Weird problems after SMC firmware update

Question

Hi,
So I have a MacBook Pro bought in July 2007. I installed the new firmware update yesterday and noticed today that my computer gets a lot warmer. If I try to run an application that does more processing, some buttons on my screen turn black, I can't move windows and the backlight starts to flash like crazy giving me a nice disco effect if I turn the lights off.
/var/log/system.log will show stuff like the following:
Jun 2 20:33:59 edvard-fagerholms-macbook-pro kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x1 = Fifo: Fifo Method Error
Jun 2 20:34:00 efagerhos-macbook-pro kernel[0]: 0000000b
Jun 2 20:34:15 efagerhos-macbook-pro kernel[0]: NVChannel(Display): Graphics channel timeout!
Jun 2 20:34:15 efagerhos-macbook-pro kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! status = 0xffff info32 = 0x1 = Fifo: Fifo Method Error
Jun 2 20:34:15 efagerhos-macbook-pro kernel[0]: 0000000b
Jun 2 20:34:59 efagerhos-macbook-pro kernel[0]: NVChannel(Display): Graphics channel timeout!
All my problems started after trying an application written in Java, which seemed to require lot of processing power and made my computer very warm. After this I have also been unable to get my DVD drive to read any DVD. If it turns to be the update, I am pretty ****** of that they release an update that can physically kill a perfectly well working computer. Especially, when it's already out of warranty.
Does anyone else experience any similar problems?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure it's the graphics even though the Apple "genius" claimed it wasn't. The genius told me the RAM chips were broken. Ok, so I bought new RAM, the computer booted up, worked for about 30 minutes and the problem came back.
However, the computer boots up flawlessly to single-user mode by pressing apple-s during boot (even with the old RAM), so I can access the disk and use it as a typewriter in the console... I also coded a poor mans memory tester that allocated memory and wrote random stuff to it, and it worked fine with my old RAM chips. If I try to start the machine normally, then according to the logs, the computer freezes at the exact moment when it's starting up the login screen. If I assume correctly how OS X works, I would suspect that this is the moment it switches from some kind of a video BIOS framebuffer mode into an accelerated mode provided by the nvidia graphics driver.
I also noticed after using the root console in single-user mode for about 30 minutes (I was making a Linux USB stick to start it through rEFIt, to do some further diagnostics) that the black console background had these faint blue horizontal lines going from the top of the screen to the bottom. This is usually a sign that the graphics chip is busted.
It seems like it's time to get a new appointment in the Genius Bar.