Lots of Apple MacBook Pro (2016) users hit by GPU glitches

Posted on Monday, November 28 2016 @ 14:43 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Apple logo
9to5Mac reports one of their writers started noticing tearing on his new MacBook Pro (2016) laptop, where the desktop started showing through foreground windows across all apps. Other users are reporting different problems, including random red or black bars all over the screen, screen flashing in different colors or unrecoverable crashes.

While we don't know how widespread the issues are, there seem to be quite a number of posts online from folks who bought a new MacBook Pro and are already suffering from strange GPU glitches. At the moment, it's unknown whether it's a driver, a macOS or hardware issue.
A couple of commonalities do seem to be showing up. Several users are reporting problems when using Adobe software like Premiere Pro – specifically Adobe Media Encoder.

When I used the Adobe Media Encoder the graphics card freaked out and computer crashed.

[…]

Mine is doing the exact same thing in Adobe Premier.

[…]

Same thing happened to me. Change the render engine to metal or software only. I’ve been working with adobe but no fix yet.




Others are experiencing problems when using Apple’s own Photos app, with more than one affected user reporting com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService showing up in kernal panic logs.

I was letting Photos do its thing syncing 13k images, and all of a sudden the whole system locked up and was flashing violently with red/green hues and a sort of checkerboard pattern.

[…]

Do you have iCloud Photo Library activated? For me the panics occur when the upload process runs and “ImageConversionService” maxes out the GPU.

[…]

All the .gpurestart and kernel panic logs in Console point to an interaction between “com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService” and the discrete video card.
Here's an example of a new MacBook Pro with a bad case of GPU issues when using Premiere Pro:



A poll on 9to5Mac's website suggests quite a lot of MacBook Pro owners are suffering from issues, but the site noticed some owners of older Macs are reporting similar issues. This could mean the problem is not hardware-related and may be caused by a fixable macOS glitch. So far, Apple hasn't issued a response yet.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments