Mac Pro (Late 2013) GPU (Driver) Issues

[iigsie]

Apple eventually replaced the interconnect board (was a real drama to get them to do it) in my 4 core mid December last year. It's been on constantly since then and hasn't crashed since. The real test will be if it's still working perfectly in another year. I was previously getting gpu panics several times a day and could replicate the issue by leaving flurry running - it would always crash within 48 hours.

Having said that, the OS hasn't been rock solid in some time, and I've seen similar gpu/windowserver errors on my laptops. I've also been told by a tech that works for a reseller that they believe the issue can be caused by dust buildup around the exposed metal connector components, which can sometimes cause damage to the gpu's and interconnect board.

If anyone in the UK is really really stuck, I'm told GBM Digital in Manchester and MCC in Warrington have fixed certain instances of this issue, it's going to cost you a minimum of £379 plus an hours labour unless you have Applecare or a warranty/service contract with them though unless its covered under the programme. GPU's are on top of that price - the D300 is currently around £125 with the D500 and D700 being significantly more expensive.

 

[eepyikes]

Apple eventually replaced the interconnect board (was a real drama to get them to do it) in my 4 core mid December last year. It's been on constantly since then and hasn't crashed since. The real test will be if it's still working perfectly in another year. I was previously getting gpu panics several times a day and could replicate the issue by leaving flurry running - it would always crash within 48 hours.

Having said that, the OS hasn't been rock solid in some time, and I've seen similar gpu/windowserver errors on my laptops. I've also been told by a tech that works for a reseller that they believe the issue can be caused by dust buildup around the exposed metal connector components, which can sometimes cause damage to the gpu's and interconnect board.

If anyone in the UK is really really stuck, I'm told GBM Digital in Manchester and MCC in Warrington have fixed certain instances of this issue, it's going to cost you a minimum of £379 plus an hours labour unless you have Applecare or a warranty/service contract with them though unless its covered under the programme. GPU's are on top of that price - the D300 is currently around £125 with the D500 and D700 being significantly more expensive.

Do you have the part number of the interconnet board? Or the official name of it? (It should be listed on your bill of repair)

 

[mikeboss]

Do you have the part number of the interconnet board? Or the official name of it? (It should be listed on your bill of repair)

official name is "Logic Board" part# 661-7527

 

[iMactouch]

I have bought a used Quadcore nMP with D300 lately which is build in beginning of 2014 and I didn't had any freezes or crashes until now (five weeks of usage).
I upgraded it to 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD and I am using it with High Sierra.

Do all D300 nMP have these problems? I read of this problems after buying the MP and now I am anxious that my MP also has this problem and I am not having AppleCare.

 

[iigsie]

Do you have the part number of the interconnet board? Or the official name of it? (It should be listed on your bill of repair)

Sure. Apple call it the Logic Board, whereas ifixit calls it the interconnect board. Whatever you want to call it it's the round board at the bottom. They also ordered what they call the CPU riser (Ifixit call that the logic board), but it wasn't replaced according to the service confirmation email.

661-7533 A, Graphics Board, 2GB VRAM, D300, AMD, FIREPRO
661-7527, Logic Board
923-0500 Cable, Flex, Graphics Board
923-0500 Cable, Flex, Graphics Board

Graphics board B was also on the original work authorization, but neither are on the service confirmation. THey had already replaced graphics B a few weeks earlier anyway.

 

[swithdrawn]

Running happily with the eGPU (Radeon WX7100 Pro 8GB) on 10.13.5 beta 5. It seems stable and performance is comparable to the D300's (I think it's a little shy of both D300s together as far as OpenCL and Metal). Premiere also works fine. I do notice HiDPI lag during video playback, something I encountered on the Hackintosh, so I will probably have to work in the native resolution (lots of squinting). It seems Apple optimize HiDPI scaling specifically for their GPUs...

I got an error from the all-in-one script and had to use goalque's installation tool instead (maybe an issue with 10.13.5 beta). I was not able to get the GTX 1080 Ti to work, but didn't spend much time on it -- I'll try again this evening.

*Update*

GTX 1080 Ti is working well -- I had to revert to 10.13.4 from the beta and was then able to run the script linked previously. Amusingly, by happenstance I was using the HDMI out on the GPU and noticed zero UI lag. I tried the three Displayports and lag was present in all of them - seems HDMI works better?

 

[bax2003]

I had 3 kernel panics on my 6c Dual D500s nMP during last month.
All of the are referring to com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily..... I am really getting tired of this. I have never owned so problematic product in my life.

