Mac Pro (Late 2013) GPU (Driver) Issues

[Riwam]

I was not just waiting for better times - Bootcamp with Windows did a great job in the meantime...
Almost never crashed. One could say, Microsoft did a better job in programming their OS, making it much more robust.

I agree with you regarding the work of Microsoft.
However Bootcamp gave and gives me a lot of trouble.
In theory it is the right and straight way to have Windows in a mac but my experience has been quite a different one. I believe that my (unfortunately needed) repeated attempts until my Windows finally boots are due to the way Bootcamp installed it in my nMP and not a problem of Windows 10 per se.
Since it was in my case a hard way to get it I do not dare to reinstall it

 

[axantas]

Bad thing to hear. I never ran into any trouble with Bootcamp yet. I even had to remove the recent Windows 1903 update after the first failed update attempt (including bluescreens and other "horrors") My complete setup dates from July 2014 and is running without any hassle since.

If you need Bootcamp, I would remove everything Windows, including the Windows Partition itself and restart from scratch.

 

[th0masp]

It is about my D300 and ALL Mojave iterations for now, including 10.14.6. It is absolutely rock solid. Just yesterday I was cleaning up my iTunes library, doing all kind of things which crashed the Mac in earlier OS versions, there was again not a single hang or problem.

Remember: It is NOT the heavy work (running at full throttle for hours), that crashes our Trashcans, but the daily things like browsing the net, watching a video etc. etc.

Yeah I have not experienced the kind of GPU issues reported in this thread but it sounds like many of the recent issues with browsers et al are down to hardware acceleration/driver issues (issues with introduction of Metal on the Dxxx series cards perhaps?).

Good to know that 10.14.6 works for you, sounds like Apple might have gotten the hang of it. Shame that we have to deal with this yearly release BS and that they are now repeating the cycle in Catalina.

And I always backup the installers, combo updaters and security patches, no worries!

 

[sasahevas]

I dusted off my old Mac Pro (R300) the other day to see if a clean install of Mojave would fix the freezing issue. It did fix it for 3 days of nothing more than Safari streaming a Youtube stream. I set the Mac Pro to never sleep and no screen saver. This morning I came in to find the old R300 freezing issue back just like before. I had put the mac pro away running 10.13 with multiple freezing episodes a day so this is an improvement hopefully.

 

[SamPotts]

Just to update the thread. The last few betas have been fine. I had a lock up on beta 8 I think it was, and decided to reset the PRAM and SMC. That seemed to help as I’ve not had a lockup since on betas 9, 10 and 11. The machine is used 9-5 daily (I have another machine I can use if it all goes tits up).

 

[uller6]

So since upgrading to 10.14.6 my D300 Mac Pro has developed an issue where yellow artifact bars flicker across the screen every ~5 minutes. It occurs both in light mode and dark mode and I can’t tie it to any specific program or use - it happens sitting idle on the desktop and also while gaming. I’m worried it may not be related to something in 10.14.6 and could instead be my GPUs finally failing. Anyone else see this?

 

[netkas]

Hey
some update
After I had to diassemble my mcpro (thanks apple for fw update) - http://netkas.org/?p=1488
I found an interesting moment, there were lots of dust under top cover (with fan), which can't be seen normally.
After I removed that dust and also some dust under bottom cover (which covers pcb with pcie switch, need to remove pcb one can see in pic in my post) I now have pci-e switch having lower temperatures (now about 67C idling) I think it was 10C+ degrees more.

I didn't have any freeze since then ( but I didn't use it much) where it was freezing before cleaning, under 10.14.6, even with increased fan speeds.

 

[CC88]

So since upgrading to 10.14.6 my D300 Mac Pro has developed an issue where yellow artifact bars flicker across the screen every ~5 minutes. It occurs both in light mode and dark mode and I can’t tie it to any specific program or use - it happens sitting idle on the desktop and also while gaming. I’m worried it may not be related to something in 10.14.6 and could instead be my GPUs finally failing. Anyone else see this?

