Mac Pro (Late 2013) GPU (Driver) Issues

[AidenShaw]

Yes, and it's GPU just to be clear, not gnu Logic board is probably the motherboard.

Could be the daughtercard, though.

The MP6,1's motherboard is the round board at the very bottom. The CPU and memory aren't on the motherboard, they're on a daughter card on the "wide" side of the thermal core.

 

[mauro16]

i installed windows 10 on last weekend but the experience so far is not encouraging.

The bootcamp installation procedure did not ask me for a usb key (though i had it available). I did not activate windows, as it is not required according e.g. to this site http://www.windowscentral.com/you-do-not-need-activate-windows-10.

Apparently everything went well, devices were immediately working. At the beginning i did not install external software and for the first two days everything seemed to work. Then i installed dropbox and firefox and when reproducing some video in streaming i had errors like 'the amd driver crashed, it has been restarted'. I then removed firefox and installed chrome, and again everything seemed to work correctly for some hour. Anyway, at a certain moment i tried to shut down the computer and the screen was deactivated but the mac did not shut off, i had to shut off by the physical button. The morning after the computer rebooted itself (while i was using the mac, but not on my request) many times, one time the reboot was preceded by a loud noise produced by the mac, and there was a red light in the bottom of the mac. I had many times the problem with shutdown that deactivates the dispaly but doesn't complete the operation.

Then yesterday i was able to systematically throw the self reboot. It was enough to watch a video on youtube with chrome and meanwhile open a file in the dropbox, edit it and save it. When i did this the reboot was triggered in a few seconds (with noise and bottom red light).

This morning i reinstalled windows and for now i have not installed any other software. One question is: after having those type of problems with windows (self reboots, restarts of graphic driver and similar), does it make sense to do a reset of SMC and/or reset of NVRAM? Do these operations apply also to windows or only to mac os? What are reasonable reset operation to perform with windows?

Another question is: what are the meanings of the noise and of that bottom red light?

 

[poematik13]

ok ill call them to be sure to see what was replaced and ask them again. i mean, just saying i have a mid 2014 mac book pro retina. but i guess their gpus are faulty everywhere, or drivers at least. doubt nvidia does such ****** graphics.

wrong forum dude, this is for the Mac Pro (2013). Not a laptop.

 

[Infrared]

Within half an hour of installing update 10.11.1 the machine locked up. GPU msg in the logs. First time it's happened on this machine.

"23/10/2015 11:46:44.997 WindowServer[162]: GPU Driver appears to be hung (over 5 continuous seconds of unreadiness)"

 

[axantas]

i installed windows 10 on last weekend but the experience so far is not encouraging.

The bootcamp installation procedure did not ask me for a usb key (though i had it available). I did not activate windows, as it is not required according e.g. to this site http://www.windowscentral.com/you-do-not-need-activate-windows-10.

Apparently everything went well, devices were immediately working. At the beginning i did not install external software and for the first two days everything seemed to work. Then i installed dropbox and firefox and when reproducing some video in streaming i had errors like 'the amd driver crashed, it has been restarted'. I then removed firefox and installed chrome, and again everything seemed to work correctly for some hour. Anyway, at a certain moment i tried to shut down the computer and the screen was deactivated but the mac did not shut off, i had to shut off by the physical button. The morning after the computer rebooted itself (while i was using the mac, but not on my request) many times, one time the reboot was preceded by a loud noise produced by the mac, and there was a red light in the bottom of the mac. I had many times the problem with shutdown that deactivates the dispaly but doesn't complete the operation.

Then yesterday i was able to systematically throw the self reboot. It was enough to watch a video on youtube with chrome and meanwhile open a file in the dropbox, edit it and save it. When i did this the reboot was triggered in a few seconds (with noise and bottom red light).

This morning i reinstalled windows and for now i have not installed any other software. One question is: after having those type of problems with windows (self reboots, restarts of graphic driver and similar), does it make sense to do a reset of SMC and/or reset of NVRAM? Do these operations apply also to windows or only to mac os? What are reasonable reset operation to perform with windows?

Another question is: what are the meanings of the noise and of that bottom red light?

I do have the crashing AMD-driver as well here, but Windows 10 immediately recovers - Windows 8 did that as well. Iam just living with that. I see a certain coincidence with a) playing a movie and b) browsing a graphics-intensive website. It mostly happens in these situations - but just sometimes...

For the not properly shutting down Mac: Do deactivate Crossfire X in the AMD control center, the problem will go away. Windows will run pretty smooth that way.

 

[axantas]

So: Now Apple has solved the problem of the "not verifying audio-plugins" i have El Capitan up and running. So far everything fine.

The nasty short screen flickers on my Dell UHD-monitor are finally gone (i had to run it at native 3840x2160@50Hz before) Now it does the interpolated resolutions as well. I had the same problem in Windows 8 as well, Windows 10 made it vanish as well.

