Mac pro early 2008 under Yosemite 10.10.3 keeps freezing

Oh, I just realized my graphics card must have been upgraded at some point. I have a ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB running in it, couldn't find any compatibility issues with Yosemite, at least from doing a web search. I've done the usual thing you could think of - repairing permissions, resetting SMC etc.. nothing helps - it still crashes max 30min into a session. It's driving me crazy! :/

Right. Let's assume that your graca is fully supported. Let's check the simple things. Have you moved the mac just after upgrade? Even a little move can affect a cable. Have you plugged in/out a cable? Something like that. So I suggest that you shut down the mac and check all the cables (dvi!). If you want to do more, plug out all the cables and clean the plugs with a brush and isopropyl alcohol. after the check make sure that all the cables are plugged in properly. Another thing: did you do the usual upgrade via App store or did you download a .dmg from "somewhere"?

Good luck!

Jens

Hi

absolutely correct. After all OS X is a rock solid UNIX operating system. I'm working a lot on the shell. Before I came to OS X I was for over 15yrs a BSD/Solaris/Linux guy. Normally there is no need to install anything new. It's "Windowsish" thinking to blame the os in the first place when something goes wrong. It's wishful thinking. In 9 out of 10 cases it's a hardware issue. You will find the weak link!

Good luck!

Jens

well, OS is the only thing I changed so I don't really see how I should look at it like a hardware issue. I mean, it is totally possible it is but it still means that it's was caused by upgrading the OS, no?

skype jannosooaar

I have not touched the computer or any of the cables. As I said - it's a computer I use every day and it was working perfectly before the upgrade. The only reason why I upgraded was that I needed to add a Native Instruments Maschine to the setup and 10.6.8 (which I had the machine running) didn't support it.

The obvious thing was to think that maybe it's the NI Maschine that's causing the problem. So I removed it and deleted the software - well it still freezes!

Oh and yes, I upgraded it through app store, all my stuff is legit.

Oh, you upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.10.3 in one go? I thought 10.9.x was your previous os x. Well, that's a handful. I confess I've never done that before, not in Linux, not in OS X and I won't do it.

Good luck!

Jens

My advice: clone the system, don't upgrade and do a clean install.

The move to Intel only, no PowerPC/Rosetta and systems have lots of old code sitting around causing trouble even upgrading from 10.8 or 10.9 or having been through years of use.

Even if using SSD, great new devices out there now, larger and 3-4x the performance, whether blade PCIe-SSD and 1TB or something else is perfect for systems and/.or audio.

soundefd like 'upgrade' in your earlier post - clean being Erase + Install on bare drive with nothing on it, then using Setup Assistant (Migrating has issues).

yeah, I'm afraid so. that's the option that the system gave me so I thought it would be okay :/

I can confirm this actually works!! Moved the graphics card to slot 2 and I haven't experienced any freezes for about a week. It seems yosemite makes the machine run a lot hotter!