AMD R9 280 - some questions

[tinpanalley]

I've had the Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 since January and love it. But there are a few things that puzzle me and I can't figure out...

1. Why does it look like I have 6 cards in the Catalyst Control Center on system tray? The top one (1.) has 'Rotate Display', 'Set Desktop Area To', and '3D Settings' available and all the others only have 'Extended Desktop' available and everything else grayed out.

2. There are, every now and then, strange graphical hiccups in Firefox. I don't see it elsewhere. I know that can be a bad flash install, a particularly graphics heavy site, but it appears to also cause the screen to delay. Which concerns me because that would imply something weird on the graphics card end. Again something to do with those 6 cards that Catalyst Control is seeing?

Thanks guys, I'm completely confused by these things, I'd love some ideas.

 

[rancherlee]

technically your card can drive 6 monitors (eyefinity) which is why your are seeing 6 cards/displays. My 7950 shows the same thing. I also get graphical glitches from time to time using Firefox with AMD cards, never noticed any performance issues though.

 

[tinpanalley]

technically your card can drive 6 monitors (eyefinity) which is why your are seeing 6 cards/displays. My 7950 shows the same thing. I also get graphical glitches from time to time using Firefox with AMD cards, never noticed any performance issues though.

Ok, thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Any idea why Windows insists on naming my computer "projector" and my TV "computer"? In other words, it always chooses to make my computer monitor display 2. It's not a problem, just an annoyance.

 

[KingFatty]

I think the choice windows is imposing is based on the physical port each display is using. Whatever port your TV is plugged into is considered to be primary over your monitor. It's possible a different output port on the video card has higher priority than both the TV and monitor, so if you unplug your monitor from its current port and plug into the highest priority port, then it should be considered the primary display. My experience is usually the displayports have the highest priority, and also I have never found a way to change this. You can mess with settings all you want, but no matter what, the display priorities are set.

An easy way to check the priorities is by going to display properties and "identify" where the computer will display a number on each display. To my knowledge you can't reassign those numbers, even if you change which display is made the primary. And the numbers determine which display is highest priority.

 

[tinpanalley]

I think the choice windows is imposing is based on the physical port each display is using...

Yeah, I played with that port-specific display choice idea and no matter which of the two DVI ports I put the computer on, when the PC reboots, the monitor always goes to #2. Which I suppose would suggest that it wants to prefer the TV to the monitor perhaps because the PC takes longer to "boot" than the TV? Maybe if I connect to the TV via HDMI-out instead of DVI-out?

 

[Stuka87]

The number that the display is does not really matter. You can move the task bar to whatever display you want, making that display your primary (Even if it is #2). On my Dell laptop with a Quadro my main display is #3.

 

[tinpanalley]

The number that the display is does not really matter...

Ok, cool. But unfortunately Windows7 wants to call my desktop "projector" and my TV computer whien I use Windows-P. It's just really confusing. And it's constantly losing the resolution I set which messes up my desktop arrangement.

 

[KingFatty]

Interesting. Would you mind doing the display properties "Identify" thing to see if the numbers assigned to the displays changes when you swap the TV/monitor ports? To confirm, both are connected to DVI ports right?

 

[tinpanalley]

Interesting. Would you mind doing the display properties "Identify" thing to see if the numbers assigned to the displays changes when you swap the TV/monitor ports?

Swapping monitor ports makes the numbers change but as soon as I click 'identify', the TV again becomes '1' and the computer '2'.

To confirm, both are connected to DVI ports right?

The computer is DVI to the monitor, the TV is DVI-out from PC, HDMI-in on the TV.