Q: New Mac Pro - A graphics problem has been detected

I believe you will see this again. It is a fairly random occurrence. Try this

• Do something that will load the mac, like watching a video or playing a game
• every so often, background the movie/game and use the web, or email.
• The problem appears more frequently for me when I am multitasking.

Frankly, I believe I have bad hardware. I am going to try to get a replacement from Apple. I'm smelling lemons. :-(

I'll post out my results after my Genius bar appointment today.

I expect they have diagnostics they can run that may force the box into a fail state.

I may end up empty handed if this intermittent bug does not manifest. I don't know what they will do in the event they cannot see the trouble there.

Those freeze-ups happen at least once every 4 hours with moderate use.

You may end up doing the apple appointment like me.. Are you under warranty?

I think kbd or mouse interaction is usually involved too. It mostly happens when I am mousing around. I have never walked up to the computer and had the message showing. It always happens during interaction.

Hmm.. A though occurs here. Maybe it is happening when switching displays (I run 2 monitors). Maybe the menu-bar swap is hitting something in the OS causing a crash. There is some strange window activity around the two display support. Maybe related.....

I went to the Apple store to talk with the folks at the bar there. They looked over my system and looked at my notes, and decided to swap my computer with a new one. I have it on order and it will be delivered to me soon. The tech at the store said he had seen this issue before (rarely) on the new mac pros, and also on some macbook pros. This is an issue (he thinks) related to the dual cards in these computers. He was pretty sure this was a hardware problem, not software.

If you get this problem, my advice is to schedule an appointment with the store for a consult before your warranty is gone. For me, I had no choice as this machine is business purposed and cannot be failing at random times.

The problem I observed was not always directly related to an app being run. It would also happen with interaction between windows (just clicking from mail to a browser, for example). When this occurred, the popup dialog would show (shown in OP) and the corresponding freezes for a few seconds while it recovered.

One time I had a crash in an app was during a game where the same issue happened, and the game shut down with a crash dump. As noted above, the game itself reported the error as "Graphics hardware encountered an error and was reset: 0x0000000e". This was in the crash dump report. So here, the cards saw an error, and the OS reset them out from under a running game, which objected strenuously and asserted down like it was supposed to do.

So I disagree about it being a software problem. I suspect there truly is a graphics card problem in this case. The frequency of the trouble went from once every few days, to every day, and then to every few hours during a 2 week span, so the trajectory was heading in the wrong direction.

I kept the old one while the new one is built to order. Since I was getting a new machine anyway, I told them I wanted an upgraded SSD. I dont really want external storage for the main stuff I use, and 250G wasnt making it.

Overall a very good impression of the folks down there. Additionally, they appear to be interested/motivated to help out businesses. So mentioning your business during the process gives them more flexibility in how they can help you.

Five Stars to Apple in-store support.