[adamfishercox]

About every 5-10 minutes (and as I'm typing this, more and more frequently), the top 1-2 thirds of the screen will go black for half a second. Also, there are tiny little graphical distortions that happen every so often. This is only on the 9400M.

Googling it finds some people with a similar problem, but they say that Apple doesn't really know what the problem is and replacing the 9400M doesn't always fix it (another defective one I guess)

What should I do? Take it into Apple and likely get nothing out of it? Live with it? Wait for them to find a solution? Hoping the MacNN forums has some tricks I can try.

[imitchellg5]

Take it into Apple, especially if you can recreate it.

[Brien]

Just bumping to say that I get this on the 13" MacBook and the 15" MBP while under 9400M. I think Nvidia might've done it again.

If it gets worse looks like it's off to the Genius Bar. Supposedly some people on the Apple Discussion boards had logic board swaps that fixed the issue, while others haven't.

[CharlesS]

I had not this same problem, but a different one involving visual glitches and GUI lockups with my old MBP with the NVidia 8600M in it. I brought it in, they replaced the logic board three times, and the problem always persisted. Then they did a unit swap and gave me a new unibody with a 9600M in it, and it still does it. And if I switch to the 9400M that does it too (although not as severely).

I give up. If it's NVidia, that means it's not gonna work.

[Big Mac]

Charles, I don't understand how you can have such terrible luck when millions of people have perfectly reliable Nvidia MBPs.

[Simon]

Huh? Apple even has a repair program for out of warranty MBPs with an 8600M. There are tens of thousands of MBP users who have experienced their Nvidia GPUs fail. This is by no means 'perfectly reliable'.

Nvidia claimed that it only affected 8400/8600 series GPUs. But it is well known that
a) even people who have had their MLBs swapped by Apple have had their 8600M fail again
b) new MBP owners have experienced suspiciously similar graphics glitches with their 9600Ms

I have zero reason to doubt Charles' report. But I have many reasons to believe Nvidia/Apple are not being 100% truthful about the problem and that Nvidia has indeed not managed to entirely fix it. Neither for the 8600M, nor for the newer 9600M.

[Big Mac]

I'm not disputing the recall, just the implication that most people owning these machines will experience those hardware problems. My business owns a Penryn MBP, and my brother owns another one, and we have had no problems with them so far.

[CharlesS]

The techs at the Apple Genius Bar were able to reproduce my problem by following my directions, even when booted from a completely clean system on their own external disk. And as I said the machine was replaced three times. When you count the fact that the unibody has two NVidia GPUs that both exhibit the problem, that's five NVidia GPUs I had all in a row that exhibited the same damn problem, and it's why I've given up bringing the thing into the Apple store anymore. It can't work, it's not gonna work.

I think the only reason most people haven't experienced those issues is because they simply haven't pushed it hard enough. Nothing else.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I'm not disputing the recall, just the implication that most people owning these machines will experience those hardware problems. My business owns a Penryn MBP, and my brother owns another one, and we have had no problems with them so far.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

My MBP was fine for over a year. I thought I might be one of the lucky ones who's not affected by the Nvidia snafu.

Then after about 15 months I noticed the first graphics glitches. My MBP also seemed to run hotter than it used to. When I checked, sure enough, AHT had started to report GPU-related errors.

[adamfishercox]

Logic board replacement worked for me but I guess it's just luck of the draw whether the née logic board has a faulty 9400M or not.