Warning: SL is not compatible with MacBook Pros 2.2/2.4 Ghz

Warning: MacBook Pro 2.2/2.4Ghz users with nVidia 8600M graphic cards risk damage to their machines. SL on these machines will cause hard lock ups and overheating. The entire system will come to a halt, and only though forcing a shutdown (holding down the power button), can the machine be restarted. You should not run SL until Apple and nVidia release new graphic drivers. You are warned against data loss and corruption.

For more details on this issue, please see the document "Meta-issue: 2007 MacBook Pro (nVidia 8600M GT) issues":

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1978

should i just return my mac....i have been reading the forums and WOW did I jsut pay 3k for a peice of crap that cant run sl to hear it said here....i have only used it for sl a few times honestly i'm terrified after all that i have read...I am new to mac and was all excited about it but i wonder now if that was foolish...i do not know how to use a mac i am working that out now its very diff from my pc (of course)...i called apple today and was told they would allow a return with 10% restock fee...i am seriously considering this but dont seem to be finding any lap tops that run sl worth shtye....no idea what to do..this is a second computer for me i wanted a lap top and thought mac would be nice change...no idea what to frack to do now...I am not a tech person and not understanding half of what is said here lol.

I have a mac book pro 2.4ghz 2gb...nvidia

I love my Mac lappy, I really do, but it just doesn't handle SL, almost no lappy will so you are dead on there. Friend of mine however does have one of the very few that does handle it like my gaming rig, and it was made by Sager. It's a 9000 series, don't remember what model, but is has 4gb ram, dual sata raid, nVidia geforce (don't remember which) in SLI configuration. It was near $3000 usd, and looking over what they offer, it seems very well worth it for a gaming class machine that's a far throw from your typical off the shelf laptops (Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc).

OK Silence, I also have a Santa Rosa edition macbook pro and meet the same issue. Until LL, NVIDIA, and Apple find a way to make it right, I have found two ways to make it work fine, but you have to put in your mind that you will need to run ... Windows on your mac.

1) Install Leopard (mac os 10.5), then boot camp, and then XP or Vista (I recommend XP SP2). Reboot on XP and install SL, classic client or onrez, or even Nicholaz Beresford edition.
2) if you want to always stay on mac os X and not reboot, you can still run XP in 'virtualization mode'. For that, get a licence of Parallels Desktop (80$). It will boot your XP partition in mac OSX, and you can run SL directly in this application. Performance is a bit slower than rebooting with boot camp (parallels desktop emulates a video card with 64MB of Vram ONLY ), but it is really useful when you want to run mac osx applications at the same time.

I know that these solutions cost another big investment (software licenses for Mac OSX, XP, and Parallels), but they work and keep your laptop safe.
I chose to do that because... well, I could never go back to PC laptops. Except the SL issue, this macbook pro I have ROCKS! (especially with Leopard by the way).

I hope this post will help you.

Well, happens to me even with an ATI card on a older macbook pro, It's not really Apple fault.. its both LL mac coders sleeping and the fact that GFX cards producers tune them products for windowsz :/, on bootcamp SL runs rocket speed fast and no issues, on mac os .. well lol.. locks like mad (have to hold power button to restart since a few versions...) and horrible FPS. It's so silly.
But other than that mac os blows windows everyday performance wise (Linux wipes em both tho).

To the guy that wants to return his macbook ... don't do it! you have one of the best laptops around.. don't be silly for crappy coded SL !

instead of moaning about how shit your mac is because it can't run a piece of software isn't a solution to anyones problems. As for mac book pro issues I have been running a mac book pro 1 gb ram and 2.0ghz processor on intel chips without any issues apart from the laptop will overheat from time to time but that is to be expected from a 1st gen mbp.

Also if you want to play games you should maybe buy a powerful pc seeing as windows comes with far more problems than what SL will generate on it's own. I suggest to anyone running a mac book pro to lower most graphics and such to play just to take some of the strain off the graphcis card.

Thank you for posting this notice. It's good to know this is a known issue that is being worked on.

I posted in another thread, and this is the gear I'm using, but will be running SL in WinXP on my MacBook Pro (thank you, Boot Camp) for the foreseeable future.

Please keep posting updates on the situation.

Edit:
XP under Boot Camp is blazing fast on my hardware. Parallels gave me the same lockup issues as running the Mac client.

I have to say, i just got my 2.4 pro and well i dont beleive any of this... overheat maybe, but for the most part, haven't had one issue yet. And no, don't return it! Unless you bought a 3K lappy for the sole reason of playing sl, the pro's highly out weigh the cons. My opinion, comment if you must.

Happy SL'ing!

The SR MacBook Pro 2.4 is the one of the best laptops ever made but it's total crap on SL, no question. Instead of using drivers from nVidia Apple writes their own drivers for the graphic chip. Apparently they suck at it. this results in crashing, lock up, freezing, screen artifacts, missing textures, a pink haze over textures, low frame rates, and the list goes on. Running hot is to be expected from a 2.4Ghz processor i have no issue with that.

Dug- you've really lucked out if your SR MBP runs SL for more than 20 mins with out eating up all the memory and freezing the system requiring a hard restart. It's a proven fact now that Vista and/or XP are superior for SL. I can be inworld for hours on end with out crashing under Vista. not to say it's perfect, i do get the occasional Blue Screen of Death with Vista, but it's 10x better than what the Mac OS does.

We've all been waiting for Apple to fix this graphics issues for months now, Leopard didn't fix it, so I'm sticking with Vista for now. Although i'd much rather use OSX, unforntunately Apple has no love for Second Lifers. has anyone else noticed how IBM, Microsoft, Sun and Dell all have several islands in SL but Apple has no presence what so ever? ever wonder why? because you can't run it on an iPhone! that's why! haa!

so to make a long story short: It's not the hardware, its the OS, so keep the Mac, run Boot
Camp, you'll be amazed!

Edward,

I have to disagree with your statement about Apple not writing decent graphics drivers. I do Apple support/repairs/sales for a living and I've also used SL on all my personal Macs going back to an 867 MHz G4 tower, a 12" PowerBook G4, a 2.0 DP G5 and my current 15" Santa Rosa MacBook Pro 2.2 GHz. All of those machines have Nvidia graphics cards and I had no major issues with any of them (aside from the normal SL lag, network weirdness, etc) until about the time of the voice client. IMO the quality of the SL experience has been going downhill ever since the ugly 1.13 release and it's just gotten uglier faster with the voice and post-voice clients.

I don't doubt that there is some incompatibility problem with the Nvidia 8600m GT driver specifically and SL because I don't get the hard freeze and lockup with any of those other Macs, only the MBP (which forces me to use BootCamp and XP or a cheapo gaming PC I also have)--but to make a blanket statement that Apple can't write drivers in general just isn't true. Also it's odd that the only software I have any graphics related problems with is SL and I run Photoshop, InDesign, Eve and a bunch of other games. Only SL causes any problems.

I think the larger issue is that the SL client in general is really buggy and the bugs have just really manifested themselves in the recent clients.

No doubt it's full of bugs and memory leaks, but the WoW guys have also been complaining about this same issue on some of their forums. This affects more 3d intensive apps than just SL, by all indications.

Did you try this workaround?

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround

What's the problem exactly?

When running Second Life on an affected MacBook Pro, your machine completely freezes up. The cursor doesn't move, pressing the Caps Lock key does not change the Caps Lock light and your machine is no longer reachable from any other machine on the network. The only means available to recover is to hold the power button down until the Mac powers off and then restart it.

Is my MacBook Pro affected?

If you have a GeForce 8600M GT graphics chip, then it probably is. Only the 2.2 and 2.4 GHz MacBook Pros have this model of video card at the current time. To see if you have this graphics card, go to Apple Menu -> About This Mac and then click the "More Info..." button, or open /Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app. In the window that appears, select "Graphics/Displays" out of the "Hardware" category.

