I had the same problem,what i found out is the screens have to be DVI-I not DVI-D or the graphics card wont pick up the 3rd dvi screen.
the fix is to get HDMI-DVI-D single link cable which is about $8-$10
problem solved :mrgreen:
That was news to me!
My screens are DVI-D, however a LOT of ppl over at iRacing where I hang out run this exact combo and they just plugged it in and it worked...
Yes, using another port for now should work. But it's indicative of sloppy manufacturing, so be sure to RMA it ASAP.
PS - that CPU will hold you GPU back a fair amount. If you're looking to triple-screen, you'll need every bit of power your video card has.A buddy of mine just replaced HIS 5200+ with a 6000+ for only $60 CAD.. Sadly, there seem to be no AM2 quad-cores, but AM2+ supports quad.
And hey, if the card is new enough, you may be able to pay the difference to a better card, if you have some extra cash.
Lame that your port has died, but yay that you seem to have found the problem.
I grabbed a HDMI->DVI cable and connected the third screen that way.
One more thing I did before testing due to some sound conflicts I had was to uninstall Catalyst and reinstall it without the HDMI Audio drivers.
As everything booted again all three screens was there and I could setup Eyefinity :D
I'll try with a different DVI cable as suggested above as well to further test the dvi-port, come to think of it, so far I've only switched between the cables that came with the monitors.
As for performance.
I only do racing simulators and mostly iRacing and have some known combos that eats FPS that I use to measure performance.
To give you some reference points:
With my old setup (4850 512 Mb @ 24" 1920x1200) at one of these combos I had 50 FPS in pits, 60 at infield and 97 at the least intensive part of the track.
With only one 1920x1200 screen on the 5850 card I had 90 FPS in pits, 115 at infield and 180 at the least intensive part of the track.
As I got the triple setup running in Eyefinity at 5760 x 1080 I ended up with the following: 60 FPS in pits, 78 at infield and 120 at the least intensive part of the track. This is even with the option where the iRacing sim renders three different synched screens which should give an FPS hit in itself.
This card can push some serious pixel volumes!
So yes, it's a performance hit and I had to adjust some details ingame but absolutely nothing that I'll miss while racing. Still, the FPS is markedly better in widescreen than what I had with the old card and it's way over the level where the FPS drop is noticeable.
If I upgrade more, I'll swap the motherboard and go with an i5 or an i7.
And WOW what an experience it is with widescreen gaming for real!!!
It's way way beyond what I expected (and I expect a lot ;) )
A shitty cellphone pic can be seen here:
Thanx for your help all, and I'll let you know what turns out with the (faulty?) dvi-port.