Triple Monitor Help

[Csandor777]

I'm currently running a setup whereby my PC (Win7-x64) has a Radeon 5870 running to 3 displays: one via DVI, another via DP, and a third "display" via HDMI. The displays are physically set so that the DVI display is on the left, the DP is in the middle (and is set as the primary), and the HDMI is on the right. The desktop extends across all displays. I use the middle/primary as the full-screen display when watching random videos or playing games. In spite of the middle display being the primary, the 22" on the left is where my main desktop items and taskbar reside, so I can actively do random stuff on the left-hand display while playing a game on the primary, if needed. The displays are numbered, left-to-right, 3-1-2.

The third "display" is in reality an HDMI hub (Kinivo 501BN) that feeds an A/V receiver (and subsequently a 50" plasma TV). The hub auto-switches between inputs when it senses an input going live. My PC is almost always on, so the hub will only switch to another active input when I turn one of the other attached devices on (those being an XBox360, DirecTV receiver, a standalone Blu-Ray player, and a spare cable that I plug random devices into as needed).

The issue: whenever the hub switches inputs, Windows thinks that the HDMI display has been switched off, and reverts the taskbar and all desktop items to the primary display, and deactivates the left-hand monitor (even though it's still attached!). If I switch the hub back to the PC's input, or allow it to auto-switch back by disconnecting/turning off another component, Windows reactives the other two displays, but retains the positioning of the taskbar and desktop items on the middle/primary. I then have to manually re-set things the way I want them to be. I know, I know, it's a bit of a clunky setup, but works for me 90% of the time, as I honestly do rarely activate other inputs on the HDMI hub.

Is there any way to fool Windows into maintaning the display setup I want it to have, regardless of whether or not one of the monitors gets disconnected/is attached? Is it simply a setting in CCC that I'm missing? Or, is there an HDMI hub that I could be using which maintains the connection to the PC even if you switch an input on it?

If it makes a difference, the 5870 has 4 outputs: 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, 1 DP. My understanding of how a triple monitor setup will work, and what my personal experience has borne out, is that I can only achieve the 3 monitor setup (without using an externally powered dongle) by using the DP, the HDMI, and one of the two DVIs. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that. And also, if it makes a difference, I have HydraVision installed (not that I actually use it...).

Any help/comments/flaming would be appreciated!

 

[ViRGE]

If you don't mind using some masking tape, a knife, and 5 minutes of your time, there's an easy fix for this. Tape over HDMI pin 19 - that's the hotplug sense pin. If that pin is cutoff, Windows will be unable to tell that the HDMI connection has been severed in any way.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/HDMI_Connector_Pinout.svg

 

[KingFatty]

As to your understanding about outputting to 3 displays, I'm currently using 2xDVI ports and 1xDisplayPort, so I can get triple monitor (and eyefinity) without using the HDMI at all.

Have you tried a cheap DVI-to-HDMI converter? Maybe if you connect the HDMI monitor to a DVI port, the computer won't get confused when the HDMI disconnect occurs.

But your behavior sounds anomalous, I don't think it should disable an unrelated monitor when you disconnect a different monitor? Do you currently use Hydravision? Maybe as part of the troubleshooting, you can uninstall Hydravision and see if that helps.

Out of curiosity, when you press Windows+P, what display mode is your computer running? Maybe you can try cycling to the display mode of extended, then configure all 3 monitors. When I use extended mode, I can power-off one of the three monitors, but the other two will remain active without reshuffling anything. HOwever, my desktop would still extend onto that "missing" monitor area, so I can tell my mouse can go to that location, it's just the monitor is not displaying it. That's how I think yours should work?

 

[Csandor777]

If you don't mind using some masking tape, a knife, and 5 minutes of your time, there's an easy fix for this. Tape over HDMI pin 19 - that's the hotplug sense pin. If that pin is cutoff, Windows will be unable to tell that the HDMI connection has been severed in any way.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/HDMI_Connector_Pinout.svg

Interesting. If all else fails, I could try that.

 

[Csandor777]

As to your understanding about outputting to 3 displays, I'm currently using 2xDVI ports and 1xDisplayPort, so I can get triple monitor (and eyefinity) without using the HDMI at all.

Have you tried a cheap DVI-to-HDMI converter? Maybe if you connect the HDMI monitor to a DVI port, the computer won't get confused when the HDMI disconnect occurs.

But your behavior sounds anomalous, I don't think it should disable an unrelated monitor when you disconnect a different monitor? Do you currently use Hydravision? Maybe as part of the troubleshooting, you can uninstall Hydravision and see if that helps.

