* releases an update that corrects this, otherwise, I'm going back to Tiger.

-Travis

Forgiss · Jan 24, 2008, 11:48 PM

@ Papernotes:

"The ATI drivers are too good either. In that last two days I found out that the ATI driver for OS X shows much less colors than the Windows drivers. Remember that whole issue about 6 bit screens? Well I have a full screen image that shows millions of colors across a perfect gradiented spectrum/color gamut. On a MBP in Leopard there is quite heavy banding in the oranges and greens. Under Windows on the same computer the banding isn't there at all, just a little grainy. Dithering works fine is drivers are up to the task and OS X's drivers aren't."

Did you find a solution for this problem? I cannot for the life of me think why I should be seeing this banding on the MBP 2.33, but I see it in all gradients, not just orange and green. I want to take it back, but could this be fixed by a software update?