The fix for eyefinity screen blackout issues

D

Doritokllr

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Joined
Jan 11, 2010
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I think I have tried everything that is possible to fix this issue and I have found a workable and permanent solution. Let me tell you first of all I signed up for these forums just to post this.

These are things I have tried before anyone reads any further in an effort to prevent people from trying them on their own as they seem useless for the most part.

2 totally different pc's (Mobo, proc, everything different)
2 different brands of 5870 (Sapphire and Asus)
12 different monitors (different brands and ports)
7 different adapters (from displayport to basically everything)
8 different drivers
2 different o/s installs (including fresh reformatting on both as well so 4 technically)
many, many different cables
different peripherals (mouse, keyboard, etc)
every possible setting I can think of with regards to windows 7
every resolution from 1920 x 1200 to 640 x 480 and different refreshrates up to 120hz in one case
So much thought and troubleshooting and reading it will make your eyes bleed

So, after all that it was a 5870 bios flash that fixed it.

This bios from ati changes the voltage of the display port slightly and that keeps the monitor from going into power save or standby or simply losing sync.

http://techpowerup.com/vgabios/61848/ATI.HD5870.1024.091112.html

There may be a bios for your specific card in there but it's up to you to verify if the voltage is changed or not. Using that bios and a few guides on exactly the safest way to flash the bios without bricking some cards I got it working. The primary guide I used was here

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles//overclocking/vidcard/34/1

In the end I have had this fix 5 different 5870's of different makes and models. All have reported no issues in several days and in one instance I do know he has overclocked it slightly as well.

My own stable rig atm runs 3 1920 x 1080 monitors all throgh dvi. 2 natively and one using dell's dp -> dvi active adapter found here. http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/Cables/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&cs=cadhs1&sku=330-5521 A sapphire brand 5870, and the rest seems to make no difference so as to mention it would be useless.

I've spent weeks with this issue and hopefully my troubles have enabled some of you to fix your issues. Bear in mind however that I take absolutely no responsibility should somebody attempt to flash the bios on their card and mess up. Use this fix at your own risk. Let me know if anyone else has had success with this as I have.
 
Doritokllr said:
So, after all that it was a 5870 bios flash that fixed it.

This bios from ati changes the voltage of the display port slightly and that keeps the monitor from going into power save or standby or simply losing sync.

http://techpowerup.com/vgabios/61848/ATI.HD5870.1024.091112.html

There may be a bios for your specific card in there but it's up to you to verify if the voltage is changed or not. Using that bios and a few guides on exactly the safest way to flash the bios without bricking some cards I got it working. The primary guide I used was here

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles//overclocking/vidcard/34/1

In the end I have had this fix 5 different 5870's of different makes and models. All have reported no issues in several days and in one instance I do know he has overclocked it slightly as well.
Click to expand...

Congrats and welcome to the club. BIOS update fixed my 5870 and Apple DVI DP adapter as well. Dave from ATI is actively posting in the widescreenforum site. He's now posted a BIOS upgrade for 5770's as well. So now there are BIOS updates for 5870 / 5850 / 5770 that fixes the pesky DP signal strength from these cards.

You've already posted the link for 5870 BIOS upgrade.

Here's the flash utility others will need:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1731/ATIFlash_3.79.html

Here's the BIOS upgrade for 5850 users:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/65298/ATI.HD5850.1024.091211.html

Here's the BIOS upgrade for 5770 users:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/66005/ATI.HD5770.1024.091007.html

Please read all notes before using. The 5770 BIOS upgrade is for 1024MB models with reference design coolers (the full shroud versions).

Enjoy your Eyefinity setups! :p
 
Great info guys.

I may be missing it, but are there step-by-step instructions anywhere on how to flash the BIOS? I have a feeling I'll screw it up without a guide.
 
Checkemdown said:
Great info guys.

I may be missing it, but are there step-by-step instructions anywhere on how to flash the BIOS? I have a feeling I'll screw it up without a guide.
Click to expand...

A moderator from widescreenforum posted this:

Widescreenforum said:
I was on my way to bed, but thought I could do this first for you. :)

Before you do this, remember that it can void warranty. Should it fail, you need to boot up from another card (while having the other card in) and flash it back again.

What you need is as following:
1. A bootable USB stick (preferably, though bootable diskette would work, but is less safe due to corruption of disk).

2. This bios image on the usb stick/disk (for 5870 cards):
http://techpowerup.com/vgabios/61848/AT ... 91112.html
rename the bios image to: ATI5870.rom

3. and this utility to flash the bios:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/16 ... _3.75.html

Boot up from USB stick to DOS.
Enter following syntax:
atiflash -s 0 backup.rom (this is to backup old .rom file)
atiflash -f -p 0 ati5870.rom

Now its flashed.
Click to expand...
 
