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PJIRA message:
Hi everyone, I have been in contact with Apple regarding this issue. This is what we know: * There are driver issues specific to the nVidia 8600M GT on MacBook Pros. * Apple knows about this. * nVidia knows about this. * Other graphics-intensive apps are seeing similar issues. * There is no date for a fix right now. * I am having regular follow up calls with our Apple Partnership Manager. * This is high priority for Second Life, but there is not much we can do at Linden Lab. I am sorry for the lack of updates. I'm not convinced this is anything more than a summary of what we knew before, but I'm hearing that's better than silence. Another workaround (aside from relogging) is to toggle fullscreen modes. This deletes and re-creates your GL context. Thanks to Runitai Linden for that insight, and other debugging help. Looks like the top line of the last comment is over-copy from my scratch file. Sorry! Plz ignore!
No progress at all then? We're heading for 3 weeks since the last update. What could be done to create progress on this topic? What is being done?
I don't know who to blame here (Second Life, Apple, Nvidia), but this situation is rather bizarre. I have the same video card in a *linux* laptop and Second Life works flawlessly there once I install the nvidia linux drivers. No pink colors instead of proper textures everywhere, and no system crashes after a few minutes. You expect an out-of-the-box experience on a Mac. Instead, it's been disastrously bad, and it's been more than two months since VR-1749 was posted. Does this mean titles like World of Warcraft also crash after a few minutes on the new mac book pro hardware? You'd think that if this is so, Apple would give it a bit higher priority. If not, that makes one wonder whether the viewer couldn't be changed to work around this problem. A cursory googling around doesn't seem to uncover significant problems with WoW on this hardware, but it's hard to be sure. I don't want to whine. It's just a really frustrating situation and you'd think at least progress could be reported after 2 weeks. Or alternatively, the lack of progress could be reported together with an idea of what is actually causing it. It's not like the card doesn't have working video drivers and one wouldn't believe Apple shifts significantly different OpenGL drivers on Mac then on Windows or Linux... But something is holding this up, so it doesn't appear as simple as a driver update. Hi everyone,
There is a new workaround for this issue. Scot Linden discovered that you can use a different driver for this video card and the computer should not crash. He wrote up instructions on the Second Life wiki. Apple has not committed to a date for a fix, but this workaround should help. Hope it works as well for you as it does for me! https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround + poppy Poppy,
You mention that this replaces the graphics driver. It does not; the system still runs Second Life using the Nvidia driver. Choosing the renderer type in the OpenGL Profiler merely changes the GL feature set that Second Life is allowed to use. The X800 feature set must lack a feature that the Nvidia 8600M has, a very particular feature that tickles bugs in the Nvidia 8600M video driver. This may be a good way to debug the issue. Start modifying the X800 renderer profiler step by step until the problem recurs. The last feature you enabled is the one that is buggy in the driver, and you can provide this information to Apple/Nvidia. I'd do this, but I don't have the hardware in question. I'm just following this issue because I know people who do and are annoyed they can't use SL well. :) Good luck killing this bug! Hmm, I was a bit unclear above:
>Start modifying the X800 renderer profiler step by step until the problem recurs. I meant, start modifying the X800 renderer profile step by step to match the Nvidia profile until the problem recurs. Good find, Scot and Poppy! For the first time in months, I've been able to move around again a bit in SL. And Zorin, that's a nice analysis of how to proceed with this issue now.
However, I'm finding one thing still hasn't changed: if I have selected the Second Life window, my fans go into overdrive - I'd rather not burn up my machine. Second Life is using 100%CPU. As soon as I click outside the SL window, CPU load goes down significantly even though everyone and everything else in SL keeps being rendered and animated properly. It seems like SL is hogging the CPU a bit too much when the window has focus? This is the same with the 'default' NVIDIA driver and your nice workaround. Would it be useful to submit the CPU usage as a seperate bug? SL will use 100% of at least one core, and a bit of the second as well. It will also use a large percentage of your GPU's rendering ability. This consumes a lot of power and therefore generates a lot of heat, which the fans on your Macbook Pro have to get rid of. Hence, they spin really fast and make a lot of noise. This is not a malfunction, nor is it indicative of a problem. It's the fans doing their job.
