Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello,

I posted this in the technical forums but though I would post here as well seeing as im new here and have no clue where the preffered spot would be.

I recently built myself a new rig and decided to go with the Matrox unit for widescreen gaming. I love the look but have been experiencing some problems with it.

My setup consists of;

Windows Vista Ultimate

2x GTX285's SSC Edition in SLI w/ 182 drives
i7 920 Processor @ 2.7ghz
12GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600

3x Asus 21.5" LCD Monitors VH222H.


After a reasonably hard time trying to get the Matrox unit to work. I finally got the firmware and what not installed to allow me to go to 5040x1050 resolution. Needless to say it works fine most of the time.

Problems I am experiencing are as follows;

Blackouts - Every now and then, an average of once a day I'll be either playing a widescreen supported game such as WoW or a game in Windowed mode. The screens will just all go black and then I get the message, "No DVI Connection Found". I can still hear whats going on and people talking on vent, I can even talk back. However my monitors never come back up even after shutting them off and on. I have to manually restart my computer then everything works again. Works for awhile, but then this occurs again within a day or so.

Skipping - When I play games like FFXI in windowed mode because they don't support widescreen gaming. I find it runs smooth 80% of the time, but then randomly for brief periods it gets extremely skippy. Yet the FPS sais it is still @ 29, and doesn't seem to really change much. Could this be a memory problem or something? I just can't imagine why I would experience anything like this with my setup.


All together the two above issues make my experiences with the Matrox unit at a moderate satisfactory level, and that's saying a lot. I'm sure I would enjoy it a lot more if I could resolve them. Either that or im considering calling this a failed experiment and going back to single monitor mode.

If there is anything you can do to help me, I'd greatly appeciate it!

I don't have a solution for you, but it might help the diagnosis if you could let us know if the problems never happen out of game - desktop apps only.

_________________
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

For testing purposes, go back to single monitor with no TH2Go unit between the GPU and monitor... see if these blackouts still happen. If they don't, RMA the TH2Go detailing the issue to Matrox.

As for the occasional stutters... do you have an 'on access' antivirus program running in the background? Norton and McAfee are the two worst, IMO, for making games stutter randomly.

I do run Norton 360 which I've been told is a virus in itself. I'm going to remove it from my computer using the Norton removal tool. Hopefully that can rip it out without me having to format my hard drive. So that may solve problem 2. We'll have to see. I'm thinking about getting a virus protection software called Kaspersky - any opinions?

http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/internet-security.php?c_id=sem_ggl_bd_us_kaspersky


As far as problem 1 goes, the bigger of the two. Do you think it could have any link to the following posted thread? It sounds very similar.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14366

I am no computer guru to say the least, but Kaspersky A/V was recommended to me by somone in the know. I have used it for 2 years and found it to be fantastic, as far as I know...LOL. Its updating is simple and non obtrusive. I have never had to switch it off when D/L patch's except COH updates as it 'seems' (and I could be wrong) to slow or interupt the D/L. Other than that it has never interfeared with any program I am running on or off line.

Its particular recommendation was that it is unobtrusive to gaming, which is important as I am a sim racer and stutters are simply not acceptable and = crash or punting someone else off, which is widely condemmed in racing circles. Others may have better info but I hope this helps.

[quote]I do run Norton 360 which I've been told is a virus in itself. I'm going to remove it from my computer using the Norton removal tool. Hopefully that can rip it out without me having to format my hard drive. So that may solve problem 2. We'll have to see. I'm thinking about getting a virus protection software called Kaspersky - any opinions?

http://usa.kaspersky.com/products_services/internet-security.php?c_id=sem_ggl_bd_us_kaspersky


As far as problem 1 goes, the bigger of the two. Do you think it could have any link to the following posted thread? It sounds very similar.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/9330]
The fixes in that thread have got to be worth a shot. ;)

As for Kaspersky... the one time I tested it, it thought Steam was a P2P worm - while adding Steam.exe to the exceptions list fixes that issue... I don't like adding exceptions to my AV program. I'm currently using Avast - it's not the quickest, but it's free and it gets the job done.