Has anyone encountered games crashing there iMac constantly?

[Coggy_11]

Hi all, Thanks for your time. I am having severe crashes when I play any computer games. I can't last 5 minutes in game until I have a massive crash, the graphics pixelate, hangs for a couple of minutes and my comp restarts automatically. The funny thing is, after my computer restarts, I can crash at anytime in Finder (usually within 5 minutes) without even starting a game. This repeats but gets worse each time the comp restarts, until I manually shutdown and wait 30 minutes, when I can use Finder again and everything goes back to normal. I have also noticed small little glitches on screen sometimes in finder - they come and go.

Things to note:
• The problem is occurring in High Sierra and Mojave (I updated to see if that would fix it).
• I've just updated to 10.14.4 and the crash still occurs
• I've reset nvram several times.
• I have spoken to Apple live chat and ran through with them safe mode tests, as well as the new user test. They referred me to an Apple reseller.
• I took in the machine to an Apple reseller (not the genius bar) and they "stress tested the unit for over 2 hours with 3d graphics and nothing had come up." I picked it up when they wanted to pay more money.
• This problem starts in game only, not anywhere else.
• I have tried setting my gfx settings in WoW to the lowest.
• I can force the crash to happen faster when the gfx has to render some distance.
• I have tried Diablo, Hearthstone, and Dota and the same thing happens after 5-10 minutes.
• My work requires me to use programs like pshop and premier (sometimes the files get up to 2gb) and this doesn’t cause any issue.
• I have tried Cinebench and it passes without a hiccup.

System
27" iMac late 2013
3.5 GHz Intel i7
16GB 1600MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB
Mojave 10.14.3

I thought it might be my GPU but I have read on WoW forums that Nvidia and Apple drivers are causing issues. I've attached photos of my screen below showing the weird purple pixelation (sorry, my imac is locked and I cant take screenshots).

My big question is; is this a driver issue or actually something like a piece of hardware that is fault. Has anyone else experienced this because I can't find anything on any forums?
Thank you all for your time.
Matt

Below is the most recent crash report (just the start):

Anonymous UUID: 4C7D787D-7782-9EA4-6C31-0D1C09F66ADB
Thu Mar 28 21:53:26 2019

*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff8011edd16d): Kernel trap at 0xffffff7f9338314c, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x000000008001003b, CR2: 0xffffff9201bcea58, CR3: 0x00000002ff48b0f4, CR4: 0x00000000001626e0
RAX: 0xffffff9201bcea00, RBX: 0xffffff8043bdd000, RCX: 0x0000013a0dcded1a, RDX: 0x000000000000013a
RSP: 0xffffff9201d03700, RBP: 0xffffff9201d03700, RSI: 0x0000000000000002, RDI: 0xffffff8043bdd000
R8: 0xffffff9201d03438, R9: 0xffffff9201d03430, R10: 0x0000000000000000, R11: 0x0000000000000544
R12: 0xffffff803760f000, R13: 0xffffff803760f630, R14: 0x0000000000000000, R15: 0xffffff803752f800
RFL: 0x0000000000010286, RIP: 0xffffff7f9338314c, CS: 0x0000000000000008, SS: 0x0000000000000000
Fault CR2: 0xffffff9201bcea58, Error code: 0x0000000000000000, Fault CPU: 0x2, PL: 0, VF: 1

 

[patearrings]

Hi all, Thanks for your time. I am having severe crashes when I play any computer games. I can't last 5 minutes in game until I have a massive crash, the graphics pixelate, hangs for a couple of minutes and my comp restarts automatically. The funny thing is, after my computer restarts, I can crash at anytime in Finder (usually within 5 minutes) without even starting a game. This repeats but gets worse each time the comp restarts, until I manually shutdown and wait 30 minutes, when I can use Finder again and everything goes back to normal. I have also noticed small little glitches on screen sometimes in finder - they come and go.

Things to note:
• The problem is occurring in High Sierra and Mojave (I updated to see if that would fix it).
• I've just updated to 10.14.4 and the crash still occurs
• I've reset nvram several times.
• I have spoken to Apple live chat and ran through with them safe mode tests, as well as the new user test. They referred me to an Apple reseller.
• I took in the machine to an Apple reseller (not the genius bar) and they "stress tested the unit for over 2 hours with 3d graphics and nothing had come up." I picked it up when they wanted to pay more money.
• This problem starts in game only, not anywhere else.
• I have tried setting my gfx settings in WoW to the lowest.
• I can force the crash to happen faster when the gfx has to render some distance.
• I have tried Diablo, Hearthstone, and Dota and the same thing happens after 5-10 minutes.
• My work requires me to use programs like pshop and premier (sometimes the files get up to 2gb) and this doesn’t cause any issue.
• I have tried Cinebench and it passes without a hiccup.

System
27" iMac late 2013
3.5 GHz Intel i7
16GB 1600MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB
Mojave 10.14.3

I thought it might be my GPU but I have read on WoW forums that Nvidia and Apple drivers are causing issues. I've attached photos of my screen below showing the weird purple pixelation (sorry, my imac is locked and I cant take screenshots).

