Graphic Artifacts and display freezing/blacking

Question

My 15inch MBP, purchased in July of 06, seems to be giving me major problems.
I'm getting really odd graphics artifacts all the time. It can be as simple as a multicolor line in a window, on the desktop or through an icon. Othertimes its as major as an icon or section of a graphic showing up like its been scrambled and combined with really bright colors. Sometimes it looks like a triangle of a few pixels that have been stretched out.
All of the issues are related to software, as I can make them go away by changing window size—and they only exist in the window or application. The heat coorelates to how severe the artifacts can get, if I'm about 60˚C I'll notice them more, so as a photographer I keep my fan running when I'm doing important work to avoid the crashes.
And finally, the computer will crash with little explanation. Not like things timing out and I look mouse function, but things like the entire screen slowly being tinted green, or everything but the mouse seizes up(when this happens, my caps lock button still works, I can move the mouse just fine, but I can't click anything;commands don't work either.) The crashing can happen when I'm working in Photoshop(comp intensive) or if I only have Mail.app open and I happen to click on the finder icon too fast(very simple tasks).
I have the funds to get this repaired, although I'm confident they will simply replace the logic board and that will not solve my issue—only temporarily put it off another few months.
I'm waiting for the 10.5.2 update, hoping that will fix something. I have all other updates.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

One thing to try would be to borrow an external display and see if the same artifacts occur on the external display. If so, you might have a graphics chip problem, either with the chip itself or with its attachment to the logic board. If the problem gets worse with heat, it may be that the ball grid array that holds the chip to the logic board is beginning to fail. It sounds like your software requires intense processor usage, which will generate more heat. As the heat builds, the failing ball grid array will work less well and you will get these visual artifacts and freezing and other symptoms.
You might try one of the laptop coolers with fans to keep your Mac as cool as possible and see if this helps. The other thing to try is to reinstall the OS and see if that helps. If reinstalling the OS does not help, very likely you are dealing with some sort of hardware issue, and very likely they would want to replace the logic board.
Have you tried running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it happens to show anything?
Good luck!