Help Stress Test nMP D700s for malfunction?

Please help me properly stress-test an nMP with D700 GPUs to make sure they don't need replacing.

A colleague asked me to set up a Resolve workstation for his prodco using a spare trashcan mac Pro they were repurposing. It's a 2013 MacPro, 12-core dual D700s. It's under AppleCare for about another week, so I needed to hurry up and stress-test it to see if the GPUs need replacing.

NOTE: This MacPro does not qualify for the Apple GPU recall. It was built before the recall window.

It's also worth noting that this is a replacement Mac. The owner bought one of the first available trashcans, and it had a bad motherboard. They swapped out the whole machine for this unit. It is possible that the replacement was more stringently tested than normal, as this has been Apple's policy with replacement hardware.

Okay, so this is what I did to try to provoke the dreaded green glitch in Resolve:

Source footage: BMD4KPC 4K RAW 4 clips of 5-6 minutes each, split into smaller clips for about 12 shots totalling 22 mintutes TRT.

Each of the 12 clips had the following nodes applied:

3 color correction
2 secondaries with one power window
1 blur with a power window
1 sharpen with a power window
1 secondary with a key qualifier
1 OFX with a power window
1 Resolve Temporal/Spatial NR

I turned all peripherals and let it warm up for an hour. GPU Temp around 130ºF

I rendered at Max to 4K ProRes 4444 XQ, then I rendered a second version to HD 1920 x 1080 H264. Later, I did 4K and HD H264 with render set to 100.

The internal GPU temperature got up to 156ºF.

No glitches or malformed frames that I can see.

Is there anything else that I could do to make sure these GPUs aren't faulty?

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Come on, folks, help me out. Is my stress test sufficient to produce the GPU error? Is there anything else I should be doing to test these GPUs?

Thanks.

Well, they say temperature is the issue.
Mine runs at 180 F when rendering 4k.
Never saw some problems with it though....

Jerry

Well, they say temperature is the issue.
Mine runs at 180 F when rendering 4k.
Never saw some problems with it though....

Jerry

Even at 180ºF, you see no render glitches?

Run each clip with multiple serial nodes.

A good way to stress out the system would be to add multiple serial nodes for each shot. Qualifications, blurs, multiple color corrections, windows, tracking, etc. All that good stuff.

Take that and render out an h264 of your timeline. Don't throttle the render. Let it render out at Max FPS.

This is usually when I would experience the problems.

With that said, it took weeks of this to finally fry my GPUs. So if you don't see an issue now, that doesn't necessarily mean you won't see one in the future.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Maybe just use it until there is a problem?

Maybe just use it until there is a problem?

It's under AppleCare for about another week, so I needed to hurry up and stress-test it to see if the GPUs need replacing.

In that case try temporal NR with more than 2 frames selected. Your setup in the first post is good for testing but NR is the best test.

Thanks

Hi guys,
i need to buy the late MacPro, and how BlackMagic recommends, whit D700 GPU cards.
I use DaVinci Resolve 14.1 UHD project on AppleProRes HQ.

I have see more post about glitches....can help me anyone whit some stress test to explain which card i must to buy?

Thanks in advance...

Fabio.

Having endured the Trashcan Mac (2013 MacPro) with D700s for more than 3 years now, my advice is not to get one. I'm on my third set of D700s, and it hasn't made a huge amount of difference, It might be 10% better (if that), but I still have days with massive glitching. Heat is a big issue, which Apple has acknowledged.

A few things seem to help:

1) reboot before every Resolve session
2) run no other programs in the background
3) get Macs Fan Control and temporarily ramp up the internal fans to 1800 RPM.
4) monitor the internal temperature and don't render until it's around 100°F.
5) when you render, keep the speed down to 10fps (for HD/2K) or 5fps (for 4K)
6) for longer files, you may want to consider rendering out the files in chunks, like in 20-minute segments, then doing one final additional pass that just stitches all the files together.

64GB of RAM doesn't hurt. Being in a cool, well-ventilated room doesn't hurt. You could try to check "minimize interface updates during playback" if you want, but it's not a big change. I avoid using the internal scopes and instead use external scopes (but I think this is a very minor factor at best), more for convenience.

Anything that stresses out the GPU, like heavy NR, GPU-accelerated OFX plug-ins, multiple blur/sharpen nodes, or large (20+) node structures with a lot of keys, will tend to add more potential for failure. For me, the GPU glitches generally tend to happen in the lower 1/3 of the picture. The machine has good days and bad, and sometimes it's absolutely fine. I firmly believe this is a design flaw between Apple and AMD and not a Resolve issue per se, because Premiere owners are reporting the issues as well.

Once the new MacPro is out (theoretically in the spring), my plan is to set my Trashcan Mac on fire and kick it into the street, possibly in front of the Apple Store at the Grove in West LA. I'll post pictures if I do it.

HaHa..... Yes!!!!!!.... everyone loves a trashcan fire.
Burn it DOWN....

Thanks for your biggest explain..
I’m now to return point..

I’have buyed the Mac Pro whit D500.

When come on my hands,make some test.

Thanks again.