Q: Mac Pro Freeze/Display glitch on start up

I would really appreciate if Apple got on line here and could report of the faulty units' serial number and call them back for a fix. Should be a known issue by now. I'm working with film editing and have experience some problems with rendering too. Seems to me like a GPU hardware issue... but I am not entirely sure.

Wanted to Bump this post. New 8-core with same issue. First boot and sometimes 2nd boot grey screen + scrambled startup screen. Having to hard boot until it comes up correct. I have a 30 and 27 in cinema display with the "Mini display to Dual-link adapter".

Normally one hard boot works for me, although I've had to do it multiple times. Very frustrating issue after spending so much cash. Has anyone heard some kind of response from Apple or is there a fix?  Thanks guys!

I don't know wether this will help but seeing as the problems seems to be graphics related I thought my experience may help. I had  all sorts of problems after migrating the set up from my macbook pro , in the end I discovered from the crash log that the nvidia graphics card drivers, which I presume  had been installed during the migration process, were crashing any programme or process which looked for the driver.I deleted every Nvidia Cuda file I could find and all the problem crashes disappeared.

I read the post here regarding one of the users using an active mini display port to DVI adaptor to reduce the screen problems and I think this is our best clue / option to look into.  This is what I'm thinking:  AMD, the manufacture of the D300, D500, D700 video cards are a version of the AMD FirePro.  These cards use a technology called AMD Eyefinity Technology.  When I did a search on Amazon for active mini display to DVI just now, guess what - some cables are AMD Eyefinity Certified. Not all are, just some - for example:  Cable Matters Gold Plated Active Mini DisplayPort to DVI Male to Female Adapter is Eyefinity Compatible. These cables adaptors are expensive $25-30.  They have chips in them to create extra power for longer run wires and to make them compatible with AMD Eyefinity.

So maybe this is the direction we need to go and try some of these AMD approved Eyefinity adaptors.  The AMD D500 is similar to the Firepro W8000 which has Eyefinity technology.

I too have a 2013 Mac Pro 6 Core, D500 that is 1 month old.   I have dual monitors, a new LG 34" ultra wide thunderbolt monitor that will not work - it's stays in sleep mode most of the time and a Dell DVI 22" monitor.  My Mac crashes constantly on startup and I can't get the LG display to wake 75% of the time.  I took my Mac Pro to the Apple Store where they hooked it up to a couple Apple Thunderbolt monitors with no problems - reboots like a champ - of course.  I take it home, same issues with my monitors. They (Apple)  blame LG for driver issues.  I called LG support, they said this is a know issue with Apple's Mac Pro - display problems.  No one is doing anything to fix our problems.

I'm ordering a couple of these ACTIVE adaptors and I hope it works!!!!!

My 6 core, D700, 32GM RAM, 10.9.4 machine has this same issue with an LG 34UM95 and Samsung 27" monitor attached. When the machine has been off for a long time, it normally boots up fine. On a restart, either the monitors don't get a signal, don't get to the login screen, or I get the black screen with digital blockiness. This is a huge problem for me. I think there are other associated issues as well as I'm a film editor and my thunderbolt connected Matrox MX02 freaks out at the same time by sending an unstoppable loud audio buzz to my speakers. Only way I've found to fix this is to turn the power off for 15 minutes then boot up -- with the movie's director staring at me like I'm an amateur with crappy equipment. That's how it looks to be a professional editor with a top of the line Mac Pro. The thing can't even restart with two monitors attached. I'm a long time Apple fan and a shareholder, but this is ridiculous and unjustifiable for a machine of this price that literally advertises the ability to drive multiple 4K monitors. This is starting to smell of class action lawsuit should Apple fail to fix their product. I hope they just fix it, and fix it soon.

So I found a solution for getting the LG 34UM95 to work with the 2013 Mac Pro.  Do not use Thunderbolt!  Use Thunderbolt to Display Port Adaptor on the LG monitor and use Thunderbolt (or mini-display port) to Display Port or HDMI to your second monitor.  Also, place the LG monitor on bus 0 and the other on 1 or 2.

