Mac Pro (Late 2013) GPU (Driver) Issues

[Cryptosmasher]

Hello all that are still here - my d300 Trashcan (128gb ram and upgraded nvme) has been rock solid on Mojave and all recent updates for months - I’m running 4 monitors and have zero issues. it seems like Catalina + d300 is a lost cause - has anybody taken the leap on big sur betas?

no Real problem sticking with Mojave for the foreseeable future just curious

thanks all

 

[richmlow]

Hello Cryptosmasher,


My d300 2013 Mac Pro has also been rock-solid on macOS Mojave (10.14.6). I don't envision putting macOS Catalina (and certainly, not macOS Big Sur) on my machine for quite awhile! It's too risky for a mission-critical machine.

I do have macOS Catalina on other "experimental" computers (Mac Mini 2018, Macbook Pro 13") and it seems to be working well....but, who knows?!

As for macOS Big Sur....I'm going to wait for awhile!


richmlow

Hello all that are still here - my d300 Trashcan (128gb ram and upgraded nvme) has been rock solid on Mojave and all recent updates for months - I’m running 4 monitors and have zero issues. it seems like Catalina + d300 is a lost cause - has anybody taken the leap on big sur betas?

no Real problem sticking with Mojave for the foreseeable future just curious

thanks all

[automerge]1595290496[/automerge]

 

[filmak]

Hello all that are still here - my d300 Trashcan (128gb ram and upgraded nvme) has been rock solid on Mojave and all recent updates for months - I’m running 4 monitors and have zero issues. it seems like Catalina + d300 is a lost cause - has anybody taken the leap on big sur betas?

no Real problem sticking with Mojave for the foreseeable future just curious

thanks all

Hello Cryptosmasher,


My d300 2013 Mac Pro has also been rock-solid on macOS Mojave (10.14.6). I don't envision putting macOS Catalina (and certainly, not macOS Big Sur) on my machine for quite awhile! It's too risky for a mission-critical machine.

I do have macOS Catalina on other "experimental" computers (Mac Mini 2018, Macbook Pro 13") and it seems to be working well....but, who knows?!

As for macOS Big Sur....I'm going to wait for awhile!


richmlow




[automerge]1595290496[/automerge]

This must be our first target, stability.
Especially if the new features of a new operating system are not crucial or mandatory for the kind of work we do.
Of course for as long as this is still possible because we (the users) are forced to upgrade at some point for other reasons (security updates, new devices, new hardware, updated software requiring new OS version, etc)

Anyway stability must be the first priority for any OS version nowadays, we are not at the first steps of operating systems anymore.

 

[richmlow]

Hello filmak,


Yes, I completely agree with you!

My 2013 Mac Pro (with macOS Mojave 10.14.6) is very stable and I've (fortunately) not had any problems with it.

On the other hand, my "experimental" computers (with macOS Catalina) currently have very frequent Bluetooth reliability issues, external SSD not being recognized/mounted on startup, periodic syncing problems with Google Drive and Dropbox, etc. Even worse is the fact that I'm running the most recent version of macOS Catalina on the "experimental" computers. I have a feeling that Apple will soon abandon any further bug fixes in macOS Catalina and focus its attention on developing the new macOS Big Sur.

I'm not too sure what to do with macOS Catalina. MacOS Big Sur....who knows what troubles that new OS will bring!?


richmlow

This must be our first target, stability.
Especially if the new features of a new operating system are not crucial or mandatory for the kind of work we do.
Of course for as long as this is still possible because we (the users) are forced to upgrade at some point for other reasons (security updates, new devices, new hardware, updated software requiring new OS version, etc)

Anyway stability must be the first priority for any OS version nowadays, we are not at the first steps of operating systems anymore.

 

[filmak]

Hello filmak,


Yes, I completely agree with you!

My 2013 Mac Pro (with macOS Mojave 10.14.6) is very stable and I've (fortunately) not had any problems with it.

On the other hand, my "experimental" computers (with macOS Catalina) currently have very frequent Bluetooth reliability issues, external SSD not being recognized/mounted on startup, periodic syncing problems with Google Drive and Dropbox, etc. Even worse is the fact that I'm running the most recent version of macOS Catalina on the "experimental" computers. I have a feeling that Apple will soon abandon any further bug fixes in macOS Catalina and focus its attention on developing the new macOS Big Sur.

I'm not too sure what to do with macOS Catalina. MacOS Big Sur....who knows what troubles that new OS will bring!?


richmlow

Hello richmlow,

I'm almost sure they have already abandoned Catalina, this version was just a transitioning stage to BigSur, as you know they got rid of the 32 bit support apps, created mail problems, external display problems, crashes etc.

From the results, I dare to say that they have not paid enough attention to Catalina from the beginning and of course forget about fully eliminating the disturbing many bugs. I have a hope that Big Sure will be better but at the same time, as it will introduce ARM and intel support at the same package, I'm a little bit cautious or better sceptical about the end result.

Of course any conclusion about its stability will be clear after its .4 update or better after a year.

 

[Strangely Brown]

Catalina has run flawlessly on my Mac Pros with D500 & D700 graphics. There seems to be a bug with the driver for D300 graphics. (The D500 & D700 use the same Tahiti driver. The D300 uses a separate Pitcairn driver.) On my D300 machine I enabled Do Not Disturb for "When the screen is locked" under Notifications and disabled Power Nap under Energy Saver in System Preferences and I didn't have any freezes or panics again, but I didn't keep the machine long enough to know if that truly fixed it. Hopefully Apple will take care of it, but it's hard to say. It appears there's a bug with the graphics driver for several other Macs too including the 2019 Mac Pro. It looks like some major issues started with the introduction of the Navi driver. They made a lot of changes to the other drivers at that time including consolidating some of the older ones.

