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Apple/NVidia Driver Bug — Question Deleted
Joe Drago writes "I purchased a Mac Pro within the first week that they were available, and immediately upgraded to 3GB of RAM (knowing that OSX loves memory). When playing 3D games (World of Warcraft mainly), the game would Kernel Panic the machine if I had played it for a few hours, or if I swapped in and out of the game a few times, etc. I eventually found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver. After waiting months for a resolution to this, I decided to post on Apple's support site. Here is an image of my post.. Within a few hours, they removed it from the site, placing it under 'Posts Removed by Administration.' What's going on here? Is Apple trying to hide this bug, or is there something more serious going on between Apple and NVidia?"
But SolidWorks in Win XP SP2 has a problem when approaching 2 GB use with one single application, er well actually it crashes.
n e,_two,_&_three.pd
Thus a "3 GB Switch" solution:
If you need help with the switch, you can find answers here.
http://www.kcswug.com/documents/3gb_switch_part_o
So much for a Mac only sort of issue.
A new Apple icon needs to be added to Slashdot, showing a man gagged by an apple.
;)
The text-only version of the Apple icon need to have rainbow-colored, overstriked letters.
There's been something fishy going on at nVidia for a while.
One is nVidia's policy that *they* don't support nVidia techology; the OEMs do. They tell you if you have problems to contact your OEM. Now Apple is a big company and could conceivably do this, but many nVidia cards are made by small OEMs who slap electronics on a board and sell it. Are they going to help you with a crashing nVidia driver. And when you follow the link on the nVidia to their OEM "support partners", this is what you get:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_support.html "Page not found"
nVidia has gone so far to shut down the feedback page on their website: It says "This module is still under construction." You really believe nobody at nVidia knows how to make a web feedback page?
There's a long running bug in nVidia drivers known as the nv4_disp bug. You'll be typing away on your PC, then suddenly your monitor goes blank. A few seconds later, your PC power down. This was happening to me and I though it was some perculiarity with my PC. It turns out, this is affecting a lot of people, and it has been around for many years. nVidia know about it (they mention it in passing on one of their forums), but haven't fixed it. Windows BSOD diagnoses it as an infinite loop "device driver programming error." Independently some skilled owners worked out it was a timing problem with how nVidia writes to an I/O register. If you're lucky this bug will hit you only once a week. If you're unlucky, several times a day. THIS HAS BEEN AROUND FOR YEARS, yet nVidia won't fix this damned thing!
Want to see how widespread the problem is? Google for nv4_disp. The owner of this web page says he's amazed how many hits this page gets, and theorises a lot of people are affected:
http://s13.invisionfree.com/nv4_disp/index.php?sho wtopic=10 0 /stupid_windows_.html 9 55.html v 4disp-problem/ . html
http://byronmiller.typepad.com/byronmiller/2005/1
http://www.computing.net/drivers/wwwboard/forum/4
http://www.christopherjason.com/articles/nvidia-n
http://www.ntcompatible.com/thread27150-1.html
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread18930
The most frustating thing is that nVidia do everything they can to put you off. A "under construcion" feedback page. The fob-off to their partners, with a support page that doesn't even exist. Ignored e-mail. Ignored forum questions.
One solution is of course to buy an ATI card, but if you're paid hundreds of bucks for an nVidia card, what do you do? Does anyone know how we can make nVidia fix this damned thing?
Actually, I've discovered that if you post an anonymous post in a story, you can still moderate other comments in that story (except for your comment). Of course this doesn't work with logged-in posts.
:-)
Now if you moderate a comment in a story FIRST, and THEN post in that story, either as AC or while logged in, your moderations are voided and you don't get your mod points back.
Now just in case, I do NOT guarantee this! I figured it was a bug when I discovered it... I posted an AC comment one time, and noticed that the moderation drop-downs never disappeared; so I tried moderating someone, and it worked. But, if YOU try it and end up screwing yourself out of mod points somehow, it's not my fault... just posting what I observed.
Also, I think you can log off and post anonymously regardless; certainly you can if you switch to a new IP address (or even better, a new IP subnet).
I take it from your sarcastic post that you feel that putting a reply on a post that Apple may feel is off topic is going WAY beyond a reasonable effort.
Rather than being sarcastic you could have just said so... or...
You could snail mail me, call me, call my mother, write it in a TPS report, stick it on a post-it on my monitor, write it on my forehead with a sharpe, and then have a 6 month board review and mock trial to allow me to object to your post.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Even the Soviet fucking Union agreed we went to the moon. We went to the moon.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"They're not king alaskan but... they sure do feel big" -Carl, ATHF
"welcome to my foes list."
Oh Noes teh Foes!!!