Got the XFX r9 290...AND THE PROBLEMS BEGIN

[Kokiafan]

Been popping in and out of the forums asking for video card advice, and I finally ended up replacing my 7870 with an XFX R9 290 for my three monitor setup.
The 7870 required me to have a powered mini displayport adapter, a displayport adapter, and a DVI to run all three.

The new card has two DVI plugs, one HDMI, one full size Displayport. I have no displayport cables or adapters, and only the center monitor (Asus) has an HDMI plug.

Hook the HDMI to the Asus, and use the DVI for the other two monitors. You know what happens next...all three monitors act like they are getting a signal, but only one monitor actually displays anything, and it aint the HDMI. I do a bit of reading, and buy an DVI to Displayport cable, hook that up with the other two monitors on DVI. Windows 7 64 detects all three monitors, but the Displayport monitor is shown with a tiny icon, no signal goes to the monitor. When I click detect, 1 and 2 show up, but the 3 does not show on the displayport monitor.

Hook the displayport cable to the other monitors and get the same result.

Figure this has been talked about here before but a search did not help. Can you?

System:
Computer
Model : GigaByte
Serial Number : To be fille***********
Chassis : GigaByte Desktop
Mainboard : GigaByte 990FXA-UD3
Serial Number : To be fille***********
BIOS : AMI (OEM) FB 01/22/2013
Total Memory : 32GB DIMM DDR3

Processors
Processor : AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (4M 8T 4.22GHz, 2.21GHz IMC, 4x 2MB L2, 8MB L3)
Socket/Slot : AM2r2/AM3

Chipset
Memory Controller : AMD F15 (Orochi) CPU HT Hub 2x 2.61GHz (5.23GHz), 2x 16GB DIMM DDR3 1.34GHz 128-bit

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)
Memory Module : Corsair CMX16GX3M2A1333C9 8GB DIMM DDR3 PC3-10700U DDR3-1334 (9-9-9-25 4-33-10-5)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : (Standard monitor types) Generic Non-PnP Monitor
Monitor/Panel : Dell Computer DELL E2414H
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Monitor/Panel : ACI VW246
(1920x1080, 24.0")
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (40CU 2560SP SM5.0 980MHz, 4GB DDR5 5GHz 512-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (40CU 2560SP SM5.0 980MHz, 4GB DDR5 5GHz 512-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)
Video Adapter : AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (40CU 2560SP SM5.0 980MHz, 4GB DDR5 5GHz 512-bit, PCIe 3.00 x16)

Graphics Processor
OpenCL GP Processor : AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (2560SP 40C 980MHz, 4GB DDR5 5GHz 512-bit)
Compute Shader Processor : AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (2560SP 40C 980MHz, 4GB DDR5 5GHz 512-bit)

Storage Devices
Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN166 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 3TB (F
HGST HDN724030ALE640 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm) : 3TB (K
SanDisk SDSSDHII480G (480.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD) : 447GB (C
ATAPI iHAS124 A (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache) : N/A (E

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (F : 3TB (NTFS) @ Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN166 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
System Reserved : 376MB (NTFS)
Hard Disk (C : 447GB (NTFS) @ SanDisk SDSSDHII480G (480.1GB, SATA600, 2.5", SSD)
New Volume (K : 3TB (NTFS) @ HGST HDN724030ALE640 (3TB, SATA600, 3.5", 7200rpm)
Optical Drive (E : N/A @ ATAPI iHAS124 A (SATA150, DVD+-RW, CD-RW, 2MB Cache)

Peripherals
LPC Hub Controller 1 : ATI (AMD) IXP SB600/700/800 SMBUS Controller
LPC Hub Controller 2 : ATI (AMD) SB700/800 LPC host controller
LPC Legacy Controller 1 : ITE IT8728F
Audio Device : Gigabyte IXP SB600 High Definition Audio Controller
Audio Codec : Realtek Semi High Definition Audio
Audio Device : Pine Technology High Definition Audio Controller
Audio Codec : ATI (AMD) HDMI Audio
Serial Port(s) : 1
Disk Controller : Gigabyte SB700/800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
Disk Controller : Gigabyte SB700/800 IDE
Disk Controller : Gigabyte 91xx SATA 6G Controller
USB Controller 1 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB OHCI0 Controller
USB Controller 2 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB EHCI Controller
USB Controller 3 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB OHCI0 Controller
USB Controller 4 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB EHCI Controller
USB Controller 5 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB OHCI2 Controller
USB Controller 6 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB OHCI0 Controller
USB Controller 7 : Gigabyte SB700/800 USB EHCI Controller
USB Controller 8 : Gigabyte Etron USB 3.0 Extensible Host Controller
FireWire/1394 Controller 1 : Gigabyte VIA VT6308 1394 OHCI Controller
SMBus/i2c Controller 1 : ATI SB800 SMBus

