WoW TBC on Mac Pro - Artefacts & Crashes

have you tried taking the X1900 out of the computer, removing the heatsink / fan assembly, cleaning everything off, putting on some good arctic silver thermal paste, and reinstalling the heatsink / fan assembly??

Perhaps there are issues with some X1900's not having it mounted/seated firmly, or having to much goo in between to be efficient?
 
I may have to find some better coolant like Arctic Silver. I currently have the Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 installed on it. It actaully cooled off my X1900 by 5 degrees compared to the stock one....so that's why i'm surprised I could have a heating issue.

Thanks for the tip.
 
Ok, I tested with the side cover off, with and without a fan. Here's what I did and what happened:

1) Cover off, fan off. Ran around Orgrimmar for a while but wasn't getting any glitches. Ran out into Durotar, lots of spinning around etc, started to get major graphical clitches. I switched on an external mains-powered desk fan, on full power, drenching the graphics card and RAM ('tis a big fan) in cool air, but the glitching continued.

I cycled through windowed mode and back to maximised using ctrl-M or whatever the shortcut is. Everything back to normal

2) Cover off, fan on full. Continued to run around outside, lots of intense spinning around and using the mouse to rapidly look about. I was unable to recreate any glitching. I switched off the external mains-powered fan and after a few seconds heard the fan on the ATI card spin right up. I kept spinning/running around and a few seconds later graphical glitching started again.

Now, I'd have thought that when I got the glitching the first time switching the fan on would have fixed it if this was an overheating problem? Or perhaps the UI needs to be refreshed before that's possible? Interestingly when I had the fan on after that glitching didn't start again until I switched it off - but I'm no scientist and perhaps my little experiment was flawed.

Anyway, I hope that helps somehow. Please fix this horrible problem :(
 
miniConvert,

Thanks for the great post. I'm hearing more and more proof that these cards are simply getting pushed too hard with the latest patch of WoW and the fan speed threshholds aren't high enough on these Mac Pro's.

I bought a semi-cheap PCI slot cooler in town to see if that helps fix my problem. If it really helps i plan on buying a nice one like this...

http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Cooler/TMG/A2414/A2414.asp

Somebody did a similar thing today and posted their positive results on the Blizzard forums...

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=64187208&sid=1&pageNo=9
 
Thanks.

Grr, reading that Apple are sending certain people new cards without having to return the whole machine or mail in the old card first. I might leave this a few more days and see if we hear anything, then call AppleCare again.

I found the comments about the Mac Pro's front fans interesting - that one that blows air over the installed cards really needs to speed up, a lot, rather than just tootling around doing not-a-lot! Also the X1900XT's fan, that could run at its higher speed one hell of a lot more than it does. But if it's going to take Apple and/or ATI to fix this problem then I hate to think how long we could be waiting :(
 
WoW and Everquest II used to run perfectly (for about 4 months) then I started having the same problems.

After a couple of minutes the artifacts start appearing which shows me it's the card getting too hot. I had the accelero installed then swapped back the original and the same thing happens after a couple of minutes also.

I played Eve Online in windows and it happens in Eve too...any 3d game now will overheat the card (windows or OSX).

I'm not sure what to do. I have applecare now but I don't want to be without my PC. Do they send a replacement then you send yours back in the same box like Dell does? Or should I take it into the store?
 
At the moment they, officially, take the machine in for repair - but we don't yet know whether this is simply an ATI driver issue, an Apple fan speed issue or a completely faulty card. So for now the best anyone can do is keep probing for answers and reporting back their findings here.
 
Rokem said:
Im not 100% sure but TBC doesn't push your computer any harder. The x1900 is a pretty powerful card.

I had issues like this but on my MBP and tracked it down to the x1600 overheating and corrupting data to eventually crash the computer. I now use fancontrol apps to prevent this and haven't had issues even with TBC. I saw in another forum about controling fans in a MP here so check that out.
Click to expand...

TBC does push harder. It's very noticeably slower on my PowerBook G4. But my Mac Pro, it runs perfectly smooth. Spec in my sig.
 
shellbryson,

Glad to hear yours is running so well. I have the exact same setup as you...monitor and all. I unfortunately am having the same issue. I installed a PCI Slot cooler last night...it blows hot air out the back. I was able to play 30min without problems, which is better than the usual 5-10min. It still didn't fix the problem. I think i need to get a PCI Slot cooler that blows cold air into the case. Somebody postd that it worked well for them.

What's so frustrating is that all these people that have paid so much money on these higher end Mac's now have over heating issues and there is no official response from Apple yet. I'm worried that it's perminately hurting my computer. I did put the Accelero X2 cooler on my card so I'm sure that voids a return :(.

I don't think we should have to sacrafice our experience by putting loud fans in our computers to keep the card cool enough to play a game....especially when everything ran perfectly fine for months.
 
shellbryson said:
TBC does push harder. It's very noticeably slower on my PowerBook G4. But my Mac Pro, it runs perfectly smooth. Spec in my sig.
Click to expand...
Curious... how high do you have your settings, and at what resolution do you play? I also assume you play full-screen?

I have my sliders ramped right up and play at the full 30" ACD resolution.
 
I play at 2560x1600 with all the sliders set at maximum quality and all features are turned on except VSync. That's how i usually play. I was getting a typical frame rate of about 40-60fps indoors (Stormwind) average...often going as high as 80-100fps when outdoors.
 
