Catalina 10.15.6 + 5700 XT: Crashing under load

[poorman9]

Hey everybody, I just a very promising test after switching over to Open Core this morning. The build went about an hour of GPU rendering in Cinema 4D + Octane Render and didn't crash. I plan to run some more hardcore stress tests this evening. I don't know much about open core, but share my setting or whatever else would be helpful if it does indeed fix my crashes.

 

[poorman9]

Just following up again – I just did an overnight render with the GPU load at or near 100% for ~6 hours and this morning the render was complete and computer was still running. So I'm gonna say this issue is solved!

Solution: Switch from Clover to OpenCore. As for specific OpenCore settings, I'm not gonna be much help. I just followed this install guide - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/

Good luck everybody, and thanks for the help.

 

[stephdurand]

Very happy for you @poorman9 . Hope I'll say the same when getting my Pc back from the shop!

 

[GovernorKrell]

The Good News: I followed Dortania's OpenCore Install Guide and created a working EFI on the first try which is awesome. Things like sleep are actually working that hadn't before!

The Bad News: The flashing showed up again instantly on window resizing and running GFXBench Metal. I haven't had a crash yet but that doesn't bode well for the 5700 XT.

 

[poorman9]

The Good News: I followed Dortania's OpenCore Install Guide and created a working EFI on the first try which is awesome. Things like sleep are actually working that hadn't before!

The Bad News: The flashing showed up again instantly on window resizing and running GFXBench Metal. I haven't had a crash yet but that doesn't bode well for the 5700 XT.

I also didn't do a clean install, just replaced the EFI. Sorry about the flashing coming back, hope you can keep making progress.

 

[GovernorKrell]

Well, just installed the latest Mac OS 10.15.7 Update. I'm hoping it finally does the trick. They specifically mention iMac profile and Radeon Pro 5700 XT in the release notes. Will advise if the crashes cease.

 

[GovernorKrell]

Well, just installed the latest Mac OS 10.15.7 Update. I'm hoping it finally does the trick. They specifically mention iMac profile and Radeon Pro 5700 XT in the release notes. Will advise if the crashes cease.

Unfortunately the answer is no. Still having flashes and crashing. I'm considering switching profiles from 17,1 to the 2020 iMac and re-installing the update.

 

[slim.jim]

On my MacBook Pro 16" with the 5500M if I don't lock the screen when I walk away from it, it crashes almost every time when it goes to sleep. I have been re-rendering my media library on my desktop with the 5700XT for the past couple of days and have the box checked to prevent it from going to sleep when the screen turns off and it hasn't crashed at all. The crashing for me at least is definitely sleep related on both machines and something to do with the GPU changing power states. When I am done with all the rendering I am going to try the screen lock method on my desktop as well.

 

[GovernorKrell]

Somewhat of a solution! I wanted to post a discovery from a couple of months after my previous post. My setup is a dual boot with a separate Windows drive and I started to find that once I ran Windows and restarted to in order to boot into Catalina that the crash issues were definitely present. I discovered randomly that if I shut down the system completely, wait about 10 seconds and re-boot directly into Catalina from Opencore the problem with the 5700xt crash magically disappears. There's still the occasional flashing in the menu bar area but the system is completely stable and does not crash. Once Windows is loaded, no restart will boot a stable system. It's only after shutting down and waiting a bit that there's any stability. Could it possibly be related to NVRAM or something? Some sort of memory flush issue before booting into Catalina? Anyway, I was glad to have at least solved this for a time. On to Big Sur where new challenges and bugs will surely await!

 

[kylec]

Interesting finding, @GovernorKrell. My understanding is that cold booting clears out the registers and RAM for any microcontrollers within attached devices such as graphics cards. So there could be something that the boot-up process doesn't reinitialize.

My X299 system, that I'm working on now, hangs on reboot/shutdown in Windows 10. Thus forcing me to avoid potential issues - lucky me!