Printers and Faxes
Printer : EPSON WF-3640 Series (600x600, Colour)
Printer : SnagIt 9 Printer (600x600, Colour)
Printer : Send to Microsoft OneNote 15 Driver (1200x1200, Colour)
Printer : Microsoft XPS Document Writer (600x600, Colour)
Fax : Microsoft Shared Fax Driver (200x200)
Fax : EPSON PC-FAX driver (203x203)

Network Services
Network Adapter : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller (Ethernet, 1Gbps)
Network Adapter : TAP-Windows Adapter V9 (Ethernet, 100Mbps)

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 6.01.7601 (Service Pack 1)
Platform Compliance : x64

 

[mysticjbyrd]

If I had to make a guess, you aren't setting things up properly in the windows OS. The R9 290 supports a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors.

 

[KingFatty]

Yes, can you elaborate on the procedure you followed in Windows for extending your desktop across all 3?

Usually, you'd right-click on the desktop, and select screen resolution or whatever, and select the disabled monitor, then change the drop-down selection (labeled "Multiple Displays") from "Disconnect this display" to "Extend desktop to this display."

Currently, your description omits any specific configuration steps that you took after physically connecting the displays. So it sounds like you simply connected the cables and stopped when that didn't work, without doing any configuration of windows/software.

Although you can also configure this under the AMD catalyst control panel, I think it's easier and more intuitive to just do configure triple display under windows.

 

[EliteRetard]

I'm a bit confused on the final connection configuration you're using. It sounds like you may be trying to run a cable from the DVI port on the GPU to a DP connection on a monitor. If so, that aint gonna work. Also, I don't think you can use all three DVI/HDMI ports at the same time...especially with what appear to be different monitors. You can use 1xDVI 1xHDMI and 1xDP, or 2xDVI and the 1xDP.

What are the connections available on your monitors?

 

[KingFatty]

What physical ports/connections are available on those monitors?

Do any of the monitors have displayport connections?

Are you avoiding displayport because you don't have any displayport cables? If you have displayport cables, but they are mini instead of normal, then you can get a very inexpensive passive adapter off ebay to re-use your existing cables, it might be cheaper than just getting a regular displayport cable.

 

[Headfoot]

I'm a bit confused on the final connection configuration you're using. It sounds like you may be trying to run a cable from the DVI port on the GPU to a DP connection on a monitor. If so, that aint gonna work. Also, I don't think you can use all three DVI/HDMI ports at the same time...especially with what appear to be different monitors. You can use 1xDVI 1xHDMI and 1xDP, or 2xDVI and the 1xDP.

What are the connections available on your monitors?

The 290 has a beefier display controller, it allows 3x HDMI/DVI actually which is pretty nifty. All the displays basically have to be exactly the same though to get 3x HDMI/DVI to work. I believe you have to do some configuration too. For that reason I run my triple monitor setup on my 290 as 2x DVI + 1x DP to DVI converter

 

[KingFatty]

All the displays basically have to be exactly the same though to get 3x HDMI/DVI to work.

Are you sure? I thought the nice thing about AMD was you had freedom to use mismatching monitors, unlike Nvidia. Is the limitation you mention somehow specific to a given brand? Where did you learn about this limitation?

 

[Shmee]

What drivers are you using? Did you update them?

 

[superunknown98]

The 290 has a beefier display controller, it allows 3x HDMI/DVI actually which is pretty nifty. All the displays basically have to be exactly the same though to get 3x HDMI/DVI to work. I believe you have to do some configuration too. For that reason I run my triple monitor setup on my 290 as 2x DVI + 1x DP to DVI converter

This sounds very strange to me, I do not recall any recent card being able to display 3 HDMI or DVI at the same time. I recommend looking at the cd that came with your card for the manual. I tried to find any 290 card's manual online and came up blank. But according to Wikipedia for eyefinity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Eyefinity), only two of the sources can be HDMI or DVI.

Update: I found a Sapphire 290 manual that clearly states only 2 out of the 3 HDMI/DVI can be used at once.

3.2.1 Multiple Displays
Your AMD Radeon™ R9 290 graphics card provides display functionality for up to five
displays using any combination of the following:
• Any number of DisplayPort connections.
You can connect more than one display to a DisplayPort connection using a daisy
chain configuration or a hub (multi-display support is made possible through
the DisplayPort v1.2 standard).
• Two connections between the dual-link DVI and HDMI connections.
Note: Display functionality for up to six displays may be possible through custom
display output configuration on partner boards.