3 Monitors with 1920x1080 Native Resolution won't do 5760x1080

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
J

jakethesnake57

Honorable
Jan 27, 2013
8
0
10,510
Hey Everyone,

After struggling on my own to get a resolution of 5760x1080 in Surround with my 3 displays, I've had no luck and I'm hoping these forums will be of some help.

I have 2 LG Flatron W2442PAs, as well as a Samsung SyncMaster S24B30BL. I wish I had 3 of the LGs, but by the time I built my new rig and wanted to set up surround, they had been discontinued. 🙁

The LGs are full 24" displays, and the Samsung is 23.6", however all 3 support a native resolution of 1920x1080.

I'm using 2 680s in SLI, with all displays connected via DVI, 2 in one card, and one in the other (I've tried switching which ports they are plugged into in every combination possible). When all displays are set to active, they run at 1920x1080, but as soon as I turn on Surround, the max res I can get is 5040x1050. It's so dissatisfying not to have it running at 5760x1080 like I had hoped Surround would on these displays.

I've tried with the Generic PnP drivers and with the LG/Samsung drivers applied to the appropriate displays and it still maxes at 5040x1050. I've also tried applying the same digitally signed .inf file intended for the LGs for the correct profile type (digital) to all 3 displays, as well as .infs I created myself that aren't digitally signed in an attempt to override the EDID info and had no luck with either methods. After a clean install of the Nvidia drivers and trying the last 2 methods, when I go to apply Surround, the Nvidia drivers think for a second and then leave SLI turned off and Surround never enables.

Any ideas? This is driving me nuts. Please help!

Cheers,

Jake
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I have several suggestions for you...

do a clean install of Windows. I GUARENTEE its a driver issue for the monitors.

So here is what you do

1. Back up your data. (Also download ALL of the latest drivers from the manufacture's websites and put on your backup media)
2. Install Windows (Chose custom and delete your partions and format the drive again.
3. Let Windows get set up and do its thing (DO NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERENT AT THIS POINT)
4. Install your Chipset driver for your motherboard.
5. Install everything else (Sata, networking, Audio, USB devices, VGA and so on)
6. THEN connect to the internet and perform Windows Updates (you will probably have to do this 4-5 times before you get all of the updates)
7. Go into NVidia settings and set it up again.

I know it seems long and painful, but it only takes about 4 hours and is a sure fire way of getting it to work... so instead of playing around with it for 24 hours, you can just get it over with.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I struggled with this problem for a long time, and while I can't point you to the link that I found that allowed me to fix it, I can try to explain it. You don't need all of your monitors to be the same - I am running 5760 with two LG 23" and one Asus 27" monitor with two 670s. The issue is that it requires all 3 monitors to have the same exact timings, polarities, everything. At least in my experience, my monitors did not care when I adjusted the timings, but YMMV on that end.

Connect everything per the Span display configuration guide, but then switch the setting in the NVIDIA control panel to "Activate All Displays." Then go to "Change Resolution," and for each of your monitors go to "Customize." Click on "Create Custom Resolution" and set each one to 1920x1080, and then under "Timing" change Standard from "Automatic" to "Manual," then set the Refresh Rate to 60.001 Hz, leaving all of the other settings the same (for me, it was Active pixels: 1920, 1080; Front porch, 88, 4; Sync width: 44, 5; Total pixels: 2200, 1125; Polarity: Positive, Positive). Your monitor will likely flick on and off, and if it worked you'll be able to confirm and then it will flick on and off a second time. Repeat this for all three monitors, and set them all to the custom resolution (not the native 1080 setting it may try to use).

Then, switch back to "Configure SLI" and select the "Span displays" option again, and go through the settings. Hopefully, this will work. Good luck.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

Very possible! I know this is where AMD excels they make everything more "plug and play".
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for the replies guys! I appreciate it.