My big question is; is this a driver issue or actually something like a piece of hardware that is fault. Has anyone else experienced this because I can't find anything on any forums?
Thank you all for your time.
Matt

Below is the most recent crash report (just the start):

Anonymous UUID: 4C7D787D-7782-9EA4-6C31-0D1C09F66ADB
Thu Mar 28 21:53:26 2019

*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff8011edd16d): Kernel trap at 0xffffff7f9338314c, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x000000008001003b, CR2: 0xffffff9201bcea58, CR3: 0x00000002ff48b0f4, CR4: 0x00000000001626e0
RAX: 0xffffff9201bcea00, RBX: 0xffffff8043bdd000, RCX: 0x0000013a0dcded1a, RDX: 0x000000000000013a
RSP: 0xffffff9201d03700, RBP: 0xffffff9201d03700, RSI: 0x0000000000000002, RDI: 0xffffff8043bdd000
R8: 0xffffff9201d03438, R9: 0xffffff9201d03430, R10: 0x0000000000000000, R11: 0x0000000000000544
R12: 0xffffff803760f000, R13: 0xffffff803760f630, R14: 0x0000000000000000, R15: 0xffffff803752f800
RFL: 0x0000000000010286, RIP: 0xffffff7f9338314c, CS: 0x0000000000000008, SS: 0x0000000000000000
Fault CR2: 0xffffff9201bcea58, Error code: 0x0000000000000000, Fault CPU: 0x2, PL: 0, VF: 1

[doublepost=1553779042][/doublepost]I have the exact same problem in WoW for about the last week or so. I have the late 2013 imac but the 755m 1gb card. However with mine, if i just exit the game and then relaunch it, it's fine. Seems like a gfx bug introduced in either a wow patch or the mojave update.

 

[Coggy_11]

[doublepost=1553779042][/doublepost]I have the exact same problem in WoW for about the last week or so. I have the late 2013 imac but the 755m 1gb card. However with mine, if i just exit the game and then relaunch it, it's fine. Seems like a gfx bug introduced in either a wow patch or the mojave update.

That's what I thought too, but the crash occurs across other blizzard games as well as Dota. And it was also occurring in High Sierra prior to upgrading to Mojave. So weird!

 

[keysofanxiety]

To me it sounds like graphics failure, especially if it's freezing your machine. You're also getting graphics artifacts in Finder which further confirms that.

Sorry.

 

[Coggy_11]

Thanks for your response Keys. Sounds as if I have to go out to the paddock to put ol' yeller down.

 

[Coggy_11]

To me it sounds like graphics failure, especially if it's freezing your machine. You're also getting graphics artifacts in Finder which further confirms that.

Sorry.

I should clarify also, I only get the artifacts in Finder after my first initial crash.

 

[curmudgeonette]

Thanks for your response Keys. Sounds as if I have to go out to the paddock to put ol' yeller down.

I wouldn't be so hasty. Your problem looks a lot like the graphic glitches when the 2016 MBP's were released. (I think that's the model...) There the problem was something to do with 24 bit vs 30 bit color. Some drivers, system functions, or application code assumed a specific frame buffer content. I don't know how such a bug got through Apple's QA, but it took a long time for Apple to acknowledge it and for Apple and vendors (cough, Adobe) to fix it.

 

[Coggy_11]

I wouldn't be so hasty. Your problem looks a lot like the graphic glitches when the 2016 MBP's were released. (I think that's the model...) There the problem was something to do with 24 bit vs 30 bit color. Some drivers, system functions, or application code assumed a specific frame buffer content. I don't know how such a bug got through Apple's QA, but it took a long time for Apple to acknowledge it and for Apple and vendors (cough, Adobe) to fix it.

Thanks for your reply. Yea it does feel like graphic related. The Mac works swimmingly when I first start it from cold (I can work in the adobe or watch YouTube without a hitch), but within the first 5 minutes of a game it crashes hard, restarts and then finder becomes supsect to a crash (not prior to playing a game). Very annoying

 

[curmudgeonette]

but within the first 5 minutes of a game it crashes hard, restarts and then finder becomes supsect to a crash (not prior to playing a game).

When it does this, do (another) restart and perform work type tasks. Or - do a shutdown and immediately turn it back on and do those work tasks. The intent is to find out the persistence of the problem. If it is still there after a user initiated restart (or full shutdown), that suggests a hardware problem.

 

[Coggy_11]

When it does this, do (another) restart and perform work type tasks. Or - do a shutdown and immediately turn it back on and do those work tasks. The intent is to find out the persistence of the problem. If it is still there after a user initiated restart (or full shutdown), that suggests a hardware problem.

Hey curm, well I tried what you said (shutdown and immediately turned it on) and it seems to be working fine. So I guess that's one thing I got going for me?

 

[ondert]

People use Mac with Nvidia gpus also report here some strange bugs happening recently. I think your problem is related to Blizzard games only.

 

[Coggy_11]

People use Mac with Nvidia gpus also report here some strange bugs happening recently. I think your problem is related to Blizzard games only.

Thanks ondert for the reply. Yes that's what I thought after testing hearthstone and diablo, except Dota also crashes. I'll just keep testing!

 

[Shivetya]

wow crashes for me a lot with the recent patches, I have the i5 version of your machine. I also get random video corruption in WOW. What I have noticed that if I have any streaming content running while playing WOW I can actually lock the machine up randomly. I do not play in full screen, I use a window filling the space between Apple bar at top and dock.

I do not have lock ups while playing Stellaris, full screen or windowed. XCOM/XCOM2 both seem to be fine as well.


Nvidia driver version for me is 387.10.10.10.40.118



I am just glad that version 8.1.5 fixed the microphone rights issue, as in they never had the wow client ask to use the microphone so it kept spamming an error message endlessly while playing the game. Still I am pretty sure that Blizzard did something wrong again

 

[One4th]

Hey Coggy. I’m literally having the exact same issue with wow and the pixelated crashes. Did you ever resolve the issue?