Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have 3x 22" (1680x1050) monitors that I have configured as a Surround display but the resolution comes out to 3840x1024 - as if they are 3x 1280x1024 monitors. I can't seem to figure out how to force 5040x1050. I replaced a 6950 with this 670 and I used Eyefinity on these displays just fine.

What am I doing wrong?

Any help is much appreciated.

Edit: I am using two monitors connected via DVI and 1 connected via DP and when I extend/clone within Windows, all are at 1680x1050.

Take this with a grain of salt, because I haven't seen it for myself. I've been using 2 5870s in Crossfire. But, I was planning on picking up a 680 until I read that your monitors all have to support the same sync polarity at their native resolution or they will default back to whatever the highest resolution they support with identical sync polarity. I have two Dell 24" S2409W monitors on DVI and one Dell 23" P2310H on a native displayport at 5760x1080. It works fine in Eyefinity, other than Bezel compensation being less than perfect due to the different screen sizes. But, the 2310H has a +/+ sync polarity at 1920x1080 and the S2409W supports +/- or -/+ at 1920x1080 so the highest I could run would be 3840x1024 in Nvidia 2d surround.

In Eyefinity, requiring a monitor with a displayport or using an adapter has been a thorn in AMD's side. I think the sync polarity requirement is Nvidia's.

Edit: When googling for sync polarity in 2d surround, I also read that some monitors with the same model number from the same manufacturer could have different sync polarities if they were manufactured at different times. Yuck! Unless Nvidia figures out a way around the sync polarity requirement, I may pass. I wonder if I can make it another generation on my 5870s.

I believe the issue has to do with one of the monitors using the Displayport because I have the exact same problem using a GTX 680 and 3 BenQ XL2420T monitors. They all run fine at 1920x1080 at 120Hz when they're not set to surround mode. When I try to enable surround, the max resolution it will offer is 3840x1024 at 75Hz or 4320x900 at 120Hz. So, related to what Bifurk8 pointed out, even though my monitors are identical models, the fact that one is connected using the displayport causes it to use a different sync polarity. In my case, the monitor on DP is (+,+) and the two on DVI are (+,-) and so the surround res is being forced lower than native. I have tried switching which one is using the DP cable and the polarity stays the same in regards to the cable, not the specific monitor (in other words the monitors don't care which polarity is needed, it will use whatever the connection type requires.) If I try to force the polarities to be the same before enabling surround, it either doesn't change at all or it flips to the exact opposite (+,+ to -,- or +,- to -,+).

I have made a few posts about the issue on the nVidia forums and not gotten a direct response to any of them. Hopefully they are aware of the problem and working on it even if they aren't specifically saying so. Interestingly, somewhere on nVidia's site it says that with future drivers they will support 3D surround on one GPU, but only using the XL2420T, presumably because it is one of, if not the only, monitor out currently that supports 120Hz over the displayport (120Hz being a requirement for 3D and HDMI only going up to 60Hz). So for them to already state that possibility up front, they must believe that it is possible to enable surround in a DVI,DVI,DP configuration at native resolution and frequency. The only question is do they think it should already be working currently in 2D mode and just plan to add 3D support later, or do they know that any surround in this setup is currently broken and plan to fix it in future drivers? I just wish I could get some sort of official response on the matter.

I had the same issue with 3 "identical" samsung 1680x1050 monitors. I don't know if your monitors are the same or not but here goes. I am just gonna cut to the chase, I got it to work and this is how I did it. I followed someone elses post on creating custom inf files.(kudos to the guy/gal). Follow the instructions on creating them and updating the windows drivers for your monitor with the custom inf file. BTW, after I did that I could not get the nvidia control panel to switch to surround mode, that's when it hit me, that somehow the updated custom inf file was causing a conflict with the nvidia drivers. So I reinstalled the nvidia drivers tried to set up surround and BAM I got 5040x1050 option. For me after I initiated the surround I had to go back to nvidia control panel and change the resolution, but like I said 5040x1050 was now available and (native).

Good luck!

Attached files

HowToCreateOneDriverForThreeMonitors.zip (1 MB)

jdrick,
It was a failure haven't seen your post before I had read your post. ;)
I just bought 3xbenq xl2420T and a gtx670 in order to upgrade my 3x17" and sli gtx260.
Mi first attempt was to connect the three new monitors to the current sli (gtx260) using the same cords I was using for the 17" monitors (dvi connectors). The result does not works well. I can switch on all three monitors, but when I try to surround them, one of them is not detected or detected incorrectly (the setup wizard thinks it exists but it is really in a black screen, even thoung the resolution confirmes me as 5760x1080, and it shows only a number '1' as unique identifier of displays.
I think this issue could also be related to the sync behavour.

This afternoon I will try to change the actual sli gtx260 with the single gtx670 with a dp cable using "dp to dvi adapter", but I guess I will have the same problem you have. :(
I hope nvidia realeases soon a new drivers to solve the polarity sync issue.

Anyway, I can't understand why do my system is not showing the third monitor in surround mode with these monitors. (It works perfeclty with the old 17" ones) (using the same dvi connections).

I had the same issue with 3 "identical" samsung 1680x1050 monitors. I don't know if your monitors are the same or not but here goes. I am just gonna cut to the chase, I got it to work and this is how I did it. I followed someone elses post on creating custom inf files.(kudos to the guy/gal). Follow the instructions on creating them and updating the windows drivers for your monitor with the custom inf file. BTW, after I did that I could not get the nvidia control panel to switch to surround mode, that's when it hit me, that somehow the updated custom inf file was causing a conflict with the nvidia drivers. So I reinstalled the nvidia drivers tried to set up surround and BAM I got 5040x1050 option. For me after I initiated the surround I had to go back to nvidia control panel and change the resolution, but like I said 5040x1050 was now available and (native).

Good luck!

I have a friend who just got a 670 and was suffering from the same problem you were but, we were able to get it working with this solution. Thanks smprc!

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Thanks everyone for their responses. This would have NEVER occured to me. I would have responded much sooner but my friend left with his system (the owner of the GTX 670) a day after I posted this and there were not responses. If he ever decided to go with three monitors (not likely due to cost and performance), we'll really have to be careful of this. I have 2 Dell monitors and 1 from Samsung (all 22", all 1680x1050) so I'm guess that there are definitely subtle differences between the two. Eyefinity works fine minus tearing on the left monitor. Hopefully my next GPU will have 3 DisplayPorts so I won't have this problem (that's the solution I believe).

Hi everyone

I was facing the exact same problem with my setup (GTX 670, XL2420T, 2x B2409HDS-B1) with current nvidia stable drivers. Couldnt go further than something close to 3000x1024
I installed the last beta driver (304.79), reverse all screen drivers to plug and play display (i guess this didnt helped, but i didnt checked), rebooted, and then i can reach 5760x1080 !

So maybe give a try to the last beta driver ?

quite off-topic: Is there an easy way to switch between surround and standard (3x full hd) config in nvidia tools ? its quite annoying to reactive and reorder all screen each time ... and redo surround border alignment

But i cant set XL2420T to 120Mhz now :( ... (in non-surround mode, indeed)

But i cant set XL2420T to 120Mhz now :( ... (in non-surround mode, indeed)

Fixed using a custom resolution.