Jeffery - I've worked in IT for years and tried the "foolproof" method of a clean install etc already before posting this thread. I did that even after following that process right from the get-go; this was a brand new build I did with dual 680s and immediately set up Surround. Still no luck. It was one of my main reasons for doing the build and purchasing the third display to add to the dual 24"s I was using with another system. I also checked on eBay for one of my LGs before buying the Sammy, but only found one; it was in really rough shape with damage to the bezel and I wouldn't trust for a second that it didn't have any dead pixels - which drive me nuts. They also had it posted for more than I paid for the Samsung. You're very correct in saying AMD excels at making Eyefinity much more "plug and play" than Nvidia's Surround.

club_med - You're reply totally sounds like it may work. I'm going to give it a try as soon as I can. I've been swamped at work recently and I've had no time to tinker or do any gaming (ironically enough, I run the IT department for a video game developer). I'm going to give your suggestion a try before I bug some of the graphics programmers at work. I'll let you both know how it goes!

Thanks again :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yea, I ditched Nvidia simply because they just didn't give me ANY reason to stick with them. Most of the AMD cards are better, and the AMD driver are ALWAYS more stable and easier to manage. So I haven't messed with surround since the 9xxx series, but it was a pain in the rear back then.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
At the Game Development studio I work for, they find that Nvidia drivers are leagues ahead of AMDs, and when it comes to development it seems that they are always the way to go. I was sent the 2 680s as a gift from Nvidia since we use their cards exclusively, other than for QA purposes. All that being said, if I knew what I do now about spanning across 3 displays and I was in a situation to where I was purchasing the cards, I would have went AMD.

club_med - I'm sad to inform you that your proposed solution didn't work 🙁. After creating the custom resolutions so all 3 displays would be running off identical settings, I went to configure/apply Surround it does the same thing as when I used the same digitally signed .inf or custom .inf files applied to all 3 displays to override the EDID info. The Nvidia drivers think for a second and then leave SLI turned off and Surround never enables, leaving the settings at "Activate all displays".
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
funny, when you make a game you program it for c++ or something simular, you don't worry about the drivers. The kernel takes care of all of that. NVidia/AMD edits the driver after the game comes out, or during beta testing. Game Developers don't edit drivers, actually I don't even know if they look into them (other than seeing if they can use xxx feature, like physicx or something similar).

Anyways, Im fairly sure that it wont work unless you have the same monitors.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
What's funny? Is that supposed to be a jab at me to hint that I don't know what I'm talking about? Because it just made you look like an idiot that continues to do nothing constructive in this thread; none of your posts have been helpful whatsoever.

I've been polite up until this point with you, but you've really gotten on my nerves now.

"I have several suggestions for you.... RE-INSTALL WINDOWS!!!! I GUARENTEE (*guarantee) its a driver issue for the monitors. Here's a step-by-step on how you should back up your data and do a clean install of windows and then your mobo drivers, and then the Nvidia drivers and VIOLA it'll work. There's no way someone who initiated a thread like this would have done this in the first place!"

Seriously?... Then you suggest that having 3 of the same displays is the way to make it work like I didn't already know that and created this thread to try and find a work-around?

"Yea, I ditched Nvidia simply because they just didn't give me ANY reason to stick with them. Most of the AMD cards are better, and the AMD driver are ALWAYS more stable and easier to manage. So I haven't messed with surround since the 9xxx series, but it was a pain in the rear back then." <- Bullshit. AMD cards are not better, and their drivers are not ALWAYS more stable and easier to manage. They are notorious for having unstable releases and huge fluctuations in driver quality between releases. I'm not saying Nvidia is perfect, they obviously have some improving to do on spanning across multiple displays and make mistakes of their own, but you're quite obviously an AMD fanboy who hasn't touched the last 6 series of Nvidia GPUs.

As for your last post, are you insane? Or just have no idea how game development works and want to sound like you do?

Although a game's source code may be written in C++ along with other languages for scripting etc that pertain to the engine it's created in, a developer ABSOLUTELY worries about video card drivers and how they interface with DirectX APIs. A video card driver and a game's API usage need to be conformant in order for it to function optimally/normally - not looking into this would be a pretty stupid move considering that's what your end-user/customer will be experiencing. Yes, Nvidia/AMD edits drivers after games come out or during their beta testing to optimize this whole process. However, it's very common and almost always the case that Nvidia, AMD/ATI, or both, work closely with game developers to make that optimization happen much earlier on, usually during the game's development at the same time that they are developing features such as PhysX and working with the developer to tweak and optimize those features to make them really shine in the game(s) that are being developed in partnership with them. It's a huge marketing tactic for both parties involved, as it has a massive impact on the end result of a game and gamers' experience with said game(s). If you thought Nvidia or AMD did all the driver tweaking on their own and didn't have those types of relationships, you're nuts. Development for PC is not like it is for consoles, where MS & Sony provide identical Dev Kits to developers to streamline the process - Nvidia and AMD/ATI rely on these types of relationships with PC and cross-platform game devs.

