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What is the Common Denominator with the lock ups for the 4850 ATI Version?

WizardHunt

WizardHunt

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 11, 2007
1,695
38
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
I don't mean to start a new Thread but I think this one could really help pinpoint the problem if we could get some good feedback on this.

What is the Common Denominator (besides having the HD4850 option) that could be causing the lockups that some people are having.

Examples Is everyone who is experiencing lockups :
1.) Installed Boot Camp and using Windows with this HD4850 option?
2.) Do you use Safari exclusively and not FireFox?
3.) Does it happen only when Surfing ?
4.) Does it happen only when playing a certain game like WOW?
5.) Does it happen only after you been using the iMac for a few hours?
so on. . .

See my point? Write down or make yourself notes to as what you were doing exactly when it locked up? Reply to this Thread and lets figure this out. It will be must easier if everyone could put their situation in this Thread and maybe we can get to the bottom of this.

Look forward to your feedback.
 
WizardHunt said:
I don't mean to start a new Thread but I think this one could really help pinpoint the problem if we could get some good feedback on this.

What is the Common Dominator (besides having the HD4850 option) that could be causing the lockups that some people are having.

Examples Is everyone who is experiencing lockups :
1.) Installed Boot Camp and using Windows with this HD4850 option?
2.) Do you use Safari exclusively and not FireFox?
3.) Does it happen only when Surfing ?
4.) Does it happen only when playing a certain game like WOW?
5.) Does it happen only after you been using the iMac for a few hours?
so on. . .

See my point? Write down or make yourself notes to as what you were doing exactly when it locked up? Reply to this Thread and lets figure this out. It will be must easier if everyone could put their situation in this Thread and maybe we can get to the bottom of this.

Look forward to your feedback.
Click to expand...


1.) no
2.) no
3.) it seems not... also with iTunes, but i'm not sure if a browser was open in background
4.) no
5.) left it downloading all night long and not freezed.


it seems that its get freezed when you make it work on some kind of task... dunno what, not a generic one (like surfing or so on) but some operation with the graphic card.
 
nss.aries said:
1.) no
2.) no
3.) it seems not... also with iTunes, but i'm not sure if a browser was open in background
4.) no
5.) left it downloading all night long and not freezed.


it seems that its get freezed when you make it work on some kind of task... dunno what, not a generic one (like surfing or so on) but some operation with the graphic card.
Click to expand...

Do you do any movie editing? If so, does it lock up then?
 
nss.aries said:
1.) no
2.) no
3.) it seems not... also with iTunes, but i'm not sure if a browser was open in background
4.) no
5.) left it downloading all night long and not freezed.


it seems that its get freezed when you make it work on some kind of task... dunno what, not a generic one (like surfing or so on) but some operation with the graphic card.
Click to expand...

What about when playing a Movie? Does it lock up when playing a full 2 hour movie? Or even a short movie for that matter?
 
no offense, but this is too many threads.... but on the other hand.... it's a good thing, lol.

My freezes occurred in safari 3.2.1 through video and through typing a post on here, as well as in WoW.

Those were the only applications I got myself to doing in the 3 days I had my new iMac. But it's just too random for it to be focused on an Application.

Imo, the common denominator is anything that involves the graphics card... which would basically call for any movement on the screen can cause the lockup, including movement of the cursor.


I mean, think about it.. it has to be SOMETHING about the 4850 iMacs that's causing the freezes, but the answer is right here in this sentence..... it's the 4850.

there's just something about the card because these problems haven't been occurring in the other configurations.

maybe it's something that's connected to the card, or something that connected to the something that's connected to the card. but the denominator is clearly the card.

that's just my opinion.
 
Tymbo said:
no offense, but this is too many threads.... but on the other hand.... it's a good thing, lol.

My freezes occurred in safari 3.2.1 through video and through typing a post on there, as well as in WoW.

Those were the only applications I got myself to doing in the 3 days I had my new iMac. But it's just too random for it to be focused on an Application.

Imo, the common denominator is anything that involves the graphics card... which would basically call for any movement on the screen can cause the lockup, including movement of the cursor.


I mean, think about it.. it has to be SOMETHING about the 4850 iMacs that's causing the freezes, but the answer is right here in this sentence..... it's the 4850.

there's just something about the card because these problems haven't been occurring in the other configurations.

maybe it's something that's connected to the card, or something that connected to the something that's connected to the card. but the denominator is clearly the card.

that's just my opinion.
Click to expand...