When SL is not focused, the code inserts sleeps into each frame so that it uses less CPU and GPU. If you watch the framerate when you're focused and unfocused, you'll notice it goes down considerably when unfocused. This is done so that if you need to work on something else while SL is running, it won't slow down your machine excessively. I threw quite a cheer when they added this feature, as it means I can be logged into SL idling while working on something else without my machine running hot as hell. It is perfectly normal behavior. So don't worry about it, things are fine with this workaround, it seems. Poppy, WorkingOnit or Scott Linden,
I just read a post on the mac forum by Kosmo Linden stating that he has been testing 10.5, have you done any tests of 10.5 on the MBP to see if it cures this jira problem? Also; Below is a recap of my recent experiance with Apple on this problem: just got my MBP 2.4 with 8600 M GT graphics back form Apple Care, THEY insisted on replacing the logic board and graphics chip set saying it would help the driver problem, BY the way the Apple Rep did go to the SL Jira site and the WOW support site to read up on the problems, after which he kicked the issue up the the engineering dept, after a week the Rep got back to me saying the YES THERE IS A DRIVER PROBLEM but replacing my logic board and graphics set will help, Well it didn't help, same problems as before. YES the jira workaround does stop the crashing and the memory leak but at a cost, it is an extra step to start up the viewer and the graphics are not as good as using the native drivers. mu,
Thanks for telling about your experience with Apple support! Unfortunately Mac OS X 10.5 is pre-release software covered by Apple's NDA, so I can't really talk about it. Since it's in development whatever I would have to say would probably be obsolete next week anyhow. Apple gives seed releases with an ADC select account, if you need a copy of the latest OS X 10.5 seed. http://developer.apple.com/ I had the opportunity to see the SL client version 1.18.4(0) running on a concerned MBP with Mac OS X 10.5 (9A559) Kernel-Version: Darwin 9.0.0b5, which was said to be one of the latest Leopard beta releases available. I was hoping for not seeing the performance problems anymore, as 10.5. should have some fundamental improvements regarding OpenGL performance.
It was so disappointing to see the same performance lacks as before on ths computer! No improement at all, at least nothing noticable. Only difference is, that the second CPU core now is significantly used, may be due to the OpenGL2.0 features. The workaround described before (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround ) does not work anymore! In opposite, the machine freezes up and must be switched off by pressing the power button after a while. Unless Apple issues a new graphcs driver for the 8600 close to the offical release of 10.5 on Oct 26th (this is the announced date in Europe) we won´t see SL running on the MBP with nvida 8600 even under Leopard. I am almost speechless. See Rush Rosenburg's post above:
Go to the URL below for an update of Lepard with WOW and the SL wiki workaround; [URL] http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=942814498&sid=1&pageNo=9 [URL] post #160, The poster said that the wiki workaround works for WOW on Leopard beta 9A559. Good for WOW users, not good for SL users. Is there anything known about the *reasons* of Apple's apparent lack of ability to update their video driver with better ones from nvidia for so many months? Why are they not doing it? Are they simply not acknowledging the problem yet?
If they are not acknowledging the problem, is there something we can do as a community to put some pressure on Apple to update their video driver? I.e. we can go put up a few web pages saying: don't buy a mac book pro, as their video driver absolutely *sucks* and Apple isn't doing a thing about it? If this is indeed Apple's fault, we should make them feel it. This is getting silly. You can install a version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon for free and have this video card work with SL (though I noticed some unstabilities if combined with desktop effects). You can install bootcamp, with a driver selection made by apple itself, and it will work. It's just not Mac OS X that will work. For a top-of-the-line Apple model this is extraordinarily disappointing. 10.4.11 is just around the corner, and Leopard (10.5) comes out today.
