Widescreen Gaming Forum

I dont know how it was different for me, but the Accell did work for me where the Bizlink didn't. Since noone seems to know/agree on what exactly the problem is, I say give the Accell a try as you can always return it if it doesnt work. Mine has been working two days so far without a problem. The Bizlink flickered after every 10 mintues or so and more the longer the machine was on.

I don't know , I would like to find more confirmed working before I commit to another $100

I think Kondor has one ordered, and he has a vast supply of various monitors to try it with. he should be able to give some more feedback on that. Trust me, I wasn't expecting it to work. I was all ready to buy a Dell DP monitor, and I just decided to be patient and wait for it to get here first and give it a shot. So far so good and even at $100 is still cheaper than a new DP Dell monitor.

Agreed

[quote]I dont know how it was different for me, but the Accell did work for me where the Bizlink didn't. Since noone seems to know/agree on what exactly the problem is, I say give the Accell a try as you can always return it if it doesnt work. Mine has been working two days so far without a problem. The Bizlink flickered after every 10 mintues or so and more the longer the machine was on.

I don't know , I would like to find more confirmed working before I commit to another $100

ATI, overall, feels relatively amateurish. Whether it's banning users from its forums for even the smallest dissent, or releasing hardware without adequate testing and/or drivers - their performance is just really uneven. The hardware itself has great potential. But that's all it has in many cases.

ATI just did not sweat the details on this one. And, reading between the lines, it seems like Eyefinity was tacked on at some point and is being managed by a small, probably underfunded/overworked team. Meanwhile, Nvidia comes out with great new drivers (remember I still have a GTX280/Core2 system as a HTPC) about 3 times as often as ATI. I can't point to a *single* game that runs significantly worse on Nvidia hardware, whereas there are plenty of games with serious problems on ATI hardware: Batman AA, Need for Speed Shift, and Dawn of War II among them. And those aren't small titles. Those are big-name, popular games. Even CODMW2 runs noticeably better on my GTX280 than on my dual 5870's.

Getting back to Eyefinity, it seems like they tested it with one or two different monitors and called it a day. And I'd be very surprised if they ever fix this problem. They just don't have the resources or the interest. Easier just to come out with another whiz-bang piece of hardware that the reviewers will all go crazy for (in order to get review samples, no doubt) - and hope they can keep capturing first-adopters.

I'll keep playing with my 5870's, and I'll do Eyefinity. But, when Fermi arrives, I suspect that I and a lot of other people will jump ship. Having become accustomed to the level of software/hardware compatibility provided by Nvidia, it's hard to adjust to the prospect of being an unpaid beta tester for ATI's QA department.

Well said and I think I will be doing the same if the new Nvidia supports some type of Eyefinity. Thats the only reason I went with this card. This ATI stuff is non sense doesn't seem like anything works how it should or how it was planned to work. All the time that I have been using Nvidia I have never had any problems getting anything to work that was supposed to work. This is just ridiculous.

Whilst I understand everyone's obvious frustration for those experiencing problems, try and keep comments constructive. The forum's here to help with problems, and we invariably come up with solutions for most issues - it's what we do! - however persistent complaining doesn't help push things forward.

We have ATI guys visiting the forum who do a great job in their own time answering as many questions as they can. Absolutely let your voice be heard, but keep it specific and helpful - in the end it will benefit us all! Persistently attacking ATI and repeat posting of the same point is unnecessary. The more constructive the posts the sooner everyone can get some answers. :onethumb

Thanks

Has anyone tried taking out other USB devices and swapping around the USB port they are using the active adapter on?

I to have been a Nvidia user. and still use the 285 in my other rig. but when this card came out and I decided to give it a go.
I mean I'm still going to try and work this out. but man. it sure has left a sour taste in my mouth.

My ticket to Sapphire was responded to and after a couple of back and forth emails . I get this

"We will look into it, i am sending this information to our Engineers, i will let you know whats going on once i get a feed back."

Good at least I feel that it is getting the attention it deserves

I'm done for now

Whilst I understand everyone's obvious frustration for those experiencing problems, try and keep comments constructive. The forum's here to help with problems, and we invariably come up with solutions for most issues - it's what we do! - however persistent complaining doesn't help push things forward.

