Fan speed not increasing when cpu/gpu runs hot (causes black screen)

Question

I've spent a good deal of time trying to narrow down the cause of all the crashing to black screen issues that I've had in both boot camp and OSX. I had first noticed it in boot camp while playing fallout 3 and warhammer online. After playing for awhile, when the gpu hits around 85C, the screen will turn black and the audio will begin looping. A cold reboot is then required.
Running COD4 in OSX led to the same problem. I figured it might be an SMC issue so I reset it and launched COD4 again. The first time I tried, I thought I had fixed it but when I launched the game again, the fans no longer sped up to cool down the machine.
I believe there is definitely something wrong with the SMC on my machine and the same issue may be affecting several other people who have reported the black screen problem when gaming. Will speak to apple tech support tomorrow to see if there's an SMC upgrade coming up. If not, I'll need to replace the MBP AGAIN. What is up with apple QC these days?

Answer 1

I keep sounding off about this in every thread I see it mentioned because it's really a problem for me.
I have had this occur with Postal 2, Eternal Lands Client, and 4x4 Evolution 2. My Macbook Pro was manufactured Nov. 5th and I received it on the afternoon of Nov. 13th, purchased from the Apple online store.
The screen doesn't just go "black", the backlighting actually goes off. The audio tends to loop. If I let it sit for a while I find "NVChannel(Display):" timeout! errors in the log.. But nothing indicating a panic, crash, or hang. Most times there is NOTHING in the log which is very disconcerting obviously.
I ran an 8 hours extended looping hardware test with the AHT CD today and it found no problems.
Tech Tool Deluxe find no problems either, for whatever that is worth. Yet it seems if I play any OpenGL based game I get an unpredictable, random dead screen and audio loop.
With the various talk about temperatures, I find that it happens even if I just turned the computer on. It takes about 30 seconds to boot, and if I start a game immediately it often has blacked out immediatley.. No time to get hot. iStat Pro reports temps not even getting far past 65 sometimes when this happens. Full screen or windowed mode, still happens. But only with games. Any kind of video or screen savers or anything, no problems. Also, only with the 9600M GT.
In another thread people have had success with exchanging their units. Not sure what happens for me having bought a CTO online.