Out of curiosity, when you press Windows+P, what display mode is your computer running? Maybe you can try cycling to the display mode of extended, then configure all 3 monitors. When I use extended mode, I can power-off one of the three monitors, but the other two will remain active without reshuffling anything. However, my desktop would still extend onto that "missing" monitor area, so I can tell my mouse can go to that location, it's just the monitor is not displaying it. That's how I think yours should work?

My initial attempts revolved around 2xDVI and 1xHDMI, since the TV/receiver/hub takes HDMI (for vid+audio) while the monitors took the DVI (not needing audio). Then I read that the HDMI port was shared with one of the DVI ports, and hence I couldn't drive three displays with that configuration. Once I brought the DP port into play, I could drive all three displays. I could try 2xDVI to the monitors and do a DP-to-HDMI cable to the hub. Not sure if I have such a cable laying around, but will try it if I do. And I can't try DVI-to-HDMI for the hub, since DVI won't give me audio to pass to the A/V receiver.

HydraVision is installed, yes, though I'm not actively using it. I will try uninstalling it as you suggest and seeing if that changes the behavior.

And yes, the displays are in Extend Desktop mode. And you're correct, it shouldn't be behaving as it is!! At work I routinely deal with 4 monitor setups (granted it's on Windows XP) that do exactly what you describe: unplug any one monitor and the rest remain as is, with the cursor floating to the extended monitor even though it's not displaying anything.

 

[Itchrelief]

And I can't try DVI-to-HDMI for the hub, since DVI won't give me audio to pass to the A/V receiver.

I can't really help you in all actuality, but I believe this statement could be wrong, depending on the capabilities of your graphics card. I have an Nvidia 9800 that can pass audio through HDMI when using a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, but this card requires you to plug in a SPDIF pass-through from the motherboard to the graphics card first. I think I heard ATI/AMD cards of similar or newer generation to the 9800 had this capability built in without the passthrough (and NV cards of newer generation, I believe), but I am not sure. You might want to look into this further.

 

[Csandor777]

I can't really help you in all actuality, but I believe this statement could be wrong, depending on the capabilities of your graphics card. I have an Nvidia 9800 that can pass audio through HDMI when using a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, but this card requires you to plug in a SPDIF pass-through from the motherboard to the graphics card first. I think I heard ATI/AMD cards of similar or newer generation to the 9800 had this capability built in without the passthrough (and NV cards of newer generation, I believe), but I am not sure. You might want to look into this further.

Yes, you're right. I wasn't aware that was possible. Very neat that AMD/nVidia would put that capability into their cards.

 

[Csandor777]

Just a quick update, uninstalling HydraVision hasn't changed the behavior. Will try a DP-to-HDMI and see if that helps.

I'm almost leaning towards the quck and dirty solution of taping off the auto-sense pin as described above!

 

[KingFatty]

With my 5850, I had an issue with HDMI where my monitor would think it was disconnected instead of powered down when I turned off the computer, so the monitor would flash a warning. Now, this could be a problem with the cable or the monitor, not necessarily the video card. But I just wonder if maybe there is something weird about using the HDMI port of the video card.

If possible, maybe you can eliminate the HDMI from the equation by trying triple monitor with DVI and DisplayPort (and/or VGA) connections to the monitors. If that ends up working fine, then maybe you can start blaming the HDMI implementation. As in, maybe your HDMI hub and setup is fine, but it's an issue with the video card HDMI port being kind of weird? Who knows, maybe your HDMI setup/hub etc. is fine and could work fine if you used a simple DVI-HDMI connector to enable you to avoid using the video card's HDMI port (e.g., using 2x DVI ports and 1x DP). I happen to have such a DVI-HDMI converter that I bought for like $0.99 on ebay that was shipped from china. And by the way, when I use that adapter, and plug the very same HDMI cable into my monitor, the monitor is able to go to sleep perfectly without having the "disconnected" issue that occurs when I plug the HDMI cable directly into the HDMI port of my 5850. So though it's a hunch, I wonder if you can get away with this adapter to make your setup work?

As for the audio, with AMD cards, they actually have a sound card chip built into the video card, so the computer will load a specific sound card for your video card. If you have a motherboard sound card, then technically you have 2 sound cards in your computer. Thus, you don't need to use a pass-through for passing the audio from the mobo sound card through the video card, because instead of passing-through, the AMD cards will generate their own sound right in the video card, and you could even disable your motherboard sound card if you wanted to generate audio from the video card's sound card.