Issue with Eyefinity

Hey guys,
I finally built myself a new machine. Components are as follows...

500w Power Supply (Forget the brand name)
PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 graphics card
AMD Phenom XII 1090T Processor 3.20GHz
8GB G.Skill DDR3 memory
Biostar A870 Motherboard
Windows 7 Ultimate

Now, I'm running into an issue with this DVI to Displayport adapter I got from a friend. It worked fine on his computer, but it keeps causing my monitor to go to sleep. It works for half a second, then "No Signal" and it goes to sleep mode, then it comes back, then it goes off again.

I'm hoping one of you guys might know what the issue is because I'd really like to be gaming across all 3 of my monitors lol.

Thanks in advance!

-Ben

Try it with just the single monitor and adapter to see what happens.

Is it a passive or active adapter?

Is it an Accel (re-branded as Bizlink in some countries) adaptor? If so the adaptor is fine (providing no hardware problem with it obviously). What do you mean by "it goes to sleep mode, then it comes back, then it goes off again"? Is this just the monitor switching in and out of hibernation mode? Or is the third screen being recognised in CCC but switching in and out of display?

When you say regardless of how many monitors you connect you get the same issue, so even with 1 monitor connected only and via the adaptor you get no display? This would indicate the adaptor is faulty (regardless of whether it was active or passive it should work with only one monitor attached)

When I tried plugging my main monitor (DVI hookup) into the adapter and plugging it into a displayport and a USB connection for power, it works fine as the machine is booting up. Once I get to the Windows 7 login screen, that's when the issues start. the monitor itself goes into sleep mode, just as if I'd left my computer on too long. Within a few seconds, it comes back on and shows me the login page still, but then my monitor immediately goes back into sleep mode. Funny thing is, if I plug other monitors into the regular DVI ports, they display fine. Only the one with the adapter has issues. The monitor itself is fine. I'm wondering if the adapter might not be getting enough power. My 3 monitors are different, if that matters. The main one is a 24" AOC brand while the other two are 19" 4:3 ratio LCDs I've had forever and they're Lextron brand.

I dropped the resolution to 1024x768 and it worked fine. Just realized though that one of my monitors isn't recognized by my system when I plug all 3 in. I have no idea what to do now to get my 3 monitors up and running together.

I did. I can only get the main monitor up to 1024x768 before the issues start. Sometimes it flickers in and out, sometimes it stays black, etc. The machine will only see two of the monitors at once.

In AMD Vision Control Center, under Desktop Management, I only see 2 displays.

I'm wondering, if I pick up a second 6850 at some point, could my current power supply handle it? Also, would I be able to run the Eyefinity setup with both of those cards Crossfired? If I can remove this adapter from the equation all together that's be great.

Strange that you experience this at such a low resolution, you are correct in some senses in regards to resolution, however it is beyond 1920x1080 which problems occur and you then need a powered adaptor else you would experience what you outlined above.

Where do you find these cards?

See some of my other posts on eyefinity related issues if you want to understand why you need the adaptor, I don't feel it necessary to explain it again here as your problem is not "do you really need one", your issue is quite peculiar. If you plug in two screens, one via the adaptor and one via DVI-I/D do you see both displays in CCC? As in is the issue only occuring when you add the 3rd display regardless of what configuration you had with 2?

Also, in response to your earlier question, no it does not matter that you have different screens, it does however mean that you will not be able to configure bezel control unless you flash the EDID's. Also if running at different resolution you can expect to have black bars (top and bottom) present depending on your setup.

It works on your friends set-up you said, was he/she running similar resolutions from a similar card to yourself?

Cool, didn't know they did these, certainly never seen them available in oz. Thanks for showing me that. Don't suppose they have similar support for 69xx cards yet?

The issue with the displayport adapter happens regardless of how many monitors I hook up whenever the displayport one is at anything higher than 1024x768. I thought I could get a small adapter to connect the two cards inside my machine in order to do eyefinity that way. I know my card has a port on the top that is currently covered by a special cover. Like the old Nvidia cards with that special SLI chip. If I can't use all three of these even with 2x cards, I'm gonna be pretty pissed.

Ahhh I see. Thanks larkspur. I'll definitely give it a shot.

So I have 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, and 1x Displayport. Can I still use Eyefinity without using the Displayport? My AMD rep from my store says I can't.

If he wants eyefinity (3 monitors) on his card he'll have to use the DisplayPort. It's simply a design requirement.

I have used eyefinity since shortly after if was released with the 5000 and 6000 series both single-card and crossfire. When the 5xxx radeons were first released it was advertised by ATI/AMD that 3+ monitors would require active displayport adapters. Their website's list of approved adapters active adapters only had powered adapters (requiring a USB port for power) regardless of single-link or dual-link DVI or VGA or HDMI. The first generation of active DP adapters were all USB powered. To be frank, they were rushed-to-market, there was an annoying shortage and believe me, it was hard to find them for about a month. Newegg had them, then didn't, then finally got them again.

Along the way somewhere, someone had developed a DP conversion path that could be done purely using silicon and voila a chip was born. I think it was about 6 months after the first-gen adapters came out that the "new" ones that I am referring to became available. The symptoms the OP describes are exactly the symptoms of an unreliable first-gen adapter. Hey, I have little doubt that some people had great experiences with the older ones, but there definitely is a design difference between the old USB ones and the new.