The problem appears to be the drivers for the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT. The MacBook Pro in question is the 2007 2.2 and 2.4 GHz machine running Mac OS X 10.4.9 and 10.4.10. This issue may be fixed in a future software update from Apple, and so this material may become invalid in the somewhat near future.

What's the workaround?

The workaround is to use OpenGL Profiler to run the Second Life application using the "Radeon X800 XT v1.5 ATI-1.4.0 (10.4)" renderer instead of the native one.

Just an FYI, I tried the workaround and it was good (although I only tried it for about 10 minutes). Problem is that the graphics quality is REALLY BAD--lots of aliasing, artifacts, and dithering. The MBP didn't crash tin that time but the visual experience was so bad that I couldn't stand it for more than 10 minutes and went back to Boot Camp and XP.

I may try it again now that 10.4.11 is out and supposedly has updated drivers for the 8600M GT.

If you are interest in this issue please see this thread on the JIRA tracker:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1978

If it seems like it relates, please vote for it.

I also suggest checking out the threads on the apple boards:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1164357
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234146


I'm sure these resources have been posted but I thought I would put them together in one location. Again, go to the JIRA thread and vote if it seems as if you are suffering from a siimilar problem. The information that I've been able to gather does seem to point at a driver for the nVidia 8600M that is only on the most recently released MBP (2.2/2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) This may be all speculation but I would also suggest taking your laptop into an Apple store to be evaluated and then have the problem forwarded on to the engineers at Apple. Maybe lift their awareness of the problem.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Yesterday was a sad day for me, my mac book pro 17 inch hi res glossy machine not even 3 weeks old over heated so bad that it literally fried the graphics. I am so pissed it all happened while running SL, so I have sent it in to apple awaiting a replacement I won't be playing sl on it ever again lol.

If you read the Windows and Linux forums you'll find similar where drivers cause problems. There was an update a little while back for these machines but since I'm on Leopard it's not been an issue.

Apple does have courses which are quite reasonable.

Laptops are not ideal SL machines no matter what the maker. You need an extremely spec'd out portable for that.

Type like a person who knows better, caps for 'I' and loose the .....

The drivers are a very serious problem to MBP,s with 8600 graphics and the issue has existed for over 5 months without a fix! (Leopard does not fix the problem)

That said, this MBP has proven to be able to run SL under windows just fine.

I found the use of the .... to be very well put!

And it's lose not loose!

Can't say I have the same issue with mine. For whatever reason there is a driver issue with Apple that isn't consistent.

As for the .... so be it if you like them I guess. I strongly doubt that using them that way is in any writing style book nor is it taught what way in school.

And yes, it should have been 'lose'.

i have buy one pc and impossibility connect with windows vista thanks

Has anyone tried with Parallels and Linux instead of Windows?

I'm not keen to keep Windows on my MBP and I'm not convinced by the user experience SL + Parallels + XP sp2 gives, esp. camera movement is not ok.

Hence my question about Linux. Anyone? And what Linux blend you would recommend?


At the moment I am falling back on my old PowerBook G4 to play SL, but of course I didn't replace this one with a MBP not to replace it...

I thought this was just a problem that I was having! I JUST bought a new MacBook Pro and i've had to force shutdown several times in a row. Am I causing permanent damage to my new computer?

Also, is this a problem that will be fixed soon?

My 1 year old MacBook Pro is a 2.0 Ghz - with ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card. I bought this new Mac so i could access the online simulation Second Life (SL). The hard drive started sounding like a garbage disposal after 7 months in (SL) & Apple replaced it under warranty. After 14 months in (SL) the Apple replacement drive sounded like a cement mixer & I replaced it at my expense. At this point I have to say that Apple Lap tops are likely to destroy themselves if used for on line simulation games like Second Life.

See this thread for all the problems and links to the SL Jira's on this issue

/164/cb/199385/1.html

Oh, brother. The macbook pro has always been a great machine for SL until the advent of the nvidia, and it's clearly driver related.

Not all laptops have integrated graphics, which is generally the real SL killer. Yes, those that do suck.

As for using lowercase letters, it's far more efficient. And we do it in SL all the time. Given the context of these forums, it seems a little silly to get upset over it.