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I've had my 3.06 / 4850 iMac since Friday mid-day. It hasn't frozen yet. I've played WoW (on all-max settings, 2x multi-sampling, 1920x1200) for ten or so hours so far. No battlegrounds (I'm not a PvP'er), but a moderate amount of time in Dalaran (which is very lovely, even with a high population of players -- 25 FPS at worst, 35-40 more typical).

I've also run Capture NX (an image-editing application from Nikon and Nik Software) a lot; no problems there.

And I bet since you are not having any problems that you are running Safari 3.0. Am I right? Safari 4.0 is unstable at present. Stay away from it.
 
And I bet since you are not having any problems that you are running Safari 3.0. Am I right? Safari 4.0 is unstable at present. Stay away from it.

Oddly enough I'm running Safari 4 on my MBA with 10.5.6 with no problems - but I'll roll it back to 3 on the iMac tomorrow and let you know if I have any more issues. Used the machine all day today with just the one freeze, so I'm still hoping it was an isolated incident.

Here's hoping if this is a recurrence of previous problems Apple have had with optimising ATI drivers, then they'll know how to fix it fast this time!
 
it could be either the 4850 is defective or that it's overheating. It could really be anything. I'd exchange the machine for a new one while you can. And it's funny people want to avoid buying imacs now. I wouldn't buy them because they suck, but if you want one, don't decide to not buy it because one guy's imac isn't working right. Potential hardware problems are always possible with any computer. Not sure what exactly apple makes, but I'd assume they only make custom motherboards for their imacs, but even then i'm not sure. The cpus come from intel, hard drives from fujitsu, western digital, etc, gpus from a whole a different company. Apple really doesn't make much in the imacs besides the casing and the motherboards (i think on the motherboards), so you can't blame them for all hardware problems. They have good service and will get your imac fixed/exchanged if there is a problem, so don't worry about it.
 
Okay, the call went mostly as I expected, and I refrained from "demanding" anything.

I explained to him exactly what I told you guys, mentioned the article about older imacs. He had me try to replicate the problem through the episode player first, which was a bit hard to do because it had only frozen on me once after 45 minutes, and was not as graphic intensive as WoW. He had me run an episode for 5 minutes while he did some documentation on what I had explained to him.

He then asked me to shut down the computer, unplug all devices, wait 30 seconds and instructed me to reset the pram.

He then asked me to open World of Warcraft. I did this, set the graphics to "Ultra" quality to replicate the freeze asap, logged in, entered a battleground, ran into a small ongoing fight, and low and behold, it froze within 30 seconds.

He then gave me a case# and told me to bring my iMac to the Apple Store (2 miles away, no problem). He scheduled me an appointment and explained how that they will be able to run some graphics-intensive tests on my system and to more thoroughly identify the problem... something like that.

So that's what I'm off to do. I have an appointment @ 12:45pm (30 minutes from now)

I'll update when I return (probably from my old powerbook :( )

Pretty much what I expected..... Can't honestly expect him to say "okay, you're right, here's an email for a fed ex shipping label, box it and send it back and we'll send you a mac pro 8-core 4870x2 w/ free display" (lol)
 
I feel for you, who knows how long the turn around will be for the replacement, which is likely what they will want to do.

Still waiting for my several weeks ago ordered 4850 equipped iMac.
 
A friend of mine just recived his 24inch 2,93ghz IMac with the Ati card and he also encounters these nasty freezes all the time. Most of the time it freezes in Spore or in Wow but I just managed to freeze his machine in Itunes. It happens about once or twice an hour and doesn't follow any logical behaviors.
Apple please patch this quickly! It was your decison to put in a new ATI with a lot of new code and therefore bug posibilities!
 
Just fired up mine... after 2 min (not even) it froze. Great start. Was not even doing anything.

Now doing updates for 5 min. It didn't do it again.

I'm crossing my fingers and toes.
 
Okay, the call went mostly as I expected, and I refrained from "demanding" anything.

I explained to him exactly what I told you guys, mentioned the article about older imacs. He had me try to replicate the problem through the episode player first, which was a bit hard to do because it had only frozen on me once after 45 minutes, and was not as graphic intensive as WoW. He had me run an episode for 5 minutes while he did some documentation on what I had explained to him.

He then asked me to shut down the computer, unplug all devices, wait 30 seconds and instructed me to reset the pram.

He then asked me to open World of Warcraft. I did this, set the graphics to "Ultra" quality to replicate the freeze asap, logged in, entered a battleground, ran into a small ongoing fight, and low and behold, it froze within 30 seconds.