Doritokllr said:
There may be a bios for your specific card in there but it's up to you to verify if the voltage is changed or not. Using that bios and a few guides on exactly the safest way to flash the bios without bricking some cards I got it working. The primary guide I used was here

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles//overclocking/vidcard/34/1
Click to expand...


Here's the guide I mainly used from my original post. The link gets a bit lost in the clutter of a larger post sometimes :D
 
Going on 6 hours without a single flash. I couldn't go more than 45 minutes before. Thanks for the heads up!!!
 
simko1ra said:
Didn't work for me, my monitor still loses connection.
Click to expand...

Are you using DP->DVI or DP->VGA? What adapter, monitor(s), and GPU? Going on 24hrs without any screen flashes, obviously I haven't been watching the whole time... But I played a solid 3 hours of MW2 without a single flash last night.
 
I'm using the dell adapter for DP -> DVI. I've tried with the multiple cables on dell 2405s and 2408s, same issue no matter which cable or monitor. I am using a xfx XXX 5870. The flash didn't help the monitor losing connection and it lowered the card's clock rates back to normal levels. I wonder if there is a new bios strictly for the overclocked xfx cards?
 
I've had my bios flashed for about 2-3 weeks. I've had about 2-3 instances of blinking (after a cold boot). It seemed to "stabilized" after a minute or so.

While this didn't solve the problem 100%...it's about 95% there and more than enough to enjoy this feature.
 
Right around 2 weeks of perfection and I just had my first 2 blinks earlier today :( I also just installed the 10.1 Driver last night too... If the blinking continues I'll try reverting back to the previous driver and see if it stops.
 
I flashed my Asus 5850 to this BIOS... It helped, but I still have on/off flicking more times than none. It rarely works perfect with 9.12/10.1 drivers. Before flashing to this BIOS the monitor wouldn't recognize there was signal 90% of the time.
 
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I haven't flashed mine yet......

I have had all sorts of DP wierdness since I bought my 5870.....but not a problem when connected via DVI.

What I'm wondering is......is this a combination of Dell monitors and the 5870????
or also a Dell+5870+DP+Windows7????
I have also noticed intermittant dark screens on my other computer which is a Dell 2408+GTX 8800 + Windows7 Professional......connected via DVI.

By the way....i sent a support ticket to XFX regarding all this whooo-hah and they seemed to put all their faith in the Catalyst 10.1 "hotfix" which hasn't seemed to "fix" the issue at all.
I do not know if XFX is planning a BIOS update, but they told me not to flash using the Sapphire Bios upgrade.

You-all may want to read this thread.......the BIOS flash is not solving everyone's problems: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1470103&page=5 pages 5 and 6 are especially relevant here.
 
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My card is already on the latest asus version of the bios, and atiwinflash will not let me flash the ati version.

Also I am using the 24inch HP monitor directly connecting via a display port cable (no adapters) and my monitor blinks :(

luckily have I have another 4000 series card sitting around so I might just move my 24inch to DVi and one of the two 18inch iiyamas to the 4000 series card.

Has to be something to do with display port.
 
Back to flashing constantly for me after the last driver update.... Guess I'll have to put up with long load times in Bad Company 2.
 
I had random black screen on my Sapphire 5970 as well. Since switching to Sapphire 5870 Eyefinity6(till 5970 4 GB vresions are out) I haven't had one screen black out.
 
I have the XFX HD-587X-ZNDC Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) XXX Edition 1GB 256-bit DDR5. I recently ordered the Dell active displayport adapter and it came branded as a Bizlink.
From the very start I was unable to get a stable picture on the displayport connected monitor, it would always flicker off and on very frequently.

I tried:

  1. Getting a separate 1amp USB power source
  2. flashing the BIOS on the video card with the recommended version shown earlier in this thread
  3. flashing my motherboard to the latest BIOS for it (Gigabyte EX58-UD5)
  4. tried different DVI cables, although I only have various Single Link DVI cables, no Dual link cables to swap out and test though.
  5. Started out with the Catalyst 10.4 drivers and just installed the recent 10.5 drivers
I'm running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate.
Nothing I tried changed the fact that the displayport connected monitor would always blink. I have 3 Acer X233H bd 23" monitors running 1920x1080.

I guess the only thing left is to RMA the adapter back to Dell. The Bizlink adapter has a sticker on it showing the firmware version on it as 034.
It seems a bit stupid that the best thing to do in this situation is to keep RMA'ing the adapters until you get one that works.

