Q: Mac Pro (late 2013) Graphic Issues

What? You got a box?

For my replacement I got the whole box as if it were brand new.

Hi everyone,

unfortunately (to fortunately when I read all the posts : ) I don't have a Mac Pro, but I wanted to shaw my experience:

I have a late 2009 iMac 27 2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7, with 12 Go Ram and a SSD in addition of the original HD (± 2500€ at the time).

It worked very well during several years, just a few "auto reboots" (I don't know the correct term: I'm French…) but nothing else until a few days.

Suddenly, I noticed a lot of yellow artefacts in a Mail window, and for a few minutes other similar artefacts.

I decided to reboot, and as soon as the Apple logo appeared, the system froze with horizontal lines covering the display…

After reading A LOT of different forums, I had no doubt it was a Graphic Card failure (ATI Radeon HD 4850).
It was confirmed when I moved the related extensions from the Extension folder (I could previously reboot with the shift key down), and it now perfectly working (no freeze or artefacts), but with no Graphic acceleration it's a pain in the a…!).

The Graphic Cards problems with A LOT of Apple machines (different generations of MacBooks and iMacs) are legion and you find a lot of review from customers on the web.
This is probably due to the Apple's obsession of thickness and silence, and I must say I'm glad about the silence of my iMac (I previously had several very noisy G4!), but it seems they go a bit too far…

The exact problem of a lot of G.C are a welding problem that heat too much:

a "funny" way to solve this issue is to "bake" the GC in an oven… and it seems to work nearly all the time, at last for several month!

Anyway, as my iMac is not the easiest machine to disassemble (neither the worst, unfortunately…), I wanted Apple to repair it.

But my iMac is now considered "vintage", and there is no way for them to take it in charge even if they are aware of those problems:

there is a free Graphics Card Replacement for 2011 and 2012 iMacs… but not for 2009 despite the numerous issues!

What I find VERY upsetting is they don't provide any spare pieces even to 3rd part repairer:

if I don't want to trow away my VERY OLD machine (which is plenty powerful enough for me, even if I often work on big Photoshop files (+ than 500 Mo…), all I can do is to loose my time trying to "bake" it an cross my fingers!

I find it totally outrageous for a company who claims to be "green", and I can imagine how you must feel when you've payed 2 or 3 time the price of my machine and have the same kind of issues!

I'm gonna start a petition on several dedicated websites (like Ava az and/or change) to try to make them change there attitude, and you'll be welcome to sign it : )

iMacGyverParis--

The recalls for problems in MacBooks and now in Mac Pro are for LATENT DEFECTS -- problems that were there from day 1.

Your problem sounds like a routine failure of the very fast logic in the graphic subsystem. It is regrettable, but it is not a defect in materials or workmanship that any manufacturer would consider covering under warranty, especially since you did not ask for any relief from this problem until after the product is no longer supported at all -- i.e., "Vintage".

The Graphic Cards problems with A LOT of Apple machines (different generations of MacBooks and iMacs) are legion

...

This is probably due to the Apple's obsession of thickness and silence

On the country, this is because these parts are clocked at very high speeds, have huge amount of transistors in them, and when worked very hard, get quite HOT. This leads to failures.

This is regrettable, but is NOT caused by a conspiracy.

What I find VERY upsetting is they don't provide any spare pieces even to 3rd part repairer

By the time a machine goes Vintage, there are more and more systems around that have failed for reasons unrelated to yours, (e.g. cracked screen). There are "junkyard" technicians who dis-assemble the major components and sell them as used parts, often with a modest warranty.

There are also third-party repairers who HAVE found sources of new Apple parts, and keep them on hand. They are often not Apple Authorized Service providers, but they can repair your machine just fine.

As told in my post, it's a dry welding problem:

the iMac (same as laptops) is not cooled enough, causing this welding problem.

You can try to prevent the problem with a software like Mac Fan Control but I wasn't aware of the risk before it was too late:

I didn't "ask for any relief from this problem until after the product is no longer supported at all" simply because the issue occurred just now!

I don't say it's a conspiracy, all I say is I'd like to be able to buy a spare GC if I need one to repair an iMac not THAT vintage…

And I would find simply normal to be able to buy a new GC (even from a third-party repairer), and not an overpriced old one often already "baked" (that's often the case) with only 1 or 2 month warranty.

And anyway, it's quite difficult to find in Paris:

I've already contacted several 3rd-party repairers and they don't have any in stock and no way to command one.

I still have several G4 (and even a Powermac 9600!) working flawlessly and no problem to fix it myself if I need to thanks to the easy access with a door : )

When you decide to close all your products like oysters, it would be nice to work on the reliability of the components and/or provide the spare parts for more than 5 years which I find very short for the tariff of their products!

And believe me, I'm not the only one to upset by this politic…

I Had the very same computer with the same amount of ram, and guess what, this past November, I had the same issue You had and the graphics card, can I give you an advice, that iMac is ready for scrap, I tried for 2 months trying to get a new graphics card they are all sold in the USA and they are second hand parts and very expensive. If you want to take the risk of putting an old part that might not work its best to get a new computer, yes, I said it, a new computer, I just bought in Jan of this year a mac pro late 2013, and the first one was amazing it had a SSD that was over the gig of speed but that machine acted very finicky, so I return it because it had some graphics issues and plus it was not working stable with the temps going very very high. I think you should get a new system. thats all I am saying..... if you could invest in the mac pro do, but don't waste your time with the iMac its not going to be worth it, like I said before I spend 2 months trying to fix it and in the end I had to buy me a mac pro late 2013..