We have ATI guys visiting the forum who do a great job in their own time answering as many questions as they can. Absolutely let your voice be heard, but keep it specific and helpful - in the end it will benefit us all! Persistently attacking ATI and repeat posting of the same point is unnecessary. The more constructive the posts the sooner everyone can get some answers. :onethumb

Thanks

Ok done ranting

As far as trying other ports I have to a small extent using open ports. I guess i could try some of the other that are occupied and do some switching around

Whilst I understand everyone's obvious frustration for those experiencing problems, try and keep comments constructive. The forum's here to help with problems, and we invariably come up with solutions for most issues - it's what we do! - however persistent complaining doesn't help push things forward.

We have ATI guys visiting the forum who do a great job in their own time answering as many questions as they can. Absolutely let your voice be heard, but keep it specific and helpful - in the end it will benefit us all! Persistently attacking ATI and repeat posting of the same point is unnecessary. The more constructive the posts the sooner everyone can get some answers. :onethumb

Thanks

Agreed in principle. This isn't about bashing ATI.

ATI can fix this or not, but I'm not being paid by them to help fix their issues, and I don't feel like I owe them anything more than civility at this point.

If their reps really do visit here, all I can say it that the ball is in their court. There's a wealth of information in this thread, but I shouldn't have to be hooking up random monitors to figure out what works and then reporting it here. That was their job.

I'll give them a while to figure things out, and if nothing happens, I'll simply put the 5870's on eBay and move on. Gaming on a 60" SXRD is quite competitive with Eyefinity.

Has anyone tried taking out other USB devices and swapping around the USB port they are using the active adapter on?

Yes. I've tried every port on my computer, an active USB hub, the USB adapter for my iphone, and even my laptop's and HTPC's usb ports.

Not the issue apparently.

The take-home at this point seems to be that certain monitors work and others don't. Whether the fault lies with the card, the monitor or the adapter - or some permutation of all three - remains unknown.

My plan is to simply slavishly copy the known working setups you can see in ATI's own demo videos. They seem to be using the Dell u2410 for 24" setups, and so that's my plan as well.

After this is over, I'll have a total of - let's see here - 11 monitors in this house! Nuts!

You have me beat by 3 monitors

hey, 3 monitors. isn't that ironic

Whilst I understand everyone's obvious frustration for those experiencing problems, try and keep comments constructive. The forum's here to help with problems, and we invariably come up with solutions for most issues - it's what we do! - however persistent complaining doesn't help push things forward.

We have ATI guys visiting the forum who do a great job in their own time answering as many questions as they can. Absolutely let your voice be heard, but keep it specific and helpful - in the end it will benefit us all! Persistently attacking ATI and repeat posting of the same point is unnecessary. The more constructive the posts the sooner everyone can get some answers. :onethumb

Thanks

good post, also good to hear that this forum gets attention form the devs at the companies making it. I think half of the fun with all this is the sense of accomplishment you get once you get things working. That's why not everyone out there has a widescreen rig setup, you have to really love this stuff to commit the kind of time we do to it :rockout

[quote]Whilst I understand everyone's obvious frustration for those experiencing problems, try and keep comments constructive. The forum's here to help with problems, and we invariably come up with solutions for most issues - it's what we do! - however persistent complaining doesn't help push things forward.

We have ATI guys visiting the forum who do a great job in their own time answering as many questions as they can. Absolutely let your voice be heard, but keep it specific and helpful - in the end it will benefit us all! Persistently attacking ATI and repeat posting of the same point is unnecessary. The more constructive the posts the sooner everyone can get some answers. :onethumb

Thanks

good post, also good to hear that this forum gets attention form the devs at the companies making it. I think half of the fun with all this is the sense of accomplishment you get once you get things working. That's why not everyone out there has a widescreen rig setup, you have to really love this stuff to commit the kind of time we do to it :rockout
Unfortunately, that will ensure that features like this are never taken seriously or properly supported. I've been living on the bleeding edge of tech for 20 years now (I had a Video Toaster for my Amiga, for instance), and popular acceptance is key to support. That acceptance will never arrive if you make things so difficult that guys like me are perplexed - much less the typical idiot out there.