Just before the installation I discovered a new folder in the root directory which contained some firmware-files, one of them pointed towards a MacBook Pro, the other cryptic filenames I could not verify. That directory is gone after two reboots now...

 

[axantas]

Interesting: I just had a freeze out of nowhere, no app running, just deleting some files in Finder. It recovered automatically after three seconds - not unplugging anything. Running fine without reboot.
There is the known "Kernel.......Mac-Pro.gpu.Restart" - so at least it does restart and not just hang...

Yesterday there were yet unseen entries: WindowsWerver......Mac-Pro.userspace_watchdog_timeout.spin

 

[twomartoe]

updated to el cap. different console message same hang. WindowServer: GPU Driver appears to be hung (over 5 continous seconds of unreadiness) x100++. This machine has cost me so much anxiety and time. Its very odd that a mega company like apple, which pride itself over great usability do not have any fix for this very expensive computer for more than a year.

 

[bax2003]

updated to el cap. different console message same hang. WindowServer: GPU Driver appears to be hung (over 5 continous seconds of unreadiness) x100++. This machine has cost me so much anxiety and time. Its very odd that a mega company like apple, which pride itself over great usability do not have any fix for this very expensive computer for more than a year.

They do not giva a shelf
OR they will start replacement program in late 2016 if they ever find culprit.

 

[axantas]

ok for the spikes and line noise. Particularly the possible noise.
Generally it is incredibly stable here regarding frequency and up/downs, but I just changed the entire wiring here, running the MacPro through an APC BR550GI (550VA - 330W) now. Now I finally see, how much energy it uses

I will report...

Don't buy a UPS - no changes in behaviour

 

[mauro16]

i posted about my problems with windows in the apple forum

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7295348

It seems it could be an overheating problem, given also the fact of auto-reboots. In fact usually the problems may happen when i reboot many times in sequence, or after some hour from the boot time. I'm thinking to install some program to monitor heating but i fear this program could worsen the problems ..

 

[El_Kritiko]

Some people have crashs only by working with the Finder or browsing in the web. I do not think it is overheating, but you should install a heating monitor tool.

 

[MMcCraryNJ]

.

 

[Timboum]

Maybe, we are wrong about the origin of the problem. I'm thinking that the problem is about the SSD rather the GPU. An access HD problem could generate freezes. What are you thinking about that?

 

[filmak]

Maybe, we are wrong about the origin of the problem. I'm thinking that the problem is about the SSD rather the GPU. An access HD problem could generate freezes. What are you thinking about that?

The logs report a GPU problem...

 

[nitrocan]

Maybe, we are wrong about the origin of the problem. I'm thinking that the problem is about the SSD rather the GPU. An access HD problem could generate freezes. What are you thinking about that?

No.

 

[voyager77]

Did anyone notice any improvements since osx 10.11.1?
This version did change something to the graphics drivers, they now give 10 bits output (even to my ancient cinema display)

I haven't had a graphics crash since running 10.11.1 (knocks on wood)
I did notice a few brief freezes, but the system recovered and there was no error message in console.

Edit
Ok, scrap that, i just got a hung cpu message, but it still recovered.

 

[nitrocan]

I just upgraded to El Capitan and the flickering is now gone.

 

[gpu-crashman]

*** WARNING -- INCOMING RANT!!***
So I posted on this thread a while ago.. thinking it was software.. now.. I'm at a total loss. I work at a rather large cable broadcasting corporation, and this year alone, we've purchased about 50 of the new Mac Pro (Late 2013) cylinders. At first, I thought it was just the one system that we were having issues with.. but get this.. I have 5 MacPro Cylinders ALL experiencing the same GPU failure / GPU RESTART / machine HANG when trying to launch (usually at the black screen with the gray Apple logo & progress bar about 1/3 of the way full) problems. 5!!! BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! I HAVE A 6TH SYSTEM WITH A COMPLETELY DEAD POWER SUPPLY!! THAT'S OVER 10 FREAKING PERCENT FAILURE!!!

I've worked on a LOT of Mac Pro / Power Mac desktop computers in my time, a lot! Before this incident, I could count the number of Apple hardware component failures on ONE HAND... with fingers to spare! This is unbelievable!

So, we get our GSX admin to download the ASD images so that I can test.. and on our most failing system, the thing PASSES the EFI boot version of the test, but won't even load the ASD OS version of the test! It can't boot ANYTHING! Rarely from the system's own internal drive, and that's only in SAFE mode.

On the other systems, I can get it to boot the ASD OS version, and when I test, I get multiple failures on the PCI port addressing & Thunderbolt ports. BUT... I also tested a known good system, and it ALSO reported the same failures.. to the ASD tests are either reporting that all of my Mac Pro Cylinders are bad, or the test is reporting 'false-positives'. .. ok.. I'm done here..
</RANT OFF>

So, we've contacted Apple Enterprise support and now we're wading through the quagmire of the finger pointing.. "It's your VAR's responsibility, the Macs were sold to them!" "It's your responsibility, you purchased the Macs from US!"

