ALL RADEONS : Overlay issue in high resolution

[billou2k]

Many Radeon owners have been struggling with a blocky video overlay problem for many months.
The overlay gets its horizontal resolution divided by 2 when refresh rates gets over a limit depending on the resolution.
In "low" resolution the problem never occurs but in 1280*960, 1280*1024, 1600*1200 and over, many users reported the problem in the radeons technical support forums.
This problem has been around for two years (first reported on Rage Pro!) and as far as I know, no one got any answer from ATI yet.
I've put a website on line to explain the problem and allow ATI owners to test their card with a short video file(about 200kB):

http://billou2k.free.fr

It would be very nice if all ATI cards owners could try it and report your result here or by email.
The more people reply the more chances we have to find exactly what cards have the problem, what is the process to reproduce it, and hopefuly the more chances we have to get ATI to answer us about it (and to fix it ;-) ).

If some of you got any information about this from ATI please keep me up to date.

Thanks a lot for your help

Billou2k

PS: here are some Rage3d threads that I've seen about the problem:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33683931 06/05/2003
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=15831 12/04/2001!
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33632816 27/08/2002
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33648127 17/11/2002
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33649239 21/11/2002
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33659486 13/01/2003
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33669882 03/02/2003
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33672446 13/03/2003
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33674107 20/03/2003

 

[rbV5]

AIW 7500 no issue up to 1800x1440 @ 80Hz my card is fine. I own presently and have owned several Radeon cards from AIW Radeon 32DDR thru AIW 9700 pro, none have had this issue.

 

[billou2k]

Thanks rvb5... I'm wondering why I'm being so unlucky
I've got a radeon 8500 for one and an half year and a radeon VE on a new Dell P4 3Ghz and both have the problem at 1600*1200 @ 75Hz (70HZ is fine)
Any idea of what could be the cause?
Anybody else tried the test file?

 

[billou2k]

I found out using Powerstrip, that the combination if horizontal freq and vertical freq make the pixel freq (ramdac) changes:
And i've realised that the overlay gets blocky when the pixel freq gets over 175MHZ. both on a radeon VE and a radeon 8500!
Can someone confirm it ?

 

[cliftonite]

I have a 9700 AIW and I too experience this problem. I use the dongle that came with the card but the lines are still visible. At first I thought at first it was some kind of interference from the monitor cable (there is a whole bunch of electrical wires behind my desk) However even isolating the monitor cable did not make it totally go away (even though it did make a small difference) Since there are alot of other people with the same problem, I have assumed that it is a problem with the drivers (like the Half life bug :| :disgust: ).

 

[billou2k]

The problem I am speaking about is clearly not related with monitor cable.
In what are the resolution / refresh rate do you have the problem?
Can you try the test with Powerstrip to find out the highest settings without overlay problem, and report us the pixel clock?
thanks