[icolor]

i've got a mac pro 2*2ghz dual-core with a nvidia 7300 and an ati x1900. recently (after adding ram?) different software start to crash a lot. photoshop and safari crashes when closing a window, motion crashes when exiting fullscreen, preview crashes when adjusting sharpness or gamma to an image, finder restarts whenever something else crashes... last thing that happened was the dock wouldnt show at all after a finder crash. this is getting a bit too much? as instructed by apple care i did an cmd+optn+P+R restart, verified disks, hardware test, nothing worked out. next would be to do a clean install. if that doesent help, i dont know what i should do. could it be the ram? it is a total of 3gb configured like this: 2gb on dimm 1 and 2 of riser a, 1gb on dimm 1 and 2 of riser b. the two 1gb chips are bought at transintl.com, and they have the extra heat sinks recommended.
my other suspect would be the video cards. i am not very into the log files in console, but it seems many of the crashed threads concern ati drivers, core graphics or pro graphics and so on.
this is getting very annoying, especially since i specifically asked apple if these graphic cards would work nice together.
someone mentioned that 10.4.8 is less stable. is this the case?
could someone give me a hint of what to do, and in what sequence? or have a look at my crash logs?

[Leonard]

Have you tried running without the new RAM? You pretty much indicated you just added it so it's the likely suspect. 99% of the time when you get a kernel panic after adding new RAM, it's the RAM.

[nationwide]

I would try checking the ram also, everything seemed to happen once you upgraded the ram.

[rickross]

I have a Mac Pro with dual-ATI cards, and it is definitely unstable. I have all varieties of applications just quit unexpectedly on me for no apparent reason. The sorry fact, however, is that this appears to be related to fundamental design flaws or serious low-level driver flaws. Apple replaced my motherboard, ram, and both ATI video cards, but the problems persists. This would seem to rule out a specifically defective oiece of hardware like bad ram or a bad video card.

While waiting for the second video card replacement to arrive I had to run the machine with just one ATI card installed, and during that 7-10 day period I don't think I had one single crash. Now that the repair is complete I get a half-dozen or more every single day. It is very disappointing that the Mac Pro appears to have such serious issues with video cards sold and supported by Apple.

Rick Ross
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