If anyone has any other suggestions before sending the adpater back to Dell they would be greatly appreciated.
 
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I've had much better luck with 10.2 than any of the current drivers. 10.2 gives me about 1 flash a day. 10.3 and 10.4 get progressively worse. I have the same DP->DVI adapter and also a cheap DP-VGA adapter. They both do the same thing with the same drivers, same car, same monitor. I realize AMD knows an infinite amount more about these things, but I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue at this point. Every time they update a driver my screen flashes more and more, no matter which adapter I use. I seriously doubt that I got 2 bad adapters.
 
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I just upgraded my 5770s to the newest BIOS and FINALLY the flashing is gone--I hope (no flickers in the past ~8 hours or so).

After flashing the BIOS, I had this weird issue where the monitors on my primary card were significantly darker (lower brightness) than the monitors on the other graphics cards. Monitor brightness was maxed, and I checked the options in the CCC on brightness and nothing looked fishy. Uninstalling the drivers fixed the brightness issue, and then installing 10.5 made them dark again. So I uninstalled 10.5, cleaned it out, and then installed 10.3b and now it's all fine again. Really weird--has anyone else run into this or am I alone here? Hopefully 10.6 won't have the dark screen issue.
 
QuothTheRaven said:
I just upgraded my 5770s to the newest BIOS and FINALLY the flashing is gone--I hope (no flickers in the past ~8 hours or so).

After flashing the BIOS, I had this weird issue where the monitors on my primary card were significantly darker (lower brightness) than the monitors on the other graphics cards. Monitor brightness was maxed, and I checked the options in the CCC on brightness and nothing looked fishy. Uninstalling the drivers fixed the brightness issue, and then installing 10.5 made them dark again. So I uninstalled 10.5, cleaned it out, and then installed 10.3b and now it's all fine again. Really weird--has anyone else run into this or am I alone here? Hopefully 10.6 won't have the dark screen issue.
Click to expand...

There's actually 2 locations for brightness settings, one is accessed in CCC by right clicking the desktop arrangement GUI and hitting properties (or selecting desktop properties drop down box) and the other is accessed by rigth clicking the display list across the bottom and hitting 'configure', so it's possible one of them had the brightness/contrast/gamma turned down even if the other was turned up.
 
I have a non-reference 5850. How would I get this to work? I assume I need to get my bios off my card and edit it somehow before flashing? How would I edit it? Or is there a bios out there for my card?

I have this model, with the MSI lightning bios on it.
 
I was able to sort out my blackoout issues. I run with the bizlink dp-dvi and running this with my 30' by itself, the screen would cut after a minute. To get it back, I would have to unplug/replug the usb connection. Very annoying. However, I missed a very important detail. I can't use the HDMI port for my native HDMI monitor. The issues went away if I did not use the HDMI port. I had to plug my HDMI monitor into the other dvi port. Everything is now rock solid. I was able to game fore 3 hours last night with no glitches. So it seems, I can't use this by itself with a single monitor but can use it with multi monitors if I don't use HDMI. Kinda kludgy solution.

PS, I am running on a clean install with Cat 10.5
 
Thanks for posting this! I have 5850 and recently connected third monitor through displayport (no adapter).
Blinking was pretty frequent, sometimes every few seconds.
Since updating BIOS I have a couple of blinks a day.
Been a while since I had an ATI card in my machine, I can see their drivers and software are still crap, gg.
 
I have a solution !

download the ati 10.3b drivers

( ati_catalyst_10.3b_preview_win7_vista_march25.exe )


or here http://www.mediafire.com/?wyin11oih2n

uninstall old or recent driver with windows panel and after, clean your computer with drive sweeper (all tick ATI box)

reboot, install 10.3b driver, and reboot , and it's works !

(sorry for my little english !)
 
staan said:
I have a solution !

download the ati 10.3b drivers

( ati_catalyst_10.3b_preview_win7_vista_march25.exe )


or here http://www.mediafire.com/?wyin11oih2n

uninstall old or recent driver with windows panel and after, clean your computer with drive sweeper (all tick ATI box)

reboot, install 10.3b driver, and reboot , and it's works !

(sorry for my little english !)
Click to expand...

The problem with that is when a new driver is released it should build upon and improve over older ones. You shouldn't have to down grade your drivers just to be able to use a feature which AMD is touting. I've been there, when I was using a 5870, and it brought me into a world of multi-monitor gaming which I now refuse to leave.

Unfortunately, having to pay over a 130 bucks on extra dongles (dvi one did not work for me so I had to use the vga version) and wading through poor drivers forced me to leave red and go back to green. To sum it up, its been 4 months and 4 driver releases since 10.3 and AMD has done nothing to fix this, its not even acknowledged in their release notes...for shame AMD!
 
Hey guys I might as well ask in here too. I just got an XFX 5970 2gb BE and I cant for the life of me get three monitors to go at all. I have 3 x asus ve276Q which I bought specifically for the displayport (it has hdmi and dvi also). I can get two monitors to work via DVI but the displayport monitor wont budge. S this is my config:

Monitor 1 - DVI --> DVI
Monitor 2 - DVI --> DVI
Monitor 3 - Mini DP adaptor --> DP cable --> DP port

All I get is a black screen. If i go into the CCC diplay options it does recognise that its there indicating its attached vis DP. But it just doesnt work. Suggestions? cheers
 
BTW I am assuming "random blackouts" means the screen loses the signal and then has to search for the signal again.
 
Just updated the bios on my xfx 5770, we shall see if it fixes any of the little issues I have been having
 
Ok some things.

10.7 and 10.8 drives definitely make this problem worse.
AMD says their engineering dept is working on it but have no clues as to a release.
10.6 after driversweeper and clear install with proper reboots helps for some.
Gigabyte doesn't have later bios than AMD has and is the last bios reported on the web.

It really sucks. I can send my entire unit back to gigabyte - but what will thy do - just send me a new one that has same issue.
 
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I was watching the monitor/hdmi based (large high end hidef tv) and the screen went black with the 10.9 drivers (seems much better then anything before - the 10.9) - but this time it stayed black the second time it went black. I was like - hell - can't even see the screen now to do a proper reboot.

Then I decided to go to the "power saving settings" of the hidef tv. Mind you all it does it adjust the brightness of the backlight dynamically. When doing so, the mointor portion came back on - but the audio portion of the HDMI port did not. I had to switch the television to another port (Roku in this case), wait for it to sync and then switch back - and which time the HDMI was returned in full (sound and all) to the tv. So this got me wondering about powerstates and this issue - because if switching it to one port and then switching back causes the blackscreen to disappear, then some type of communication has to be taking place between the tv and the card that tells the card - "Yo Im here you idiot - give me some data to display!" and then finally the card returns the proper data to resync.

So I figured what does the card connect to - well obviously the TV - but also to the PCI-E Bus.

So I did two things... set the tv power saving level ot off, and then looked in the power savings of WIndows 7 for anything that might affect it and found that PCI Linked State Power Management was set to "ON".

Another hint that this was a power thing was that this last time was that the mouse quit responding to clicks at the same time the monitor went blank - and even though I was able to resynch the monitor- I had to log off (using the keyboard) and log back on to get the mouse working. Checked the power settings again and USB Device Suspend was set to on.

While upping the voltage on the adapter may help, I am wondering if this is not the right approach - but adjusting the PCI-E power settings is, and perhaps also in the bios the PCI, e.g. for my P6x58D-e Asus motherboard *I* have the following set to auto but found the following settings on an overclocked motherboard:

IOH Voltage............................[1.14]
IOH PCIE Voltage.......................[1.50]
ICH Voltage............................[1.20]
ICH PCIE Voltage.......................[Auto]
DRAM Bus Voltage.......................[1.64]

Now I haven't changed these settings yet in my bios because I am waiting for the next black screen to see IF the PCI Linked State Powermanagement set to "OFF" is enough (along with disabling power savings in monitor).

For those of you who have this problem - in past or now - can you post and tell me what your "PCI Linked State Power Management" under power settings in the control panel is set to? I would be VERY interested. Otherwise, if I get anymore black screens Im going to have to send this back to gigabyte as that is what Asus told me to do if gigabyte can't resolve it - but it will leave me without a computer for 3-4 weeks which is hard considering Im disabled and this is one of the only outlets I have.

HP
 
Nope - still got it once so far after doing it - its better, but it still seems like the card is not putting out enough voltage to keep a signal level to a lot of monitors / HDTV's. This problem is all over the internet - but AMD is not responding.
 
I tried the PCI power management suggestion, and my DVI monitor attached to the DP port using an adapter now flashes less frequently.

It is strange, as the flashes seem to come in waves. It is rarely the case that the monitor flashes once, then dosn't flash for a while. Rather, the flashes come in groups of 10 or so, then it goes away. Although sometimes it flashes constantly, and I have to reboot to get it to stop. Last, sometimes the DP monitor flashes and then comes back at a smaller resolution, while sometimes it flashes and turns off completely, requiring that I extend the desktop to the DP monitor in CCC in order for it to turn on again.
 
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