Cat4.10_m119_UB_HD Crashing

[longred]

Cat4.10_m119_UB_HD is crashing with Mac OS 10.4.11 and Quicktime 7.5. The machines are Mac Pro Dual Core Xeon 2.66 GHz with 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1900XT video cards.
The graphics cards have the recent update, and the macs have the firmware updates.
The machines pass Apple Hardware Testing - 24 loops no problems.
The same problem is happening on both machines.

The problem is that randomly Catalyst and the entire Mac with just freeze. This can show up any from 2 minutes after launch to 2 hours after. It happens whether or not I have it attached to Artnet. Just sitting in my office with no console it still crashes. It takes a power off/on to get the Mac moving again.

Does anybody have any experience with these kinds of problems?

What do I do now?

Thanks for your help.

Michael

[samsc]

scsi discs?

freezes are almost always intermittent hardware problems.

you need to email me the pdf profile from the catalyst application

[longred]

This turned out to be an ATI Radeon x1900XT that died. Hardware problem not software problem.
To share information that I gathered during this process It is very important to clean the graphics card regularly. If it over heats it shortens the useful life of the card. Dust bunny fur builds up on the very fine copper intake fins and defeats the cooling fan.
CLEAN YOUR graphics card!

[SourceChild]

Actually, several content creators I know constantly complain that the X1900XT overheats. Even a new card in a new machine that is clean can still overheat. I just lost a Mac Pro due to this. Thank God I paid for the Apple Care.

On a different note, I found an article a while back about the X1900XT. If you have noticed on other threads here, we refer to three versions of this card. Well on a subtle note is a temp spec that is slightly different between the cards.

Chances are you have an older card like the one I had that just failed. My newer X1900 is fine. The new one being replaced is also a newer version.

There is a difference.

A note to any of you who've had system freezes. If you have gotten strange pinwheels of death or reboot required lockups, chances are, this is why.

Keep a can of compressed air in the roadcase. Also invert that can every now and then to cool off your GPU.