I just got 2 unit this weekend the first one was acting all weird this one is more stable plus they gave me a box yes it was brand new, but I am thinking it was a older stock model seems to me that mac pro has been in that apple store stock room for a long time....... I have been doing extensive rendering to it and doing lots of motions graphic and screen flow captures to see if the graphics card will flicker on me but seems to be working fine lets see how this goes......

Switch900 wrote:

 

I tried for 2 months trying to get a new graphics card they are all sold in the USA and they are second hand parts and very expensive.

Yes I've seen that (it's what I say in my last post), and I don't want to pay several hundred euros for a second hand G.C probably already baked with the risk it will break down in a few month.

Unfortunately I don't have the money to "invest" in a Mac Pro, but even if I had the money I surely not do it anyway:

for all I can read in this topic, I don't think 'investment" is the accurate word for this machine!

As I've already told, for many years I always bought more or less the highest product available:

my 1997 Powermac 9600 233 Mgz has been later upgraded with a G3 450 CPU, I added a Zip drive (replaced later by an additional "big" Hard Drive of 12 Go!), 2 other HD, a better G.C card, a USB card, a lot of additional RAM (there are 12 slots and it can be upgraded to 1,5Go!!!), replaced the original CD player by a superdrive etc etc…

Even if it's truly a "vintage" machine, It still work flawlessly with a flat screen and a USB keyboard connected:

my wife who is an illustrator has used it on Photoshop and Painter with a Wacom graphics tablet until 2012 to finally change for… a PowerMac G4 450 bi-pro, then a PowerMac G4 MDD that I finally gave to my old mother with a beautiful 23' cinema display!

THAT'S what you can call an investment (and the 9600 is still working : )

At this time I was ready to pay for an expensive Mac at the time because I knew I would be able to use it for years, upgrading it with new technologies to make it last longer.

Now, you tell me 1 of the 2 units you just bought is acting weird out of the box:

I don't find it very reassuring for an "investment" that will be declare "vintage" by Apple in merely 3 years from now…

The iMacs are beautiful machines, plenty powerful enough for our needs (even 600 or 700 Go Photoshop or Painter files) and as long as Apple doesn't sale an affordable and sustainable product for the pros, I'm gonna stick to it… or maybe look at the "Dark Side"!

sa I love my late 2009 iMac quad core i7 with 12 gigs of ram and I even made a raid zero with two ssd of 1 terabyte and it was pretty **** fast but right away the graphics card died out on me and all of sudden, I spend 2 months trying to fix it the only thing I could tell you is to get a refurbish Mac that's about it, but for sure all these all in one system tend to run very hot and the components welding melts down they actually fry itself. That's the reason I went with the Mac Pro but we know now it's a hit and miss apple cares about iPads and iPhones

I'm having this same problem in Pro Tools 11.3.2, with a Quad Core Mac Pro with the D300 GFX cards.  I understand that Apple is repairing the Mac Pros with D500 and D700 cards but they are telling me that there is a problem with Pro Tools and that I should pay for a support request with Avid to solve the problem.

Has anyone else had any of these same crashing problems with D300 cards on a 2013 Quad Core?

Frequent crashing

Mouse Freezes

Music keeps playing if it crashes during playback

Program completely freezes - can't get to the Finder.  Can't Force Quit.

Beach ball of death on occasion

I've been able to get it working again by turning off the monitor and then turning it back on.  The screen comes up with the PT environment.  The screen goes black for about 5 seconds.  It comes back to life every once in awhile.  I then have to quit the program and restart the computer.  If I don't, the mouse lags - really lags, and then when I go to the Apple icon to restart, it takes a few times before I can actually restart because of the mouse lag.

Sometimes, it just comes back to life if I wait a bit and sometimes not.  I'm working with Pro Tools HD 11.3.2 but far from the track limits of bench tests that I've seen for Pro Tools HD with a newer Mac Pro.

from Apple:

"We have tested your hardware to confirm that it’s not the cause of the issues that you’re experiencing and our engineers have identified that this is a software issue related to Pro Tools. Avid is the expert on their product so you will need to contact them for additional support for this particular issue."

But they won't tell me what the issue is short of a panic of some sort.  I have a crashlog after retrieving it once in the many times it crashed.  The weird thing is turning off the monitor does something to change the condition.  And Avid charges for Support cases, and I've had limited success on the Avid forums.  And the computer was tested at the Genius Bar but the tech recommended that instead of taking it backstage to do more thorough testing, that I should create a new user and try again.  I did.  Same thing.

Very frustrating

2013 Mac Pro Quad Core (refurb)

256 Flash Drive

32 GB of RAM

OSX 10.10.5

Thunderbolt G-RAID Studio HD

4K Hisense H7 monitor

Hi Metapunk,

I'm on Logic X and exactly the same thing happens to me. It used to sometimes come back to life but lately I have to restart the machine every time. I haven't tried switching my monitor off and on again but will try at my next freeze. Sounds very much like everyone else problem. I call BS on it being protools but who knows.

2013 Mac Pro 6-core

1T flash drive

12 GB Ram

OSX 10.11.3

LG ultrawide (HDMI connection)

No it goes for all graphics cards.

thats what they are fixing, but it depends on the date of manufacturing. I had some all crazy sort of flicking and some instability of the machine...

You have D500 cards in the 6-Core though, right?  Apple can't tell me when the manufacture date was but they said this:

"I’m not showing that this Mac is part of the current repair program. There are a very limited number of serial numbers affected and your Mac doesn’t appear to be part of that group. "

Metapunk,

No, I actually downgraded my D500's to D300s because I figured I didn't need the GPU power doing audio work. Plus over here in Australia it saved me heaps of money!

I got mine in 2014 so I'm not eligible for the program either way. After reading these forums, maybe they need to expand their date range