Remember the games makers have to do their part as well and fix issues like FOV that continue to plague triplehead gaming. Just try booting up the most popular game in the world right now and find out: CODMW2 requires a third-party hack to work properly.

ATI can attempt to proselytize this feature all they want, but it's the raw number of people actually using (and clamoring for proper games support) that will - or won't - turn the tide. While I certainly take some pride in being able to get almost anything to run properly (you can see I'm like a dog after a bone on that), I can't recode games and I can't invent microcode for a BIOS. Ultimately, I'm at the mercy of people who will only fix these things if there's a significant economic benefit involved.

Update.... Voltage @ 1187 and it hasn't crapped out for over 6-8 hours. I will keep you guys posted.

In the spirit of trying to provide raw data, here's what I've got going on.

1. As noted, LG 32LG60/Bizlink worked all day at 1680x1050 (Eyefinity) then started the famous random sleep mode routine after a cold restart.
2. I realized that the only difference was now I was attempting to run the LG at 1080p (non-Eyefinity - just an extended desktop). Note that I lost my Eyefinity group on restart - it could detect that there was something wrong with the DP link and produced a "DP Link Failure" error.
3. Thinking pixel rate might have something to do with it, I take the LG down to 720p - and it starts working with no problem (although it always will come back to life on a res switch - this was obviously stable).
4. Solved, right? No. Trying to reproduce the error, I go back to 1080p. Now it works fine. On a cold restart, with 1080p selected, it works fine. It has nothing to do with resolution.

Now I can't reproduce the error. But the cold restart makes me wonder. Maybe something gets out of whack in terms of sync.

It would be incredibly embarrassing if the fix were to simply implement the oldest trick in the tech support book: Just reboot.

Well i will stick it out to see if this problem will be solved. It seems a lot forget the issues Nvidia had with a few cards of there that did not perform as promised. GX2 come to mind. They brought out "fixes" / updates like crazy but none really worked.
My card on a single screen is a killer. It absolutely runs anything i throw at it and IT is the fastest single chip card out there and supports DX11. So just for that i am happy. Eyefinity is a bonus: a big one and yes i hope to, it will be sorted soon.

Look, I realize that the 5870 is new, but the underlying architecture most assuredly is *not*. I also realize that, after having plunked down $400 for a card, a lot of people are going to want it to be great.

And it *is* great - REALLY great. When it works (and I'm referring to Eyefinity). I've actually got my 32" LCD working reliably enough that, this weekend, I'm going out to get 2 for the the sides. Based on the performance I've observed, I don't see a benefit to going above 720px3. When they get Crossfire working with Eyefinity, I'll just crank up the AA. I happen to think that 720p 4xMSAA looks quite a bit better than 1080p 0xAA. I'm more worried about running out of framebuffer (1gb) at high res than exhausting the power of 3200 (2 cards) shaders!

Anyway - I'm just aware that a lot of people aren't like me, and have to make do with what they have. And, for a lot of people, this Eyefinity-thru-an-adapter stuff doesn't work.

I think we all just want to hear that ATI is:

A) aware of the problem and
B) actually working on it

If we all just sit around and talk about how great it works, how will it ever get fixed?

Just to Keep you up to speed, since I changed my monitor to a dell U2410 and connected directly to the HD 5850, the problem disappeared completely.

So after all this grief, I was happy.

However, I have now upgraded to a Sapphire HD 5970 with the mini displayport connected to the same monitor and I now have major issues with the display flickering. it is extremely bad in Eyefinity mode, when all 3 flicker (although the dell is worse).

So here we go again, another couple of months wasted trying to sort this out!

A couple of observations.
There is at least a 15-20 sec delay for the monitor that is connected to DP adapter to come on.. Power is there but no signal.

The occurrences are more frequent . as time goes on . seams to happen more times each day. today it wasn't but 10 minutes before the first instance after boot up . In fact I was on here reading post when it started happening again . Are others seeing it happen more frequent as I?

I think we all just want to hear that ATI is:

Just so you are aware, I am the Product Manager for the HD 5800 Series.