My GPU temps with the accelero were 70-75, with the stock cooler 80-85. These are the temps while playing WoW when artifacts start.

If I just let it keep going through the artifacts in windows, windows resets the graphics driver and keeps going...it just locks up for like 1-2 seconds (while it resets it) then continues for like 20 seconds then does it again.

If I do the same in OSX, it either completely locks up or reboots.
 
For some reason none of the utilities i've tried for OSX pick up a GPU temperature sensor :(. So I don't know what the temp is. I have the Mac Pro 3ghz and X1900.
 
Well, smcfancontrol is on (works fine for me without a reboot, unlike other reports). I'll be able to let you know soon if it fixes the problem for me! Trying all the fans up a bit, but IO fan right up at 1857.

Edit: Running like clockwork so far!
 
I don't see how it can be a driver thing if it's happening exactly the same in both windows and OSX on diff games. Hopefully I'm wrong though.
 
Well I'm not sure what would control the fan speeds... firmware? If so that'd be the same in OS X or Windows. Shame about the extra noise, but it was a lot of fun being able to play without any issues!
 
Am I the only one that still has the problem outside of WoW also? Has anyone tested other 3d games?

Edit

Ran the smcfancontrol program and if I keep all the fans at 1300-1500 I don't have problems. But I shouldn't have to be doing this =/

And I can't play any windows games because this program only works in OSX.
 
Do we think that the cards have been permanently damaged by the overheating prior to finding better cooling solutions such as smcFanControl?

Has anyone received a replacement card yet, and can anybody confirm if they have gotten replacement cards from AppleCare without having to return the entire machine?
 
miniConvert said:
Has anyone received a replacement card yet, and can anybody confirm if they have gotten replacement cards from AppleCare without having to return the entire machine?
Click to expand...

I contacted Apple yesterday about replacing the card in my 5 month old Mac Pro. They refused to budge from the 'bring the whole machine in to an Apple Service Provider for testing' line. When I pushed the issue of carting this monster of a beast that cost me £2500 on a 40 minute car journey to leave with people who I just know won't treat it the same as their own kit, I managed to get the number of an authorised local Applecare representative.

I called them up and they initially spun me the same lines, but eventually they did say that if I provided the card info, they would order one in for self-replacement.

Result!
 
miniConvert said:
Curious... how high do you have your settings, and at what resolution do you play? I also assume you play full-screen?

I have my sliders ramped right up and play at the full 30" ACD resolution.
Click to expand...

I play it full size (2500x1600), but windowed (so the game is slightly scaled down) so that I can keep an eye on Adium and access Thottbot and things on my desktop easily. All game effects are maxed out and it runs perfectly smooth. The fan rarely speeds up on the GPU... occasionally outside Irongforge when there are bored Mages spamming Arcane blasts the fans will kick up a gear, but other than that... no issues.
 
wfehres said:
Yea....WoW on that 30" with all the settings max'd out is pretty amazing!! You get spoiled. I was irritated last night because I finally had to play on my MacBook Pro because I didn't want to leave in the middle of a raid. So there i was sitting next to this monster machine with a 30" monitor and was forced to play on the notebook...LOL. You get spoiled.
Click to expand...

Considering I play on a 1,67 ghz G4 Powerbook you get absolutely no pity from me! :D

This thread is very interesting, as I may buy a Mac Pro in the near future, for my graphic design work and of course I'll also play WoW with it. I hope a sollution is found.
 
wfehres said:
I play at 2560x1600 with all the sliders set at maximum quality and all features are turned on except VSync. That's how i usually play. I was getting a typical frame rate of about 40-60fps indoors (Stormwind) average...often going as high as 80-100fps when outdoors.
Click to expand...

Much the same on mine. I dont ever close programs down that are running in the background, so I tend to have PhotoShop, Flash and a bunch of other applications running... and whatever my other half has left open on their account too (I have fast account switching enabled).
 
shellbryson said:
I play it full size (2500x1600), but windowed (so the game is slightly scaled down) so that I can keep an eye on Adium and access Thottbot and things on my desktop easily. All game effects are maxed out and it runs perfectly smooth. The fan rarely speeds up on the GPU... occasionally outside Irongforge when there are bored Mages spamming Arcane blasts the fans will kick up a gear, but other than that... no issues.
Click to expand...
Try playing for a while with the window maxed, just for a giggle ;) I've never had the problem with the window not maximised.
 
miniConvert said:
Try playing for a while with the window maxed, just for a giggle ;) I've never had the problem with the window not maximised.
Click to expand...


Oh I did, until about 2 weeks ago and started using Thottbot a lot :) Very hand being able to click out of the window, quickly check something on Thott and click back into WoW. Also, I get to see when someone is bugging me over Adium as the little icon bounces. Switched "always on top" on for the Adium chat Windows and I can MSN chat with folks I'm playing with (better than WoW's chat). I only play with the WoW window marginally smaller than full screen - just enough for the Apple bar at the top and dock on the left to be visible.

I noticed some slowdown last night in BG, but it was particularly intense!
 
Still going fantastically for me, btw, with the fans turned up :) Must have played for a good 6-7 hour stint at the weekend without so much as a pixel out of place.
 
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