Hi. Posted this time ago but with little luck. It seems to me very close to your case:

Video artifacts on right side of the monitor if 10.14.1 or 10.14.2 are installed

Dear all, I'm stuck on a problem I have with macOS Mojave. If I install 10.14 all is ok. Whenever I install 10.14.1 or 10.14.2 after restart I have video artifacts on the right side of the monitor scrolling wifi menu, or volume, data etc etc. They are similar to horizontal scan lines but...

forums.macrumors.com

and

Anyone with nMP, dual D700 and Mojave

Dear all, after a Carbon Copy Cloner I completely initialized my SSD internal drive and installed Mojave. I upgraded from Mavericks and thought that was the right time to a new installation after coming to HS with upgrade. I'm experiencing typical GPU glitch in Mojave on the right side of my...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[uller6]

Hey
some update
After I had to diassemble my mcpro (thanks apple for fw update) - http://netkas.org/?p=1488
I found an interesting moment, there were lots of dust under top cover (with fan), which can't be seen normally.
After I removed that dust and also some dust under bottom cover (which covers pcb with pcie switch, need to remove pcb one can see in pic in my post) I now have pci-e switch having lower temperatures (now about 67C idling) I think it was 10C+ degrees more.

I didn't have any freeze since then ( but I didn't use it much) where it was freezing before cleaning, under 10.14.6, even with increased fan speeds.

Thanks, I may have collected a critical mass of cat hair inside my nMP so will clean it out tonight.

 

[loby]

Hey
some update
After I had to diassemble my mcpro (thanks apple for fw update) - http://netkas.org/?p=1488
I found an interesting moment, there were lots of dust under top cover (with fan), which can't be seen normally.
After I removed that dust and also some dust under bottom cover (which covers pcb with pcie switch, need to remove pcb one can see in pic in my post) I now have pci-e switch having lower temperatures (now about 67C idling) I think it was 10C+ degrees more.

I didn't have any freeze since then ( but I didn't use it much) where it was freezing before cleaning, under 10.14.6, even with increased fan speeds.

Humm...interesting finding. How easy is it to get to take off the covers for cleaning. If I could reduce the heater and stop cooking marshmallows on a stick over it, I would be grateful.

 

[CC88]

Humm...interesting finding. How easy is it to get to take off the covers for cleaning. If I could reduce the heater and stop cooking marshmallows on a stick over it, I would be grateful.

Try to use Macsfancontrol. It change the fan speed automatically based on cpu temperature or many other parameters. Mine is always under 50°C also during FCPX heavy work.

 

[netkas]

10 torx screws, and some force applied, pretty easy I would say

this, until step 5 https://ru.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+Pro+Late+2013+Fan+Replacement/21222?lang=en and this https://ru.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+Pro+Late+2013+Lower+Case+Replacement/21207?lang=en

 

[CC88]

New operating system old problems. I have the same glitch issue on right side of the monitor with Catalina... Very very annoying.

 

[Cryptosmasher]

Hello all, just wanted to add my .2 cents, I've had a D300 Trashcan for a few months

Only used it with a clean off USB install Mojave and had zero issues (OWC 1 TB NvME and 64 gb of new ram) I stupidly made the mistake of doing a clean install on Case sensitive APFS so when Mojave came out did a clean install, at least 1-2 times a day there is a hard crash and reboot

A few of these before it reboots com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.DumpGPURestart): Service only ran for 1 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 9 seconds.


only once I actually witness it freeze up while I was working and reboot , otherwise while it was idle (admittedly with a screen saver)

did SMC and Pram, also forcing the fans to run at 100% doesn't make a difference.

I plan to reinstall Mojave this weekend and (perhaps) do an actually upgrade to Catalina at some point.