Or a Updated Driver is needed and needed badly. LOL
 
1.) Installed Boot Camp and using Windows with this HD4850 option? NO
2.) Do you use Safari exclusively and not FireFox? YES
3.) Does it happen only when Surfing ? NO
4.) Does it happen only when playing a certain game like WOW? SAFARI AND WOW (never tried anything else enough to know)
5.) Does it happen only after you been using the iMac for a few hours? usually in the primetime of it's session, which is after 45 minutes from a fresh day startup.
 
I wonder if people using photoshop gets lockups? I use photoshop a lot. I do movie editing and rendering. I am not too much into games but I have played a few. So I wonder if my iMac will lock up on me when I get mine. People who are worried so much that they are canceling their order, I think is jumping the gun. I think Apple will fix this in no time. Hopeful at least. ;)
 
Software update 10.5.7 has over 108 bugs fixed in there and maybe one will fix the lockups some people are having. I hope 10.5.7 is out next week at the latest.
 
How about someone (an ADC member) with access to 10.5.7 install it on their freezing 4850 iMac; maybe then we can know if the issue gets fixed? After all, one of the big things I hear about 10.5.7 are new graphics drivers.
 
Wizard, it's not application-related. It can freeze doing everything, it's something about the card or the ati driver. My only hope is that's a software issue, 'cause I don't want to call applecare for substitution (already installed all the software and configured all I need on this mac).
 
No offense but it is clearly a hardware issue. It is happening to people who are doing nothing on the system, or watching a video or playing a game. It is happening on machines with fresh installs, brand new machines, running Windows in BootCamp.

It is another shoddy graphics card sent out by Apple. Don't they test machines before they send them out? Very poor in my opinion and very irritating.
 
When there was widespread freezing on the Mid-2007 iMac with the ATI 2600 Pro, it was eventually discovered that ONLY the video cards with video ram from a particular manufacturer were failing. The way to determine which manufacturer your card used was by running this from within Terminal:

ioreg -l | grep ATY | grep Mem

The results of which looked like this:

Code: 
    | |   |     |   "ATY,MemVendorID" = <0600>
    | |   |     |   "ATY,MemRevisionID" = <0100>

The only people who experienced this problem had a MemVendorID equal to 600. I'm not saying the 4850 has the exact same problem (you'd think apple would have learned from the 2600 experience), but maybe poking around ioreg and finding some common link would help. I went through a couple of iMacs at the time to no avail, and eventually a firmware update took care of it. The firmware update only installed on machines whose MemVendorID = 600.
 
djc6

would it help if we pasted our results to that command on here? See if theres a difference between freezers and non freezers?


For the record... MemVendorID on my freezing iMac is 600.....
 
Headliner said:
wouldnt a firmware update affect both OS's though? I agree its not an OS issue so 10.5.7 being the fix is pretty much out of the question...
Click to expand...

could be...

However if it was a firmware issue, I think the fault would be on every machine. At the moment it looks like it's only a fraction of imacs that are suffering from the problem.

Also, the 4850 has been out for a while, pretty certain any issues with firmware would have been solved by now.

Apple said I can get a replacement sent out- have to call back on monday to speak to the sales department (they're closed).
 
Components on the card aren't all made by ATI. ATI could have used various suppliers for what should be identical components... however if one batch of these disagrees with the firmware for whatever reason then we get this freezing result. As I understand that is what happened with the 2007 imacs until ATI provided a firmware fix for the problem.

Someone correct me if im wrong coz i did (luckily) miss the whole 2007 iMac saga but it sounds very much like that is what is happening all over again?
 
Headliner said:
Components on the card aren't all made by ATI. ATI could have used various suppliers for what should be identical components... however if one batch of these disagrees with the firmware for whatever reason then we get this freezing result. As I understand that is what happened with the 2007 imacs until ATI provided a firmware fix for the problem.

Someone correct me if im wrong coz i did (luckily) miss the whole 2007 iMac saga but it sounds very much like that is what is happening all over again?
Click to expand...
Correct. It was the DDR3 RAM. Different manufacturers produced RAM with "variable" timings. The firmware update in early November fixed the problem.
 
Headliner is correct. Also, it's possible that there are two different suppliers of 4850 mobility cards to Apple and that the problems affect one suppliers parts and not the other.

It's not uncommon for such small batch parts as the 4850 mobility to be sourced from multiple component suppliers who might only be able to ship a few thousand units per run.
 
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