I'm betting the problem is fixed in both. They probably just wanted to fix all the problems people were having in one or two major releases than to spend time preparing, testing, and releasing a driver update for a small percentage of users having problems. At least, one can hope. If this problem is not fixed in 10.4.11 or leopard I am going to lose a lot of my faith in Apple. And I'm a big customer. I own a Mac Pro and an (unaffected, but the issue still concerns me since I like recommending Apple to friends on SL) first gen Macbook Pro. We shall see very shortly. -Zorin I just installed Leopard on my MBP with 8600 graphics. It seems a little faster, but no difference on the memory leak problem, still have to change screen resolutions every few minutes to reclaim memory. Also the Wiki workaround does NOT work any more, probably needs an update to OpenGL Profiler for Leopard. Anyone see any updates for Profiler yet?
Update and correction to my previous post: I confirm the before mentioned workaround actually does work with the official Leopard released version. However - I want it working with the native graphics driver, as the visual and performance result using the workaround is weigh behind from being sufficient.
After the recent graphics update on Tiger for macbookpro, there is some improvement: it seems more stable. It still leaks memory heavily though, so it runs out of memory after a few minutes, which makes it unusable (choppy movement).. Let's hope it doesn't take 4 more months before that gets fixed.
I can add that it isn't *that* much more stable. Trying to switch resolution to free up some memory works, but eventually (in full-screen mode) it froze up hard again. It hadn't even used up all system memory yet at that point. "Improved graphics stability", huh?
hY together,
i´m with you, looking and crying on this topy since i got my new MBP, 2 months or so, and i´m frustrated like HELL! booting XP EVERYDAY, cause like you all i need to work in sl...makes WTF apple? my Q is: i "heard" from a friend who got a mbp 2 weeks ago, that it´s runnig fine on osx. i couldn´t belive, and i did´t saw it (just on the phone), so can anybody varify? greetings from new BERIN and BTW, i´m thinking on giving up on waiting..reselling..., will there be a fix at ANY time? It would be nice to have an update from Linden Labs on this one, in particular, since neither Leopard nor the update fixes the problem, what can we as Apple customers do to make Apple share our pain? Having a serious issue open this long is pretty awful, both for Apple and SL.
So, if you tell us what we can do to make Apple experience this as a serious problem, that is, what reporting mechanism, and those of us who follow this issue follow through, then there might at least be hope for a solution. Again, this is NOT an SL software problem... but the lack of feedback about what we can do, for the past month or so from LL is an SL problem. The machine freezes. This is a major vulnerability in OSX, I would think, that a user program can crash the system pretty much at will. How long until somebody comes up with an exploit that kills all MacBook Pro machines, when run? I hate to sound stupid, but I really feel betrayed by Apple... or Linden Labs. If Apple's driver is at fault, then I feel totally let down. My Powerbook worked just fine, but I thought I would "upgrade" to the MacBook Pro, but now I feel like I got suckered. Are they so busy rushing new models out that they aren't making them well? I used to always tell my PC friends that my Mac never crashed... never. Sure, a program might have occasional issues, but you could isolate it ad move on. But these hard restarts must be damaging something internally, right?
And if it's Linden Labs responsibility to make their software work for us on new Macs, then please talk to us! Let us know you are aware and that something is happening!!!!! I feel like we are all speaking into a black hole and no one is listening. For sure it seems like no one with the authority is answering! My boyfriend has a Macbook Pro that he bought shortly after mine. I found out he started playing WoW, so asked him about this. It runs at 40-60fps, and never crashes.
...Now what, LL? You're not communicating with us, and I hate to say it, but in six months I think that a skilled team of developers like yourselves would be able to isolate the cause and develop some sort of internal fix. What's the hold up? Kalemika, let me tell you what happens on this issue. About once every month or so, if you're lucky, Poppy Linden will call in on one of the issues associated with this (might not be this one, you have to check the related ones) and say again that it's Apple's fault, and then we'll wait another month while nothing happens. Repeat ad infinitum.