Long enough of a Mac user where I should have known better than to install the OS on day of release hahaha I guess I'm screwed with reminders vis a vi iOS 13

 

[iigsie]

Update on my situation:

After much fuss, Apple eventually replaced the circular board (what Apple calls the logic board and what ifixit calls the interconnect board) in December 2017. COmputer worked perfectly until last month when the issue arose - kernel and gpu panics multiple times a day.

Apple refused to repair for free and charged me £225 for a new gpu and £75 labour. They said it was caused by debris and is not covered under consumer law as I run a business. It would appear they googled my name to come to that conclusion.


Ultimately I sold both my Mac Pro's and built 2 X299 based hackintoshes with i9 cpu's. I've got the cash in my business to buy the new model but it's highly unlikely I'll buy another Apple product that I can't build from off the shelf parts ever again.

 

[Cryptosmasher]

Another quick update - after changing my screensaver to text + date my GPU crashes seemed to have ceased under Catalina (d300 trashcan)

 

[AidenShaw]

Another quick update - after changing my screensaver to text + date my GPU crashes seemed to have ceased under Catalina (d300 trashcan)

Does that make you happy or sad?

 

[Cryptosmasher]

Does that make you happy or sad?

Sad, issues came back - might have to finally downgrade back to Mojave that seemed to not have any issues on this machine

 

[Cryptosmasher]

So another quick update on my quad core dual D300 trashcan + Catalina

Background I bought this machine used only a few months back put in my own nvme and ram - so I started with a clean install of Mojave and have had zero GPU issues

Under a clean install of Catalina the same issues that those on this thread experienced began

Looking through the many years of threads I ran into this utility - gfxcardstatus:

https://gfx.io

it was obviously designed for MacBook machines with discrete/integrated graphics , one of the things I noted on it is that it explicitly listed a number of apps as "dependencies" ( but not every app using the GPU as listed in activity monitor)

in my case they were the following: Slack, Vmware fusion menu helper and chrome - I always have fusion VMs running when idle usually have slack and chrome open as well

various apps from time to time pop up on gfxcardstatus, but nothing thus far I left opening/idleing

I disable hardware acceleration on chrome and slack and disabled the VMware fusion menu which I never used, I had also previously disabled the 3d Acceleration in my fusion VMs as well (which had not helped the crashing situation)

bottom line: the machine has been rock solid under Catalina release going 3 days no issue - which is certainly a new record - my 2 cents on this multi year Apple debacle! hope this helps

 

[th0masp]

Sounds neat.

So - you are only using gfxcardstatus to identify apps using hardware acceleration? Where do you disable hardware acceleration on a per-app basis?

 

[CC88]

On my previous nMP with D300 cards with a clean install (so no VMware, chrome etc) the problem were still present. So I think that’s an hardware problem not connected to the app that use hardware acceleration.

 

[Cryptosmasher]

Sounds neat.

So - you are only using gfxcardstatus to identify apps using hardware acceleration? Where do you disable hardware acceleration on a per-app basis?

yes on a per app basis , as it happens all the apps on my list had that option
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On my previous nMP with D300 cards with a clean install (so no VMware, chrome etc) the problem were still present. So I think that’s an hardware problem not connected to the app that use hardware acceleration.

i am sure it’s not one specific thing at this point just relating that my d300 is still fine operating as it did in Mojave No GPU crashes

 

[Martyimac]

My D300 had the kernel panic issue with nothing more than Firefox or Safari running you-tube videos. This was before Mojave. Finally shelved it.

 

[Cryptosmasher]

I explicitly only ever had the com.apple.xpc.launchd (com.apple.DumpGPURestart) (and self reboot) when idle - under Catalina never more than 18 hours tops - and zero issues for a few months under Mojave - so far - this solution worked for me - I should mention I decided to leave the fans running on maximum also - obviously based on others there are clearly hardware design / flaws / defects.

 

[th0masp]

yes on a per app basis , as it happens all the apps on my list had that option
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I see, mental to hear that slack uses hardware acceleration though. Isn't that just a... chat window? Aaaanyway....