MBP freezing within minutes when gaming

Seems I have no luck at all with Apple. First my Macbook DVD drive was broken, sent back to store and decided to upgrade to a Macbook Pro while this was possible. This MBP now seems to be having problems with the videocard: when I play a game, within minutes the laptop starts revving up the fans to the highest speed (might be normal?) and a few minutes after that, the game/laptop just freezes. This is with Hallife2, Left4Dead and others.

I'm losing ALL confidence in Apple. Is it normal for the fans to start blowing that quickly after starting a game? And is there a know issue with MBP's locking up after a few minutes (due to overheating?)?

 

check your temps. i have lost my faith in apple a long time ago

 

It does sound like you're overheating. The MBP does run rather warm, particularly to the touch, but it shouldn't be shutting down.

Get HWMonitor or the like to track your temps.

 

Are you running the Unibody Macbook or the older one with Nvidia 8xxx series graphics? If it's the 8xxx series, you probably have an overheating problem. Those are the ones with the G90, G92, G94, and G96 cores that have faulty soldering and are known to cause overheating.

 

which macbook pro is that?if it is old model,then it is possible that your card is dying(common 8600gt problem).also,what driver are you using?

 

This is on a ONE day old Macbook Pro Unibody. When surfing etc is works fine, but when I try Vista/Bootcamp it just freezes or crashes games after a while. I have all the latest drivers installed. Is there a game/demo that runs natively under OsX and stresses the gpu, maybe I can check if it's a windows or hardware problem.

 

download HWmonitor and check your temps.

 

I'll do that. I just loaded up a game demo under OsX (Lego Star Wars) and have it running for about 15mins now and so far seems stable, can't even hear the fans in the notebook (although it gets equally warm to touch).

So my question is now: how come that the fans start blowing very hard within minutes when using Vista, and they seems almost silent within OsX? Is this a known issue? Still very annoyed that the MBP freezes when playing games under Vista32bit though I cannot rule out software issues instead of hardware problem.

Any other thing I could do under OsX to really stress the GPU?

 

my guess is that it is a bootcamp software issue.

yes, i have problem with apple hardware too. almost 2in3 of their stuff is defected, from plastic cracking to wire fraying, you name it. they should do more to insure their hardware design/engineering quality. luckily their support policy is good.

 

Well I have the latest bootcamp installed. Just tried again, HL² at menu screen (which is rendered in 3D), fans slowly ramp up to pretty audible levels. Temps : cpu core1+2 : around 73°C; GPU core : starting around 55°, goes up to about 85° and then HalfLife² crashes (temps are max temps reported by hwmonitor)

 

Do you have the mbp 15" or the 17"?

 

The 15" version

 

That is strange. I do video encoding all the time and my laptop hits 90 but runs just fine. I suggest you take it to a Apple service center.

 

Got it fixed by now. Seemed that the newer trackpad drivers caused some serious stability problems. Did a system restore to the point where I had the original bootcamp trackpad drivers installed and voila, no more crashes.

One thing though: when I play games under Vista, the fan of my MBP comes on pretty quickly making quite a bit of noise. I understand this is needed to avoid overheating, but is it normal for the fan to start blowing almost fullspeed in such a short time (usually takes no more than 10mins).

 

yes,totally normal!