 

[Pardo83]

Sorry to hear that. This mac pro is really a garbage can

 

[Captian_CrabStick]

Sure. Apple call it the Logic Board, whereas ifixit calls it the interconnect board. Whatever you want to call it it's the round board at the bottom. They also ordered what they call the CPU riser (Ifixit call that the logic board), but it wasn't replaced according to the service confirmation email.

661-7533 A, Graphics Board, 2GB VRAM, D300, AMD, FIREPRO
661-7527, Logic Board
923-0500 Cable, Flex, Graphics Board
923-0500 Cable, Flex, Graphics Board

Graphics board B was also on the original work authorization, but neither are on the service confirmation. THey had already replaced graphics B a few weeks earlier anyway.

Can you tell me how much does the Logic Board and the cable cost?
I got both of my cards and Board replaced before my Apple Care expired. Rightnow, I am still experiencing crashes and dead GUI. After seeing your solution，I wanna give it a try if the cost is not too ridiculous.

 

[eepyikes]

Can anyone confirm that their computer has been fixed completely buy the hardware replacement? There was talk earlier in the thread that replacing Graphics Board A and B, and the "interconnect" fixed it. Is this still true for those of you that had that fixed? Mine has now had both A and B replaced TWICE, the interconnect (or at least what I think you guys are calling that), and like 1 or 2 other things. Woke up to another freeze/crash this morning. The higher level techs at Apple claim that it's a software issue and that a fix is in the works. Frankly, I think it's a manufacturing defect among at least a large quantity of the graphics boards, and maybe even the main board (or motherboard or logic board, whatever Apple calls it). It could also be in the back panel, which has had other known issues.

 

[Pardo83]

The higher level techs at Apple claim that it's a software issue and that a fix is in the works. Frankly, I think it's a manufacturing defect among at least a large quantity of the graphics boards, and maybe even the main board (or motherboard or logic board, whatever Apple calls it). It could also be in the back panel, which has had other known issues.

I actually believe it's a software issue, since I ran Mavericks for a year without any issue. Freezes started to happen with Yosemite/ElCapitan/Sierra/HighSierra. Also, going back again to Mavericks fixed the issue once again.

Hearing that high level techs are admitting that it's something known it's somehow reassuring. I hope they're really working on a fix rather than just waiting till the next Mac Pro is out

 

[krakman]

Can anyone confirm that their computer has been fixed completely buy the hardware replacement? There was talk earlier in the thread that replacing Graphics Board A and B, and the "interconnect" fixed it. Is this still true for those of you that had that fixed? Mine has now had both A and B replaced TWICE, the interconnect (or at least what I think you guys are calling that), and like 1 or 2 other things. Woke up to another freeze/crash this morning. The higher level techs at Apple claim that it's a software issue and that a fix is in the works. Frankly, I think it's a manufacturing defect among at least a large quantity of the graphics boards, and maybe even the main board (or motherboard or logic board, whatever Apple calls it). It could also be in the back panel, which has had other known issues.

I had both graphics cards, power supply and interconnects board replaced, I still get freezes usually when editing in FCPX and watching a video stream in safari at the same time.

 

[pierre1610]

after returning the 'repaired' machine 3 times they had replaced all hardware including logic board, both gpu's, flex cable, riser board. They finally replaced the machine and gave me one with D500's. All i can say is keep plugging away and evertuallyyou may get somewhere. Took me about 7 months.

Machine seems ok at the moment.....

 

[noodle654]

Anyone have their nMP in for repair right now? If so what’s with the delay? I sent mine in 2 weeks ago (dropped off at ASC). Apple sent it back to ASC and the ASC sent it back because it was still broken (they apparently only replaced graphics card B). It has now been back at Apple for over a week, still being worked on. My unit has D300 cards.

 

[krakman]

Can we all agree to send "Phil Schiller - My ass " a pair of nappies in the post?

What is the best address?

Phil Schiller
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino
California
United States.

 

[Martyimac]

Apple just refused to fix my nMP because it doesn't fail with a clean install of HS. It does fail when using Firefox or the screen saver but don't know if FF has some residual software file loaded that is causing this.
i pick it up tomorrow probably and will have to do a time machine restore just to get my files back.
Having just found this thread, could somebody give me a quick synopsis of what may be the actual cause of this? 59 pages is a LOT of reading to go through.

Thanks

 

[AidenShaw]

Can we all agree to send "Phil Schiller - My ass " a pair of nappies in the post?