We're waiting to hear back from Apple now..

 

[twomartoe]

*** WARNING -- INCOMING RANT!!***
So I posted on this thread a while ago.. thinking it was software.. now.. I'm at a total loss. I work at a rather large cable broadcasting corporation, and this year alone, we've purchased about 50 of the new Mac Pro (Late 2013) cylinders. At first, I thought it was just the one system that we were having issues with.. but get this.. I have 5 MacPro Cylinders ALL experiencing the same GPU failure / GPU RESTART / machine HANG when trying to launch (usually at the black screen with the gray Apple logo & progress bar about 1/3 of the way full) problems. 5!!! BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! I HAVE A 6TH SYSTEM WITH A COMPLETELY DEAD POWER SUPPLY!! THAT'S OVER 10 FREAKING PERCENT FAILURE!!!

I've worked on a LOT of Mac Pro / Power Mac desktop computers in my time, a lot! Before this incident, I could count the number of Apple hardware component failures on ONE HAND... with fingers to spare! This is unbelievable!

So, we get our GSX admin to download the ASD images so that I can test.. and on our most failing system, the thing PASSES the EFI boot version of the test, but won't even load the ASD OS version of the test! It can't boot ANYTHING! Rarely from the system's own internal drive, and that's only in SAFE mode.

On the other systems, I can get it to boot the ASD OS version, and when I test, I get multiple failures on the PCI port addressing & Thunderbolt ports. BUT... I also tested a known good system, and it ALSO reported the same failures.. to the ASD tests are either reporting that all of my Mac Pro Cylinders are bad, or the test is reporting 'false-positives'. .. ok.. I'm done here..
</RANT OFF>

So, we've contacted Apple Enterprise support and now we're wading through the quagmire of the finger pointing.. "It's your VAR's responsibility, the Macs were sold to them!" "It's your responsibility, you purchased the Macs from US!"

We're waiting to hear back from Apple now..

I wonder how much productivity time have been lost to the cylindrical mac pro. I have it for more than a year now and putting up with very frequent unpredictable gpu hangs.

 

[flyingfoxuk]

I wonder how much productivity time have been lost to the cylindrical mac pro. I have it for more than a year now and putting up with very frequent unpredictable gpu hangs.

Lost a lot of time earlier this year - new machine #3 seems pretty stable overall - only time will tell...

 

[bax2003]

We should start spreading this wherever we can.....this is just cataclysmic.

 

[voyager77]

I think it's time to get some apple care on this puppy, 10% failures is huge.

 

[richmlow]

Wow...this doesn't sound good at all!

It appears that there may be inherent hardware design flaws in the 2013 Mac Pro. =(


richmlow

*** WARNING -- INCOMING RANT!!***
So I posted on this thread a while ago.. thinking it was software.. now.. I'm at a total loss. I work at a rather large cable broadcasting corporation, and this year alone, we've purchased about 50 of the new Mac Pro (Late 2013) cylinders. At first, I thought it was just the one system that we were having issues with.. but get this.. I have 5 MacPro Cylinders ALL experiencing the same GPU failure / GPU RESTART / machine HANG when trying to launch (usually at the black screen with the gray Apple logo & progress bar about 1/3 of the way full) problems. 5!!! BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! I HAVE A 6TH SYSTEM WITH A COMPLETELY DEAD POWER SUPPLY!! THAT'S OVER 10 FREAKING PERCENT FAILURE!!!

I've worked on a LOT of Mac Pro / Power Mac desktop computers in my time, a lot! Before this incident, I could count the number of Apple hardware component failures on ONE HAND... with fingers to spare! This is unbelievable!

So, we get our GSX admin to download the ASD images so that I can test.. and on our most failing system, the thing PASSES the EFI boot version of the test, but won't even load the ASD OS version of the test! It can't boot ANYTHING! Rarely from the system's own internal drive, and that's only in SAFE mode.

On the other systems, I can get it to boot the ASD OS version, and when I test, I get multiple failures on the PCI port addressing & Thunderbolt ports. BUT... I also tested a known good system, and it ALSO reported the same failures.. to the ASD tests are either reporting that all of my Mac Pro Cylinders are bad, or the test is reporting 'false-positives'. .. ok.. I'm done here..
</RANT OFF>

So, we've contacted Apple Enterprise support and now we're wading through the quagmire of the finger pointing.. "It's your VAR's responsibility, the Macs were sold to them!" "It's your responsibility, you purchased the Macs from US!"

We're waiting to hear back from Apple now..

 

[twomartoe]

Lost a lot of time earlier this year - new machine #3 seems pretty stable overall - only time will tell...

machine 3!! wow. no gpu hangs at all? Thats so much time at the apple store or worse, the apple authorised dealer. If this is hardware, maybe apple should make it in china. This made in usa seems poor in quality