Mac Pro 2010 Graphics Corruption

[stevex]

Hi - I have a problem that started suddenly yesterday and I'm looking for some ideas for troubleshooting.

My mid 2010 Mac Pro started showing graphical corruption. I was in the middle of migrating to a new iMac (yeah, figures) and the Mac Pro started showing small boxes randomly on the screen. Just a few at first, but then more of the display started getting corrupted. Some bad pixels attached themselves to the mouse pointer. All the icons in the dock turned into red boxes.

Eventually it freezes - sometimes it reboots into the kernel panic message, sometimes it just hangs.

My theory is it's the video card, but it could be RAM, could be the system board .. curious if anyone has run into this sort of problem before and what the resolution was.

Running High Sierra, 10.13.1.

Thanks
-- Steve

 

[orph]

hi, what GPU is in the macpro?
sounds like a GPU problem, may just need a clean if it's full of dust or just need the cables checked.
also worth a try to swap the pci slot it's in, if you can stick it in the second slot (from the bottom) to see if that helps (better ventilation there as well as maybe dust or something in the pci connection).

also i do sometimes get random graphic corruptions that just happen some times, dont know why and never last long tends to go away after a reboot.

 

[stevex]

It's a Radeon HD 5770. Swapping the slot is a good idea, I will try that.

 

[w1z]

The graphic drivers for the 5770 under High Sierra aren't quite there yet.. Multiple reports of similar issues have been documented in this forum.

If you tried switching the GPU to another pcie and the problem is still there you should wait for 10.13.2 to be released to see if it remedies the corruption you are seeing. You can also try giving the card and slots a good clean, re-apply new thermal paste on the gpu and retest. Bulk thermal paste applications usually last for a couple years, 3 at the most.