Diagnosing Graphics Card Failure on MacBook Pro

June 11, 2009 1:45 AM

This evening, I've begun noticing intermittent graphics glitches and flakiness on my MacBook Pro. I'm well familiar with the slow and painful graphics card death that can plague Macs, and I'm wondering- What's the best to diagnose whether that's truly the issue?

The details:

15" Macbook Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel processor (pre-unibody)
OS X 10.5.7

Began noticing screen re-painting glitches, and minor artifacting this evening, thought maybe just needed a restart, but now Photo Booth reports "The graphics card installed in this computer does not support Photo Booth".

Has suffered cosmetic damage from a drop in the past, but has shown no symptoms of any internal damage until now.

I'm quite diligent with backups, so that's all squared away.

The machine was issued my my company's IT dept, so I'm not cost-liable, but I want to be able to go to them fairly certain of the problem to minimize time lost at work.

Thanks much!

posted by potch to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Did you try running the hardware test cd that came with the computer? See what come up when you do that.

I was having problems in January similar to the ones you are describing and then finally it wouldn't start up past the spinning circle thingy. The results of the hardware test said that there was an error concerning a video controller.

I took it (17" Macbook Pro, 2.3 GHz Intel processor) to the nearest authorized service dealer and then swapped out the board or card. It took about a week. Also, according to the guy that I dealt with, this is a know and documented problem (if it is indeed the same problem) and Apple has also been known to fix it even if the laptop is not too long out of warranty.

Since then I have had no problems. If your company wants to save some money, it's work checking out and seeing if it can be repaired.
posted by chillmost at 2:31 AM on June 11, 2009

There is a known error with the Nvidia graphics card in some Macbook Pros, they wither and die long before their time...

Macbook Pro: Distorted or no video output (Apple support article)

Happened to mine. Apple changed it free of charge after the warranty.

You might need to bring it in to an Apple center to have them check if the system is part of the faulty batch.
posted by gmm at 2:44 AM on June 11, 2009

Did you just recently upgrade to 10.5.7? There are some reports that it can cause overheating.
posted by ook at 7:40 AM on June 11, 2009

2nding gmn

I have the same model, purchased a year ago. In September I noticed that iPhoto window scrolling/resizing would flicker and then noticed that redraws got glitchy scrolling/resizing Finder windows as well. I mostly seemed to happen under battery power. The problem was intermittent and would go away after a restart, so I used screen-capture (iShowU) to make a few Quicktime movies of what I was talking about.

I brought it in, played the movies and they said "ok, we'll have it ready in 5 days". They replaced the logic board/ graphics card. I mention this because the new processor serial# meant I had to reinstall some software and set up time machine again. I read that they extended the coverage for this problem to 3 years (if you have Applecare or not)
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:40 AM on June 11, 2009

Oh, ...forgot to answer the question.

I ran the Apple built-in diagnostics (hold down D on startup, I think?) and everything came through OK according to that, so the screen caps may be your best bet. Try command/shift/4 and click/drag the offending area.

Web page text also suffered from "tearing".
posted by bonobothegreat at 11:06 AM on June 11, 2009