Could you please tell me what led you to enabling "Do Not Disturb - When screen is locked" i.e. how did you make the connection between the freezes and DND?

I ask because I have been chasing this problem for a long time too and have tried just about everything suggested. Disabling the "Aqua" scope in display mirroring seemed to work up until Catalina but since then it makes no difference on or off.

I am curious because I already had power nap disabled but "Do Not Disturb - When screen is locked" was one that I had not tried and - touch wood - it seems to be holding. Uptime 9 days and that's almost unheard of.

I would really like to know why. Perhaps an assertion is set that prevents a particular bug being hit.

 

[Strangely Brown]

Still no hangs/crashes - touch wood - uptime 21 days and using machine as normally as I can. Multiple monitors, many applications open, including 2 VMs (Win10 and Ubuntu), two RDP apps (ARD and MS) and it appears to be stable.
Can it really have been that simple all along?
Anyone else still using a MacPro6,1 and not tried this yet?

 

[randomtask72]

I would also love to know if anyone else has tried:

"On my D300 machine, I enabled Do Not Disturb for "When the screen is locked" under Notifications and disabled Power Nap under Energy Saver in System Preferences"

... and not having problems? Still on Mojave 10.14.6 and scared to try it. Any braver souls out there?

 

[Strangely Brown]

I am using that on Catalina 10.15.6 + supplemental(s). So far all good and I would still love to know the connection to the "fix". I already had power nap disabled and it was still hanging/restarting annoyingly frequently but I have had none since also enabling "Do Not Disturb when screen is locked".
21 Days and counting...

 

[Strangely Brown]

Well, after 31 days uptime with no problems whatsoever on 10.15.6, I updated to 10.15.7 and 4 days later... boom. Another hang.

System.log says:
Sep 29 08:34:18 bramber com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.WindowServer[368]): Service exited due to SIGABRT

Crash Report says:
Application Specific Information:
StartTime:2020-09-25 08:03:54
GPU:AMD
MetalDevice for accelerator(0x3903): 0x7fc57411aec8 (MTLDevice: 0x7fc574728000)
MetalDevice for accelerator(0x4c43): 0x7fc57270e4a8 (MTLDevice: 0x7fc574716000)
IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/GFXB@3/IOPP/GFX2@0/ATY,MaguroS@3/AMDFramebufferSI
Assertion failed: (isReady - AMD: AMD transaction hang or work overload (AMD IOFB)

Basically, all the same old stuff.

But 31 days was great.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Bummer :-(
Will you go back? Imagine so.

 

[Strangely Brown]

That is a good question.
At this point, I don't know. The problem is that without knowing why enabling "Do Not Disturb for "When the screen is locked"" made a difference I have nothing to say that it actually did. Perhaps I was just really lucky in that 31 days.

I believe there were some changes to graphics drivers in 10.15.7 so whether that has had any affect on whatever difference that change may or may not have had I simply don't know.

For now, I guess I'll be running as it is and see if the crashes return to their previous frequency. Options after that are most likely to be:
swap this D300 machine for another that is sitting idle here
wait for Big Sur and see if that has the same problem
or maybe it's time for a new machine altogether

... and that would be a shame because I really like the trashcan.

 

[ManuelGomes]

Hell of a machine indeed, too bad all these issues.

 

[grunty]

My machine had been crashing constantly for a while there - to the point of becoming unusable, it seems to have stopped in the last day or two though and I can't think what's changed.

 

[richmlow]

Hello grunty,


What is your current computer configuration and what macOS version are you using?


richmlow

My machine had been crashing constantly for a while there - to the point of becoming unusable, it seems to have stopped in the last day or two though and I can't think what's changed.

 

[randomtask72]

Any brave souls out there updating to Big Sur? Keep us posted on your experience. I am still on Mojave ?.

Thanks

 

[Strangely Brown]

I will almost certainly update the trashcan as my daily work machine has now changed. The problem will be using it enough to induce an error.
It is now 29 days without crash, then install 10.15.7 supplemental, then another 6 days sober clean uptime.

 

[Levv]

I will stay on Mojave as well, till I read a lot of positive feedback. Fingers crossed!!

 

[Cryptosmasher]

Hello all, I wanted to catch up with everyone, I upgraded my D300 machine to the 12 core CPU and have been on Mojave since early this year - ONCE I had a full freeze but none of the errors we have all encountered so I consider it a fluke - currently using it with 4 monitors without issue.after the last Mojave upgrade I had to plug in my monitors 1 by 1 after a reboot for them to be detected. otherwise mostly no issues.

what has the general consensus been with Big Sur so far

 

[netkas]

is it just me, or it became stable with bigsur ?

 

[Robo_G]

I've Mac Pro 2013 D300 version. Using Mojave - super stable. On Catalina my MP crashing constantly few times per day (office work and home usage). On bootcamp Windows 10 super stable - windows using both D300 GFX card, so I think its not hardware problem - just graphics drivers.
I installed Big Sur na external ssd drive and tested it. Unfortunately Big Sur crashed on every 20-30 min just playing videos on Youtube. Very annoying. Looks like stuck on Mojave...

 

[eepyikes]

is it just me, or it became stable with bigsur ?

How is it running for you so far on Big Sur?

 

[netkas]

How is it running for you so far on Big Sur?

after longer test - same as catalina, maybe freezes less freq-ly

 

[Robo_G]

UPDATE: after install 11.2 beta on main SSD and turned off Power Nap option, Big Sur is usable now - few days without freezing. Will see...

 

[Robo_G]

UPDATE: Big Sur much better as Catalina, but still freezes 1-3 times per day