Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey all,

I've been scouring various sites looking for helpful information on a bit of a technical speed bump I've encountered and haven't had any success so far. Perhaps the concentrated knowledge on the subject here will shed some light on things for me. Here's what I'm dealing with:

I've got three Dell 2412 displays running in a landscape configuration as discreet screens. This has been my configuration for years and runs without issue on an EVGA GTX970. One display connected via DisplayPort and the other two via DVI. This base configuration continues to work as expected.

I recently added two new elements to the configuration. A Pioneer VSX-1020-8 receiver hooked to a 7.1 system, and an Asus VG248 monitor. The HDMI out on my GTX970 goes into the receiver and has provided my audio. This works perfectly. The problem arrives when I add in the VG248 display.

When initially hooked up, the VG248 seems to work perfectly. It's detected, shows up, and I can start using it without issue. When left connected after I lock the system for some time, I return to find that the receiver and associated monitor are detecting and dropping with about five to ten seconds between. This causes all kinds of chaos with my configuration as screens start shuffling around, displays turn on and off, etc. All while the Nvidia driver constantly adds and removes the fourth display and moves the others around to compensate.

The only fix for this so far has been to disconnect the VG248. Once this is done, the three standard displays can be adjusted to the proper settings and I can use the receiver for audio as normal.

The only non-standard piece in this whole chain is that I'm using a HDMI to DVI cable for the output from the receiver to the VG248. I didn't have a normal HDMI cable long enough. It doesn't seem like that would be a contributor to the problem, but I'm planning to pick up a longer HDMI cable anyway just to eliminate the variable.

Has anyone dealt with something like this? I'm a bit mystified at the moment.

Thanks for reading!

Does this also happen when you take the receiver out of the chain and hook the monitor up directly?

I've had issues with receivers hooked to PC's via HDMI in the past. It's usually been due to problems with the EDID during the HDMI handshake. If this is the case you can try to setup an EDID override (free but a pain in the ass), or get an EDID spoofer (not free but relatively straightforward to set up) like the Gefen HDMI detective+

Honestly, if your MB has an optical out you might be better served by just running a TOSLINK cable from the PC to the receiver for audio and keep the monitor hooked to your PC directly.

I am in a similar situation.

I have 3 Dell U2311H and two 290s and a Denon AVR-X1000 as Audio system.
I run two monitors via DVI cable and the third from HDMI to Denon and there i use a HDMI->DVI Adapter to the 3rd Monitor.

I've had a hole lot of problems about my Monitor going into sleep and receiver turning off and when you wake the Computer in this Moment the Passtrough kicks in and sends the signal over the offline Receiver, meaning you have another EDID signal than when the Receiver is Online causen the Eyefinity Setup to break up, or the Monitor to turn on/off every 3-5 seconds.
Even after powering on the receiver he Audio did not get recognised and the monitor kept turning on and off.
The Solution to this problem was something like unpliging the HDMI cable on the GPU, restarting both devices, and sometimes pluging the hdmi back while running windows solved it.

Now after a few firmware updates from Denon and after i deactivated the "powersave" features (aka turn off after 60 minutes idle) i don't have this problems anymore.

Nillaz wrote:Honestly, if your MB has an optical out you might be better served by just running a TOSLINK cable from the PC to the receiver for audio and keep the monitor hooked to your PC directly.

Hell no, 7.1 Channel 24bit 192khz signal straight over HDMI all the way!
Toslink only supports 2 channels PCM, if you want 7.1 you need dts dolby or some other compression stuff.

Thanks for the information, guys. Here's where I am now. Your suggestion put me on the track to trying one of the 2412 displays using HDMI>DVI and use a standard DVI cable from the video card to the VG248.

That got things up and running. The only odd behavior now comes from starting full screen games, which sometimes cause the displays to shuffle order around. They go back to normal after a moment, but it plays havoc with my other open programs, whose windows tend to end up all over the place.

Doesn't happen all the time, but it's pretty irritating. At least all four are running, now!

Is there any particular reason why you must use HDMI signal out for sound and do a pass-though of the receiver?

Not enough Ports on the GPU I assume.
At least that is the reason why i use it. No DP cable right now so my card uses 2x DVI 1 HDMI, if i would wan't to add 4th Monitor i would still need to do this.
Because i rarely have problems now it's actually pretty neat to have the Audio GUI ontop of your Monitor if you switch settings.