LightingGod
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2008
- Messages
- 66
So, I’ve been reading [H]ardOCP for the better part of fifteen years. I remember buying my Athlon 2500 Barton and overclocking to a 3200 all on recommendations from Kyle and Co., and they’ve never led me astray. But now I have an issue with a card that I bought because of a review here on the [H], and because of that I thought I should post it here.
I read the review of the ASUS ROG STRIX RX 480 O8G GAMING and, long story short, I bought it. So I get it earlier this week, do a fresh install of Win7 Pro, and install the latest drivers from the AMD site (16.12.2). But no matter how I try, I can’t get the card to recognize all of my monitors. I run a triple-monitor setup like so many here (again, bought after they were reviewed on the [H]) that are all DVI-D, so one is hooked up directly to the DVI port, one to a HDMI port via adapter, and one to a DP port via adapter. The only one that receives signal is the one connected via HDMI. I know that all the ports work (the crappy base Win7 driver output to all screens), so I give Asus tech support a call.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. The guy I talk to at Asus tells me that the problem is that I’m using the latest driver from AMD. He goes on to tell me that the only drivers Asus supports are the ones downloaded from the Asus website and that Asus won’t guarantee the basic functionality of the card with any other drivers. When I mention to him that the drivers on the Asus site are three months old and AMD has released 9(!) driver updates since Asus released their last driver, and those updates included support for games I bought during Christmas like Dishonored 2 and Civ 6, he says that doesn’t matter and I should just download the drivers from the Asus site or the card won’t work correctly.
I went and looked back at the review, and I saw that Brent had indeed used the latest available generic AMD driver for testing. I also saw the monitor he used, but there was no mention of how he connected it to the card. Nor was there any mention of multi-monitor testing, even just as far as basic functionality.
So, I have a couple of questions.
First, is this the SOP now with video cards? It’s been a few years since I bought a desktop card, but in recent history I’ve had cards from Gigabyte, Sapphire, and Powercolor (all AMD/ATI chipsets) and none of them had any such silly restrictions on using the driver only from the AIB partner versus directly from AMD. So am I just getting worked up for nothing because this is how it is now? Or is there something off about this situation?
And second, if the official position from Asus is that only drivers from the Asus website are supported, shouldn’t that have been mentioned in the review and testing been done with the Asus drivers instead of the AMD drivers? Or is the question of what drivers to use for testing even asked? And if so, is the follow-up question asked whether the specified driver insures the basic functionality of the card, i.e. the ability to use more than one monitor at a time? I wonder how big of a difference using the ASUS driver would have made to the results. It sure would have made a difference in my decision to buy the card. And as so many [H] readers go multi-monitor, the ability to do that with the card & driver as tested seems like a big deal to me.
This post is not made to bag on Kyle, Brent, or [H]ardOCP. They are my most trusted source of hardware info. My main beef is with Asus. But because my decision to buy this card was very heavily influenced by the [H]ardOCP review, I have an indirect issue with the review itself. If I’m off base, please tell me so and why. That’s why I posted here- to get feedback from the [H] community. Thoughts and comments are appreciated.
I read the review of the ASUS ROG STRIX RX 480 O8G GAMING and, long story short, I bought it. So I get it earlier this week, do a fresh install of Win7 Pro, and install the latest drivers from the AMD site (16.12.2). But no matter how I try, I can’t get the card to recognize all of my monitors. I run a triple-monitor setup like so many here (again, bought after they were reviewed on the [H]) that are all DVI-D, so one is hooked up directly to the DVI port, one to a HDMI port via adapter, and one to a DP port via adapter. The only one that receives signal is the one connected via HDMI. I know that all the ports work (the crappy base Win7 driver output to all screens), so I give Asus tech support a call.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. The guy I talk to at Asus tells me that the problem is that I’m using the latest driver from AMD. He goes on to tell me that the only drivers Asus supports are the ones downloaded from the Asus website and that Asus won’t guarantee the basic functionality of the card with any other drivers. When I mention to him that the drivers on the Asus site are three months old and AMD has released 9(!) driver updates since Asus released their last driver, and those updates included support for games I bought during Christmas like Dishonored 2 and Civ 6, he says that doesn’t matter and I should just download the drivers from the Asus site or the card won’t work correctly.
I went and looked back at the review, and I saw that Brent had indeed used the latest available generic AMD driver for testing. I also saw the monitor he used, but there was no mention of how he connected it to the card. Nor was there any mention of multi-monitor testing, even just as far as basic functionality.
So, I have a couple of questions.
First, is this the SOP now with video cards? It’s been a few years since I bought a desktop card, but in recent history I’ve had cards from Gigabyte, Sapphire, and Powercolor (all AMD/ATI chipsets) and none of them had any such silly restrictions on using the driver only from the AIB partner versus directly from AMD. So am I just getting worked up for nothing because this is how it is now? Or is there something off about this situation?
And second, if the official position from Asus is that only drivers from the Asus website are supported, shouldn’t that have been mentioned in the review and testing been done with the Asus drivers instead of the AMD drivers? Or is the question of what drivers to use for testing even asked? And if so, is the follow-up question asked whether the specified driver insures the basic functionality of the card, i.e. the ability to use more than one monitor at a time? I wonder how big of a difference using the ASUS driver would have made to the results. It sure would have made a difference in my decision to buy the card. And as so many [H] readers go multi-monitor, the ability to do that with the card & driver as tested seems like a big deal to me.
This post is not made to bag on Kyle, Brent, or [H]ardOCP. They are my most trusted source of hardware info. My main beef is with Asus. But because my decision to buy this card was very heavily influenced by the [H]ardOCP review, I have an indirect issue with the review itself. If I’m off base, please tell me so and why. That’s why I posted here- to get feedback from the [H] community. Thoughts and comments are appreciated.