Catalyst Control Center

Question

Hello, I recently purchased an Alienware R4 with Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD6950 Cross-FireX enabled video cards. I purchased a Dell U2410 monitor and connected it over DVI and it worked great.   But then I decided to also connect my old Dell 1900FP monitor as well over DVI. What I found was that none of the DVI ports on the 2nd video cards would work?  Only the two DVI ports on the 1st video card worked? So I left it like that for a while, then I bought a 2nd U2410 and replaced the 1900FP.  The two workedfine over DVI, again plugged into the same video card.  I started researching the subject and from what I can tell I should be able to add a 3rd monitor, my 1900FP. Since I ran out of DVI ports on the 1st video card, and since the DVO on the 2nd video card won’t work, I bought a Mini-Display to DVI adaptor and tried to connect it to the Mini Display port.  Again, I get nothing if I plug it into either mini-display on the 2nd video card.  If I connect it to either mini-display port onthe 1st card (along with the populated 2 DVI ports) it seems to detect it, but nothing displays? Catalyst Control Center detects it, but it won’t allow me to configure it.  If I go through Win 7 Control Panel/Appearance and Personalization/Display/Screen Resolution/Change Appearance of your Displays, it will detect there too, but when I try to 'Extend Desktop to this Display' and click apply I get an error 'Unable to Save display settings? I saw a Dell video on how to setup 3 displays, but it assumes Catalyst Control Center can detect and enable you to configure each, in my case all 3 are detected, but only 2 are configurable…What am I missing? I called technical support and they said it’s not a warranty problem, it’s a configuration problem.  I can’t locate any documentation on how to properly set this up?   He referred me to another 'software support' guy who wanted to charge me $129.00 before I even said hello! I tried to upload a screen shot of what my Control Centre shows so you can see it, but can’t I keep getting errors like 'Sorry, there was a problem with your last request!'….Dell’s on-line support has a lot to be desired… Is anyone in the same boat or was in the same boat as I am now and figured this all out? When you have dual video cards aren’t they both supposed to both work? Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

Tesla1856 · Answer

When you CrossFireX the cards, only the ports on the Primary card work.

Are you trying to use all these monitors to setup an Eyefinity gaming setup or do you just want a bunch of monitors connected to Extend your Windows desktop across (maybe for software development or multiple Windows productivity apps)

Smeegle1098 · Answer

Well, if only my primary card works, that suggests the cross-fireX is configured properly i guess.

For now, I would just like to extend my windows desktop across 3 monitors. I may want to try the EyeFinity setup later, but at the present time I can't do either with 3 monitors only the 2.

Any ideas? LIke I mentioned before it 2 work fine, the 3rd will detect, but it won't allow me to configure it. I just may another attempt at inserting a pic of what the Catalyst Control Center looks like when I attempt to detect displays. It shows all 3 monitors, the first two U2410's are numbers 1 and 2, and illuminated in a bluish color, the 3r 1900FP is dark and has a green checkmark above it...The message at the bottom says "To Continue, start a new task". How do you start a freaking task?

Smeegle1098 · Answer

Well Telsa,

I figured it out. I was doing some more research on the AMD Web-site FAQ page support.amd.com/.../AMDEyefinityFAQs.aspx and I learned a number of things:

If you are using Dual Display cards, only the ports on the Primary Card will work, ie. Monitors connected in a Display Group must be connected to the same GPU and set to the same orientation (e.g., Landscape or Portrait).
You can connect up to two non-DisplayPort monitors at one time to an AMD Eyefinity technology-enabled graphics card using non-DisplayPort connections or passive DisplayPort dongles. To enable and drive 3 or more non-DisplayPort monitors at one time, any non-DisplayPort monitor beyond the first 2 must be connected with an active DisplayPort dongle.
For active DisplayPort adapters, VGA and DVI adapters are available, not true I recieved a "mini-display" to "display port" adaptor /w my R4 and it worked.
AMD Eyefinity Validated Dongels can be found here: http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

I'm a happy camper now. And to think I left work early due to a headache and I figured this one out... Now, if I can only figure out why I can't Create a System Repair disk....I haven't rebuilt my PC yet, to be honest it's scaring the crap out of me...

Spamfighter · Answer

.....................I tried to upload a screen shot of what my Control Centre shows so you can see it, but can’t I keep getting errors like “Sorry, there was a problem with your last request!”…...............

I'm getting the same error lately - why? as it has always worked in the past Anyone else has this problem?

Locked Topics – Alienware General

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