I do suspect LL is right and the bug is related to Apple's display drivers. The same video card works fine under Windows and Linux, and the SL client isn't significantly different under those OSes. The display drivers shouldn't be much different either, but apparently Apple still can't get this right easily for some unknown reason - the updated display drivers they released recently didn't help. So perhaps we do need to complain to Apple, but what do we tell them? The few reports I've heard from people complaining to Apple is that they had their video boards replaced for no reason whatsoever, and still no fix. LL is the group that can give details, we can't. We don't have the details. I think we need to get organized. Our tasks: * somehow petition Apple. I know nothing about Apple. It's my wife's laptop that's broken. How does one approach them? They have a bugtracker, as Orson Dahlgren created an Apple bug about this: 5578350. Is it possible for arbitrary users to get logins and comment on issues there? We could swamp this issue with activity. * I'd be very nice if we could something more in the issue than "SL doesn't work!". We need "Please fix the blah blah, which when used in blah mode leads to memory leaks in blah blah" in as much detail as we can. Poppy, is there any particular OpenGL access pattern that SL uses that is causing this leakage? Technical details, please? The Apple Discussion site has several threads that are talking about this issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234146 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1164357 It appears very clear that this isn't a LL issue but an Apple issue, at least that is the consensus on the boards and from those who seem to be in the know. It seems to be an issue that is only affecting the latest 2.2/2.4 MGh core 2 duo MBP with the nVidia 8600M GT video card. I have been writing about this issue for a few days on the Apple discussion boards, and I recommend that anyone who is interested in this issue do so as well. I'm also going down to the local Apple Store this afternoon to get as much info as I can and communicate my displeasure. If I discover anything useful I'll bring it back here. :) If this problem is indeed a driver issue then it has been going on for months, and I find that disgraceful. This laptop is advertised as a graphics powerhouse, unfortunately it seems that the video card makes it fairly dysfunctional for any high-end 3D graphics work. Let's keep shaking the tree and communicating. I would like to post something communicated to me in an e-mail from a developer at Blizzard:
"Certainly we've filed our share of bugs in Radar, but we've never seen a case on the MBP where framerates start good and decrease over time. I personally own the 2.2GHz with 8600M and WoW plays great on it." So there you go. Another major company working in development of OpenGL-based software has stated that they have never experienced this issue. This would make fixing this problem Linden Labs' responsibility. I would like to note that there has been -six months- of development time, and LL has still been unable to provide us a single bit of information on -what- causes the crash. If it were a graphics driver issue, you'd be able to at least tell us what calls are causing it. At the very least, you'd be able to provide a halfway-decent explanation as to what was happening. But no. All we see is 'apple is aware and we are working on it.' Sorry. It's pretty shamefully obvious you're not. Not that I'm arguing, I'm jusy asking... How is it possible to say "...but we've never seen a case on the MBP where framerates start good and decrease over time..." When at least one of the threads on the WoW boards (see Mu Bickcin's Oct 22nd post above) has 200 posts talking about the problem of MBP with faltering framerates? If the developer has a MBP that is one of the computers that seems to be one of the batch that is affected, maybe he has some info that would be helpful? I don't think it can be reasonably doubted that there is a problem that is endemic to the computer itself since it effects more then one application (WoW and SL) and can be lessened or alleviated by using the Radeon X800 XT driver workaround posted above. Again, not trying to argue, just tying t | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Meta Issue
Open
Critical
Meta-issue: 2007 MacBook Pro (nVidia 8600M GT) issues
Closed
Resolved
It has been a month since any of you posted on this issue, PLEASE post with some comment , has Apple responded to you on the radar report you filed? Have you identified this an a SL programing problem or an Apple IOKIT issue or a GeForce driver problem yet? My machine crashes (or the activity monitor indicates that I need to log out/in again) every five minutes, that's 20 crashes an hour, I can't build anything or do any business that way. I know you are all working the isue, most of us Mac owners just want to know if this is something Apple needs to fix so we can put some pressure on them. Thanks.