I have gotten less severe version of this bug before, but right now it was going crazy. I took some screenshots, but I cant check to see if the screenshots portray the bug. If they do, you will see what I mean in the attachment. Also, these random pixels are jumping around like crazy.

Edit: it fixed itself, so now I can checkout my own screenshot. You can sort of see what was going on in the screenshot.

I have seen that kind of pixelation if there were a problem with the LCD display (usually a loose connection), however if that were the case, it would not have shown up in the Screenshot....
Well, it would have, but only when looking at it on that one computer.

You get the idea.

Obviously not that though, even though it does look exactly like what I ran into twice on a couple Powerbook G4s.
(2 out of a good hundred or so, after a year and a half of heavy abuse by some of the idiots I work with.)

It is a powermac G5 (dual monitor) and it was happening on both the Apple cinema display and the dell little display.

First off, were the artifacts actually stored in the screenshot, or is that something that you added?

If it was actually in the screenshot, then it sounds like it could be a problem with your graphics memory.
What I would try before anything would be doing a disk repair to make sure that there isnt an issue with the driver.
After that, I would look at getting a new graphics card.

I did not add that to the screenshot. Also, I believe my graphics card has 256 MB of ram. I upgraded to it when I got my 30" cinema display.

I believe the card is a ATI RAEDON 800 or 700 or something XT

Well, try opening Disk Utility and having it repair your disk.

Then, restart.

If it is still an issue after the reboot, then see if you can track down a different network card.

hm...well my airport card does have problems with the newest leopard build....

Although, I think I saw this happen once or twice b4

That's due to corruption of the display buffer. You may want to check the fan on your graphics card, as the card may be overheating. It's also possible a connection is loose, or there is a problem causing the graphics card to recieve less power than it requires.

Ok, I think it is definitely overheating. I was smelling something...that smelled like overheating, but I thought it was just my new external. Thanks


EDIT: yeah, it happened briefly again, and i smelled that that smell...I moved my tower over, so it is no longer touching the side of my desk, and I think that helped.

hmm... i had the same issue with vista RC1 then i upgraded the ram and it worked fine... but that is prolly not the issue with u

It's similar to what happens when you overclock your GPU a bit much.
Try underclocking it, perhaps?

And how do I underclock it?

On a G5, it's not going to happen. What you want is a can of compressed air. Open up the tower, remove the graphics card and use compressed air to blow all the dust off of it. Then use compressed air to clean off the motherboard near the slot for the graphics card. Reinsert the graphics card, and boot the machine back up. If that still doesn't work, and it's under warrenty, send it in for support. If it isn't, and it still doesn't work, you'll probably have to buy a new graphics card.

Thanks! I'll try that. I think it may just be a problem with the leopard build not passing the right data to the card or something.

one of my friends was experiencing a similar prob wen playing games on his ibook. he didn want to screw around wit it, so he re installed tiger. wat release did u have? he had the 1st leaked on piratebay, that could be da prob

yeah, the newer 9a321, 9a343, 9a303 don't have pixel probs
@soundless, he had the wwdc build

I am sing build 9a343...I dusted off the card, and that helped a lot.

I saw this on an old G3 of mine using XPOSTFACTO to run 10.3

Hey...so I just did some mroe testing on this because the problem became much worse.

So this bug starts occuring after bootup very quickly on two seperate partitions of 9a343. Additionally, after more time, it acts up on 9a283. The problems have recently been increasing. Is it in the card?

Yes, it's your card. a solder-joint between your graphics core and/or a RAM chip has been broken, this is normally seen as there can se a lot of mechanical stress on the chips, if the cooling of the chips is done wrong.

I have two HIS ATI X700 PRO Cards laying on the operating table. HIS has glued cooling profiles ontop of the RAM chips, in a way, so one cooling profile touches two chips. When the stuff heats up, the aluminium the cooling fins are made of, and the Fibreglass the Circuit board are made of, doesn't expand the same amount, and there you have it, stress on the solder joints. a BAD thing.

I will have to reflow them with hot air to possibly fix it - Warning, this is not a job for anyone but professionals.

I would recommend you to get your Graphics card replaced if it's still under warranty, or if the system is.

Just my .2 cents.

Regards, Per Jensen.

Yeah....sorry for not re-posting.

I called ATI, and they were very nice about it. I sent it in (under warranty) and am awaiting its return.