He then gave me a case# and told me to bring my iMac to the Apple Store (2 miles away, no problem). He scheduled me an appointment and explained how that they will be able to run some graphics-intensive tests on my system and to more thoroughly identify the problem... something like that.

So that's what I'm off to do. I have an appointment @ 12:45pm (30 minutes from now)

I'll update when I return (probably from my old powerbook :( )

Pretty much what I expected..... Can't honestly expect him to say "okay, you're right, here's an email for a fed ex shipping label, box it and send it back and we'll send you a mac pro 8-core 4870x2 w/ free display" (lol)

Its a BTO machine, when Apple deals with BTO systems they refrain from offering replacements and rather try to repair the machine. Replacements only come as a last resort.
 
Freeze on imac with 4850

Sorry for my bad english, i'm french^^

I've just received my imac 24' with the new ati 4850.

I'm a wow addict too.

Whatever i'm doing, this imac freeze every 5-10 minutes, under wow or just under macos while playing videos or downloading.

I've the same thing with windows on bootcamp.


Any solution???
 
Sorry for my bad english, i'm french^^

I've just received my imac 24' with the new ati 4850.

I'm a wow addict too.

Whatever i'm doing, this imac freeze every 5-10 minutes, under wow or just under macos while playing videos or downloading.

I've the same thing with windows on bootcamp.


Any solution???

Yes, call Apple and raise hell until they fix this or get you a new Mac!
 
I realize that the majority of people who are going to post here are the ones having problems, but you guys are scaring the heck outta me. My 3.06 4850 is coming next week, and I'm a WoW player too -- can we please hear some more posts from people whose machines are just fine? I'm starting to wonder if I should cancel the order and wait a month or two.
 
I realize that the majority of people who are going to post here are the ones having problems, but you guys are scaring the heck outta me. My 3.06 4850 is coming next week, and I'm a WoW player too -- can we please hear some more posts from people whose machines are just fine? I'm starting to wonder if I should cancel the order and wait a month or two.
Most likely you will get a good one. A month or two probably won't make a difference anyhow.
 
Okay.... I took my imac to the apple store and tried to replicate the freeze... the funny thing was, I couldn't. I ran WoW and had it running for about 20 minutes, trying to get my character into the core of crowded battles in a battleground. There I am, in the middle of the Apple Store, playing WoW. Kinda embarrassing, to say the least.

25 minutes went by, but for the life of the future of my mac, it just would not freeze. Irony, I know.

The genius told me that it takes awhile for the mac to get going, to build its heat, and to get into the "primetime" of its session, and that that's what it could be. He believed that I was telling him the truth.

I mentioned/showed the dead pixel to the guy and he said to take it home and give Apple another call and they should be willing to replace it. I figured okay, ironically, this dead pixel is actually the mac god's little helper in that it may get be an exchange. I told him that I could honestly care less about a dead pixel (yeah, honestly), and that it's the freezing that is scaring me.

So I went home, thinking maybe something magical happened at the store and it wouldn't freeze anymore, and started up wow. I played for an entire 45 minutes, and swoosh, a freeze.

I gave Apple Technical Support another call (1800myapple), but I had to call three times because I kept getting disconnected after being on hold. Finally, a call held out, where the guy put me on hold for a "product specialist". After explaining the same story to the guy from this morning, the genius at the genius bar, the two people who put me on hold but got disconnected, and this third guy..... and finally to the product specialist, he decided to send me back to the Apple Store for some "real" testing... the kind where they keep it overnight, take it to the back, and run diagnostics.

Today's appointments were all booked, so I'm scheduled to go in tomorrow afternoon with the same case id/number.

I think it's an overheating problem. and it sucks. I hope the tests will show them something, or at the very least, the dead pixel will warrant me a recommended exchange from the apple store like they told me when I went in.

As for those who don't have this lucky dead pixel... you might have a story of your own to share :(

I'll keep you guys updated.
 
I'm running Safari 3.2.1. The computer froze twice yesterday and once today. Since it's 11pm Est I can't call Apple until after work tomorrow. I wish I knew why it was doing this. At least it would make me feel better. I still have 2 computers, keyboards and mice on my desk! It's crowded! I don't dare dismantle my old computer.
 
This happened to me on my late 2008 24"Imac 3.06ghz and it had the nvidia 8800gs card/chip in it.
Now i'm waiting on replacement with the 4850,I thought they would have this under control by now....
 
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