The LG monitor wants to stutter or flicker when there is no second display, but if you keep the other monitor attached even off with HDMI, there is no screen flicker.  Once you unplug then HDMI on monitor 2 you get flicker.  You leave it plugged in even when off and there is no screen flicker on the LG.

Cables also make a difference, I ordered AMD Eyefinity approved cables / adaptors which seem to help.

This is definitely a software problem with both LG and Apple, both are at fault.  LG could create a software patch, they include drivers already with the monitor.

On reboots I have had a couple lock-ups but way better than before.  My computer is usable now.  Oh and windows 8 on boot camp works perfectly now.  Eyefinity works on Windows - Confirmed.  Eyefinity allows you to pair 3 monitors as one screen, meaning one monitor see's 1/3, next monitor see's 1/3, last monitor see's 1/3 - great if you want a flight simulator windshield view 180 degrees.

I also bought an active mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter. Hopefully, it will get rid of my freeze and sleep/wake issues. My problems may take up to 7-10 days to show up. So I'll report back after 10 days.

I am not sure LG has any fault in this case. My monitors work with all other computers I have. Only nMP has problems with them. Apple is known for not testing their products with products from "eco" systems.

Thanks for both of your replies. My system boots up fine from a cold start after sitting awhile 90% of the time. Of course, this morning it glitched on startup after being off all night so that was annoying. It's mainly a problem for me on restarts and starting up after it's only been shut off for a short time.

But this issue is not just limited to when the thunderbolt LG monitor is attached. At one point, I tried out two 1080 Samsung monitors hooked up via HDMI on separate thunderbolt busses and also had problems booting up. This glitch was different though. Sometimes both screens would display the apple logo on startup before freezing with the logo displayed. But like the digital blocks glitch, a hard shutdown was the only way I could figure out to resolve this.

Vett, please let me know how the adapters turn out. Volt I'm glad to hear it works most of the time. But we shouldn't have to buy adapters for our $5,000+ top of the line computers to work most of the time. This should just work out of the box as advertised. Apple needs to fix this. I hope they read these forums since this seems to be a major problem for a lot of people. I've supported their company since the 1980s, but it's hard to justify a top of the line professional work machine behaving like this.

I've contacted AppleCare and explained the problem we've all been having and after going through the basic questions and suggestion to bring it to the Apple Store, I requested this issue be reviewed by the engineering team and was transferred to a very helpful and friendly senior advisor who provided me with a TimingSnoop and Capture Data app to try and get hard data on what is going on for the engineering team. While I was told whatever they discovered would be for the purposes of specifically fixing MY machine, hopefully this will provide data that fixes this issue for everybody. Either way, the person I spoke to seemed to genuinely care about getting this fixed. So my recommendation would be to call AppleCare, as they actually do care.

I did the exact same thing over a month ago.  Contacted Apple care and did the capture data then spoke to a really nice helpful senior advisor.  After a couple of weeks they came back to me and said engineering is working on a solve for the issue and hopefully we will see the fix in the next software update.

I have been working with AppleCare and Apple Engineering team since mid June. They have given me tools to collect logs and traces twice already. I have gone through 2 Apple senior advisors. They both started energetically, but ended up with telling me some lines. They stated that Apple will continuously work on the issues and Apple has never been unable to fix customer issues. I asked them if they knew the root causes and have an estimated date on when the issues will get resolved, they became quiet.

Ha. You guys ended my optimism pretty quickly. It felt so good to be proactive. But now all I see is a black void. Thanks for unplugging me from the Matrix, now can you please put me back?  I'll give it a shot and let you know if anything comes of it. But if we're still stuck with this problem at the start of 2015, perhaps we should band together and take a serious look at our options of how to handle the situation.

I still have hope this will get resolved.  But if we don't see something in the next software update then ,I say, we go bat $h!t crazy.

I filed an official complaint to Apple, through the last Apple senior advisor. Hopefully, Apple management will get to see it.

Alright gentlemen, well, if our current efforts fail, then I'm down for a strength in numbers approach. We really shouldn't have to be wasting our time to try and help Apple fix an easily reproducible problem. Just hook up two monitors in the lab and keep restarting until you freeze. Shouldn't take long.... Then figure out how to fix it. Do you both have the D700 graphics card? It seems to be the problematic one as far as I can tell.