Ok, Why would Itunes movie previews crash my GPU?

[C. Alan]

Ok, this one has me puzzled...

When I try to preview a movie in Itunes, it completely crashes my GPU. Here is a short exert from my log:

11/1/14 6:42:17.000 PM kernel[0]: Trying restart GPU ...
11/1/14 6:42:17.371 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.DumpGPURestart) Throttling respawn: Will start in 1 seconds
11/1/14 6:42:18.000 PM kernel[0]: [5:0:0] GPU HangState 0x00000090, HangFlags 0x00000005: IndividualEngineHang 1, NonEngineBlockHang 0, FenceNotRetired 1, PerEngineReset 1, FullAsicReset 0

Basically, the screen freezes completely, and I have to do a hard reboot to get the computer to work again.

So normally my first through was this was a sign of a failing GPU, I am running a PC spec HD 7950, so this is not out of the realm of possibilities.

So to test this theory, I downloaded and ran Cinebench, fully expecting it to freeze up. However, it ran fine, and posted a score of 62.44 FPS. As I am typing this, my 2 year old is sitting next to me watch the Lego Movie in a separate window from my web browser. So this leads me to believe that I may have a software issue rather than a hardware issue.

So does anyone have any idea why trying to watch Movie Previews on the Itunes (V 12.0.1) would completely crash my GPU? Could it be something wrong with Quicktime?

Any help for the Best and Brightest here would be appreciated.
--Alan

 

[Intell]

What version of OS X are you running?

 

[C. Alan]

what version of os x are you running?

10.9.5

 

[C. Alan]

Ok, Ive had a chance to look a little more into this issue.

The freezes and GPU crashes only happen when I am playing encoded HD video in Itunes. I had an HD 5000 in my other hackintosh, and I pulled it out and swapped it for my 7950. The Mac Pro now plays those same previews and videos fine.

So this is leading me to believe my issue is related to this:
Mac Pros may notice display anomalies or issues playing back video or other HDCP-encoded content when you use an ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card in Mac Pro computers released before the Mac Pro (Mid 2010).

My Mac Pro is an original 4.1 that was reflashed to a 5.1. Has anyone else encountered this problem?