What is the best address?

Phil Schiller
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino
California
United States.

They moved....

​

https://www.apple.com/contact/

Infinite Loop is where the second class employees (like macOS) work.

 

[MarkJames68]

Apple just refused to fix my nMP because it doesn't fail with a clean install of HS. It does fail when using Firefox or the screen saver but don't know if FF has some residual software file loaded that is causing this.
i pick it up tomorrow probably and will have to do a time machine restore just to get my files back.
Having just found this thread, could somebody give me a quick synopsis of what may be the actual cause of this? 59 pages is a LOT of reading to go through.

Thanks

Isn't the screen saver part of the clean install of HS?

 

[Martyimac]

Isn't the screen saver part of the clean install of HS?

Yes, but not sure what you are really commenting on.

 

[mikeboss]

Yes, but not sure what you are really commenting on.

macOS High Sierra clean install, the flurry screensaver is part of the operating system. if the machine is faulty, flurry will crash sooner or later. so no more excuses for Apple (stating the machine doesn't crash with a clean install of the OS).

 

[Martyimac]

macOS High Sierra clean install, the flurry screensaver is part of the operating system. if the machine is faulty, flurry will crash sooner or later. so no more excuses for Apple (stating the machine doesn't crash with a clean install of the OS).

Okay, i should expand my comment. My screensaver uses the photos library for it's source data, then each picture scrolls across the screen and they look like pictures in a frame. There are thoughts that FF has left some artifact in the graphics care/driver that contributes to the failure. FF is the second thing I open every day after my email client.
I should add, the repair shop in town, an  authorized shop, ran the screen saver for 4 days over a weekend with no failure.

 

[MarkJames68]

Okay, i should expand my comment. My screensaver uses the photos library for it's source data, then each picture scrolls across the screen and they look like pictures in a frame. There are thoughts that FF has left some artifact in the graphics care/driver that contributes to the failure. FF is the second thing I open every day after my email client.
I should add, the repair shop in town, an  authorized shop, ran the screen saver for 4 days over a weekend with no failure.

Thanks, mikeboss's response was what I was thinking about. If you do a clean install of HS and it locks up then it has to be an Apple problem - they can't point to anything else. You may want to try Flurry with maxed settings and see if that causes an issue.

 

[iigsie]

Can anyone confirm that their computer has been fixed completely buy the hardware replacement? There was talk earlier in the thread that replacing Graphics Board A and B, and the "interconnect" fixed it. Is this still true for those of you that had that fixed? Mine has now had both A and B replaced TWICE, the interconnect (or at least what I think you guys are calling that), and like 1 or 2 other things. Woke up to another freeze/crash this morning. The higher level techs at Apple claim that it's a software issue and that Frankly, I think it's a manufacturing defect among at least a large quantity of the graphics boards, and maybe even the main board (or motherboard or logic board, whatever Apple calls it). It could also be in the back panel, which has had other known issues.

It appears to have fixed mine. I restored the system drive to as it was when I took it in and was crashing as Apple had done a clean install. Running 10.12.6. Incidentally, I have another 4 core Mac Pro that I obtained second hand, and that doesn’t have the issue so far. That one was manufactured in feb 2014


It’s highly likely there’s several issues giving similar symptoms.
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Can you tell me how much does the Logic Board and the cable cost?
I got both of my cards and Board replaced before my Apple Care expired. Rightnow, I am still experiencing crashes and dead GUI. After seeing your solution，I wanna give it a try if the cost is not too ridiculous.

The logic board/ interconnect board is £379 and the cables are £12 each. Not cheap. Other folks have had it done and it didn’t help.

 

[iMactouch]

I have another 4 core Mac Pro that I obtained second hand, and that doesn’t have the issue so far. That one was manufactured in feb 2014

That is interesting. My second hand Mac Pro is from March 2014 (or September 2014 tells me http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com) and it also didn't had these problems until now (knock on wood).

 

[krakman]

That is interesting. My second hand Mac Pro is from March 2014 (or September 2014 tells me http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com) and it also didn't had these problems until now (knock on wood).

That is interesting. My second hand Mac Pro is from March 2014 (or September 2014 tells me http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com) and it also didn't had these problems until now (knock on wood).

According to Mac serial numbers my one is:

Build Year: - This unit was built in the first half of 2014.
Build Week - Week 17 (April) or week 44 (October)
Production Nr.: - This unit was number 320 to be built that week.