iMac with ATI 4850 FIX IS OUT!

Run software update and grab the "iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.4". It fixes the freezes on the new 2009 iMacs with the ATI 4850!

Update 1:

Just a quick note. I have played Fallout 3 under bootcamp, World of Warcraft under OSX with no  crashes. Also it seems to run cooler all of the time without any extra noise.

Update 2:

Well, I just put in another 4 hours of Fallout 3 with no problems. The iMac stay quiet under all playing conditions it seems, which is really nice. So, I guess it wasn't a straight heat issue. I also got in another hour with Wow with the graphics setting cranked up to 'ultra'. Not that Wow really pushes anything.

Update 3: 

At 24 hours now and I would normally have had about 3 freezes or more. But I have not had one so far. I really think they got a good fix here. I am very happy with it and am glad I did not take my box in to get it fixed or replaced.

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2009 iMac, ATI 4850 freezing. Is it wireless, not completely.

So, I have been playing with my iMac, trying to figure out why it keeps freezing up on me under OSX and crashing under boot camp. Like many other owners of the new 2009 iMacs with the ATI 4850 graphics card I have been suffering from numerous freezes and crashes. I thought it was heat related since I never hear my fans speed up as things get hot. So, I downloaded a fan control program and cranked it up. However, while trying to do a Jungle Disk back up to Amazon s3, it hung again, twice. So, freezes and no backups. Great. This is with wireless on. So, I book into boot camp and turn off the wireless adaptor, since I don't need it to play games. I still get crashes. I will have to say though, that the crashes don't happen as often. I was able to play for a few hours at a time, before I turned off the wireless adaptor, it was 30 minutes at most.
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iMac ATI 4850 Crashes and Graphics Problems (glitches)

So, I am not starting to see problems with, what I think, is the ATI drivers for the ATI 4850 in the new iMacs. Look at the picture upper left in this post here and look at the upper right corner. See that greenish line, it isn't part of the image. That picture is part of a screen shot taken from within Aperture 2. I have seen that with other images, If I exit and come back into Aperture it is gone. The line moves around too and grows and shrinks in size for different pictures. I am also seeing crashes and freezes....

I am also seeing crashes and freezes in OSX now. I was using Aperture and had moved to a new picture when the whole system just froze. No response from anything. I had to power off the iMac and power back on to recover. I, again, am seeing more crashes in boot camp, this time in Fallout 3, had to reboot.

OSX 10.5.7 is due at "any time now(TM)". Lets hope they roll out new ATI drivers for both OSX and boot camp.  Here is a picture of the full aperture session.

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