Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all, so as some may know I have been playing around with a 3x2 projector setup for the past few months (something I am building for work.) I have been having issues with eyefinity interfacing with the projectors and not running in the correct resolution (EDIE info isn't being properly passed to "someone" and the projectors are not operating at their native resoultion. Furthermore I am getting strange flickering problems from the bottom two ports on the card. BOTH of the above problems are ONLY occurring while operating in eyefinity mode. If operated in extended desktop mode I can set the projectors to their native res AND I don't have any screen flicker problems.

For reference:
Approx 35' of high quality cable exist between the GPU and the Projectors (it has been suggested my problems are a result of cable length)
I am using x6 identical Accell active DP adapters (bus powered)
Native res for my projectors (1280x800){3840x1600} but when put into eyefinity mode they are defaulting to 1920x1080{5760x2,160}

I have also been working with a 3rd party developer to write software to edge blend/warp all 6 projectors, for the past few months we have been trying to get the system to work properly but have been running into some strange bugs that result in his software crashing on my machine, we have gone back and forth a number of times with crash logs to try and resolve problem. We have managed to get it "kinda" working although he maintains that when he runs it on his machines things seem to be working fine.


the original machine that I have been running this on:

i7 930 1366 cpu
XFX 5870 eyefinty 6
MSI big bang Xpower main board,
1200w Corsair PSU
Win 7


now for the interesting part:

I have a second machine in my setup that ALSO has an xfx eyefinity 5870, which is being used to drive 6 LCDs in extended desktop mode to display various data windows on various resolution monitors. It to has a 1200W corsair and is running windows 7 BUT it is an AMD machine:

Phenom II x6 core cpu
XFX 5870 eyefinty 6 (serial numbers are 1 digit apart)
MSI 890FXA-GD65
1200w Corsair PSU
Win 7

On a whim the other day when I had the first machine apart to upgrade to a larger SSD the developer whom I am working with sent me a new version of his software with more error logging enabled. Because the primary machine was down I decided to plug the AMD system into the projectors (same cables, adapters etc) to run it and low and behold the bloody thing worked. When entering eyefinity mode it recognized the correct res and everything WORKED the way it was supposed to and when launching his software it to started and functioned how it was supposed to. I tired earlier variation of his software and a number of them appeared to function correctly.

I thought that this must then be some driver problem or perhaps a software bug that cropped up over the few months (although both machines were up to date with latest drivers/windows updates. To further identify the problem I did a fresh install of windows + CCC on the original machine AND swapped the GPUs, to my dismay the original machine STILL produced the error.... I put a new drive in the second machine and ran another fresh install of windows+ CCC and had it running the first machines GPU and.... it worked.........



So............. Cliffs:
eyefinity is broke when running on machine A, but works on machine B. Both machines are identical EXCEPT one is running an Intel CPU + expensive mainboard and one is running an AMD cpu + expensive mainboard.... Have swapped hardware and software on both A and B, the problem is ONLY present on the Intel machine NOT the AMD...

I have upgraded to the latest bios firmware on machine A, problem still persists.


ideas?

Well you're going to have to edit the edid to atleast one of the projectors, because eyefinity doesn't run off the native resolution, it runs off the largest common resolution between the projectors. (Well it might run off the native resolution, but, than the edid was written wrong to have the native be 1920x1080). This may also fix the flickering due to sending a lower resolution. Though it will only truely be sending the lower resolution to the projector you edited, as Eyefinity sends a scaled resolution to the others. Meaning every other projector will be getting 1280x1024 scaled to 1920x1080. You can edit all of them and that wont be a problem. The issue is the EDID editing process can potentially destroy the use of that port on the projector.

Another thing you can try is removing the pin on the dvi cable that transfers EDID. I remember briefly that on things like the Sony FW-900, you could remove the pin and get access to more resolutions.

Hope this helps.

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |