How to diagnose physical GPU failure for sure? (MacBook Pro mid-2012, non Retina)

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5 points

How to diagnose physical GPU failure for sure? (MacBook Pro mid-2012, non Retina)

Hi there,

MacBookPro9,1 running Mojave, connected to a external display most of the time.

A few weeks ago I noticed that anytime I would open Google Maps, the page would freeze and crash, while displaying small untextured triangles. I then got the idea of trying to put any 3D graphics on (Steam games, Google Earth etc.), and yep, all that crashes too. Looks like anytime 3D graphics are intended and the discrete GPU is used, it crashes. Check the crash logs every time:

Graphics hardware encountered an error and was reset: 0x0000002b

Dayum. Sounds like hardware failure...

But the thing is, other than that there no display glitch whatsoever on any application. Mac OS boots fine and runs fine, my music software runs fine, and with Chrome in which I deactivated hardware acceleration, all web pages run fine, including 3d pages like Google Maps. But the instant I try to run 3d graphics by launching a game, or enabling acceleration in Chrome, the problem comes back. Geekbench 4's GPU benchmark runs fine too, but it doesn't actually draw anything on the screen.

Since the problem seems, for now at least, contained, I thought it might be a software issue. So I popped out an old backup drive from last year (way before any issue began) with High Sierra on it, and booted from that. Opened Chrome and went to Google Maps and... Crash.

Please help me think this through and know for sure! I'm 85% sure that it's a hardware failure, the following gives me some doubts:

there's no display glitch or anomalies ever if 3D graphics aren't involved (at least that's my conclusion). Is it possible that a GPU could fail "partially" like this? This sounds like a software problem on paper, but I don't know how GPUs are built so can't say for sure.
I'm using the computer with an external display, and I think that external displays ONLY work with the discrete GPU, so certainly I wouldn't be able to type this message now using this display if the discrete GPU was fried? Or am I mistaken and it's the integrated graphics that are connecting to the monitor?
gfxCardStatus isn't very useful, it's telling me I'm on the discrete GPU right now, but how do I know it's telling the truth? It seems it hasn't been reliable for years
I tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC etc. It did nothing.
I was unable to run Apple Diagnostics. I tried the normal way, the online way, and the USB bootable flashdrive way. None worked.

Error: 0x8000000000000003, Cannot Load 'EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi'

Is there any other and more subtle way to more damage 3D graphics on a Macbook Pro, that would be a software issue but wouldn't be fixed by re-installing a prior OS? Like some corruption at EFI level or something?

Is it only a matter of time before the discrete GPU starts failing more and glitches appear where I don't have them now?

Thank you

MacBook Pro

Posted on Sep 12, 2019 11:14 AM

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Answer 1

ninomojo Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 14, 2019 4:23 PM in response to ninomojo

The video window in my music software looks like it's still hardware accelerated but doesn't crash. It shows the artifacts I was talking about. Those black dots are look not really random in their position, some appear and disappear when the video is playing/changing frame.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

60,356 points

Sep 12, 2019 3:25 PM in response to ninomojo

Years ago I discovered a GPU issue when using the Chess app included with OSX. It would create odd colored border shadows, but otherwise ran fine. It was some issue with the 3D part of the GPU. It sounds like a similar issue from your detailed description.

The only thing you I would suggest is checking on the GPU temperature & fan speed using an app like Macs Fan Control. Make sure the fan speed increases when the CPU & GPU temps get hot. If the GPU gets too hot and the fan is working properly, then perhaps the thermal heatsink compound needs to be replaced. Otherwise it appears your GPU has an internal failure with 3D acceleration.

FYI I like to run "gputest" as it doesn't add too much stress on the CPU like some other GPU apps. However, I have not been able to run the GUI version on recent versions of macOS. I have to run it from the command line.

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Answer 3

Sep 13, 2019 7:33 AM in response to ninomojo

There was a diagnostic Apple was forced to develop to find these issues at the Genius Bar. It was called Video Switching Test VST. It ran for as long as 14 minutes, trying to decide whether you had the recallable failure. My impression is that it has been retired, but I have no insider information on that.

The rest of MacOS runs fine, despite the eye-candy, because it does not do much stuff that is especially difficult.

<<I'm 85% sure that it's a hardware failure,>>

Those are better odds than many decisions made in using diagnostics to find faults. You are done. It's time for dGPUDisabler, developed as a camp follower to the unsupported patchers that allow recent versions of MacOS to run on unsupported Macs.

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Answer 4

Sep 13, 2019 7:40 AM in response to ninomojo

Your MacBook Pro pre-dates Apple Diagnostics, and the Error message you posted says essentially, "Could not load Apple diagnostics" which is no surprise.

If you faithfully follow the steps on this GitHub site, you can make a Bootable Apple Hardware Test USB-stick. It does NOT use MacOS in any way to load itself -- it must be booted from a cold start using Startup Manager. You can not make the diagnostic execute from within MacOS, except perhaps to set the USB-stick as the boot device using Startup disk..

https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest

.

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Answer 5

ninomojo Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 13, 2019 9:10 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Maybe this is indeed the step where it went wrong. But there has to be some light modification of the command lines involved, since the volume is called AHTCTwo and not simply AHT like in the examples. That's all I changed when trying it (with 3 different USB sticks).

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Answer 6

HWTech

Level 9

60,356 points

Sep 13, 2019 2:29 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

There was a diagnostic Apple was forced to develop to find these issues at the Genius Bar. It was called Video Switching Test VST. It ran for as long as 14 minutes, trying to decide whether you had the recallable failure. My impression is that it has been retired, but I have no insider information on that.

This was made specifically for the 2011 MBPro models. AFAIK, the VST test was not an official option for the actual 2012 models.

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Answer 7

Sep 13, 2019 7:50 AM in response to ninomojo

The treacherous step is "blessing" the USB-stick at the end.

If you have to make any changes to the command line, one typo and the process goes ahead, but does not boot.

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Answer 8

ninomojo Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 13, 2019 7:43 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

This is the link I previously followed and created my USB stick with. It doesn't work on my Mac for some reason.

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Answer 9

Sep 13, 2019 9:12 AM in response to ninomojo

I always prefer the easy way out-- to change the Volume-name to conform to the script -- then I don't have to venture into the code at all.

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Answer 10

Sep 14, 2019 5:41 PM in response to ninomojo

Did you ever get Apple Hardware Test to work?

You may have a display memory failure giving you those black pixels.

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How to diagnose physical GPU failure for sure? (MacBook Pro mid-2012, non Retina)

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