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squimotron

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 6, 2024
6
1
I'm curious if anyone else has had kernel panics with a Radeon 6900XT in their Mac Pro. Used an Apple 580X with an AMD 6900XT for a while, but there started to be frequent system crashes from kernel panics, not linked to any single activity on my computer. Happens when editing, when only using email, when installing new updates, sometimes when idle... I ended up removing the 6900XT but it's a shame, because I'd really love to keep using it. Any advice or thoughts are welcome.
 
OS version?
Which slot are you using?
I have the OEM 6900XT with Sonoma and works great for a long time now. Removed the 580X and only have the 6900XT in there in the same slot that the 580X was.
 
OS version?
Which slot are you using?
I have the OEM 6900XT with Sonoma and works great for a long time now. Removed the 580X and only have the 6900XT in there in the same slot that the 580X was.
This has been happening on Ventura through Sonoma, latest updates installed, and I’ve tried it in different slots, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Any recommendations on slots? And yours is a non-Apple GPU, right?
 
Maybe this is helpful to figuring this out, but since using only the OEM 580X, instead of system crashes I get messages that WindowServer has quit unexpectedly, usually when logging back in from sleep. I'm wondering now if this has to do with the dual monitors I'm using (Samsung UR55), so I updated the firmware on those and put the 6900XT back in as the only GPU. We'll see what happens.
 
Last edited:
This has been happening on Ventura through Sonoma, latest updates installed, and I’ve tried it in different slots, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Any recommendations on slots? And yours is a non-Apple GPU, right?
Yes its a retail OEM 6900XT.

Remove the 580X completely and if you're getting WindowServer crashes then something's up with the OS install. It might be other drivers you have installed or other hardware.

Also sometimes GPUs do go bad and cause crashes, but generally those start with pixelations like green glitch blocks etc. Not saying your GPU is bad.
 
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Yes its a retail OEM 6900XT.

Remove the 580X completely and if you're getting WindowServer crashes then something's up with the OS install. It might be other drivers you have installed or other hardware.

Also sometimes GPUs do go bad and cause crashes, but generally those start with pixelations like green glitch blocks etc. Not saying your GPU is bad.
Definitely no pixelations or artifacts like that, so that's good. The WindowServer crash has never happened with the 6900XT—only the 580X. Just straight-up, full-on system crashes with the 6900XT.
 
I recently had an issue where my 2 eGPU's (both with 6900XT's) connected to one of two MPX's stopped the Mac from booting. On Sonoma they were super unstable causing hard crashes. Seems like something had changed somewhere because I could run them via either of the MPX's before. Going back to Ventura and swapping the MPX they were hooked up to resolved it.

Not that this helps you - but it certainly seemed something changed somewhere.
 
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I pulled my 580 and have a 9100wx and a 6900xt (reference design from sonnet. No issues for years. On latest version of Sonoma.
 
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Thanks for the responses, everyone. This is reassuring. Still no crash since updating my monitor firmware, so hoping that was the issue. Just wish I would've known that months ago!
 
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Welp, it was going great from 3/7 until 4/22. I've had 3 crashes, 3 days in a row, and I'm scratching my head as to why, all of a sudden, and so consistently. Before that, this was the longest stretch with no system crash. I did have a couple of system freezes in which I had to cold shutdown the computer. But I'm at a loss.
 
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