It's a known fact where I work that Nvidia drivers require much less tweaking during development to correct bugs than ATI/AMD drivers, and have a lower number of bugs to begin with. I don't even put ATI cards in workstations unless requested for a specific reason, always by QA or Programmers. Level Designers, Environment/Character/Texture/Layout/Concept Artists, Animators, and Producers all use Nvidia cards as they consistently have far fewer incompatibility issues and in general run more stable across different driver revisions.

I'm a very well educated IT, hardware, and video game enthusiast with enough programming knowledge to realize that you need to educate yourself further before chiming in on another thread like this one. It's a waste of your time, my time, and anyone else who happens to read the thread.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


One more thing to try - after you create your custom resolutions in the "Change Resolutions" section of the nVidia control panel, make sure they are selected. Having gone through this process multiple times when reinstalling drivers, what I found was that sometimes on one monitor would list two 1920x1080 resolutions, one under the custom list and one under the "PC" list. If I selected the custom resolution and clicked "Apply" it would flick on/off and then the "PC" resolution would be selected. I interpreted this to mean that it was treating the custom and resolution the same, favoring the "native" resolution and then refusing t use the custom resolution when switching to SLI spanning. To fix this, I think I just went through the entire process again, this time using a timing that was slightly off the other way (going to 59.999hz rather than 60.001). Keep playing with it, I think you're closer than you think.


I'm fairly sure you're trolling, but hopefully one day you'll get tired of being wrong.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I did try that before posting.. still no luck. I'll tinker with it again sometime soon, for now I have it working at 5240x1050.



That's honestly all you have as a response? Jeffery - you're a ******* idiot and it's quite obvious that you seriously lack education. "My way" included much more in-depth troubleshooting of the Surround feature of Nvidia's driver software than you're pathetic OS re-install suggestion. Why are you even on these forums? Just to be a goddam troll? Go crawl back into your hole where you think you know everything.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


And your way still isn't working I assume? Humm, and Im the one that doesn't know what he's doing... Oh well...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
AMD definitely does not have better drivers. They are the reason I stopped buying ATI/AMD video cards altogether almost 3 years ago. It's not cool to have high fps with visually detectable microstutter all the time in crossfire or wake from sleep issues or having to run driver sweeper just to update drivers or issues with HDMI audio not installing on driver updates, etc... The AMD hardware is quite capable. The drivers are a handicap and in my opinion THE reason you pay less for what would otherwise be comparable performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Well, you assumed wrong. Last night I was able to achieve full 5760x1080 resolution via Surround by using an .inf I created for each display (same .inf for each display) in conjunction with creating custom 1920x1080 resolutions for each display that had identical settings, timing set to manual and the refresh rate at 59.999Hz. I hadn't tried this combo yet and I was using the digitally signed .infs from LG and Samsung for their respective displays when attempting the custom resolution fix suggested by club_med. Huge thanks to club_med for his help with leading me to this solution.

The only solution that you recommended in this thread, Jeffery, was the first thing I tried before even creating it... and guess what? It didn't work. Humm, looks like you are the one that doesn't know what he's doing... Oh well...



^hey look, someone that knows what they're talking about! 😉
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I know that this thread is a little old and that jakethesnake57 has solved his problem, but I wanted to add to it since I had the same issue.

I am using one LG W2442PA and two LG E2442TC monitors. They are all 24" class (W2442PA is 24.0" & E2442TC is 23.6") and 1920x1080.
I fixed it using a combo of EDID Editor and MonInfo to create a new INF file for the W2442PA to override the EDID settings.
The 'interesting' thing about the W2442PA is that it has two sets of timings listed. One is basiclly the same as the E2442TC and the other is the 'prefered' timing. Windows/nVidia seems to want to use the first one only.
The best one can get without modifying the EDID is 5040x1050, but with the modified INF for the W2442PA (using the second timing) you get 5760x1080.
Here is the INF that I created for the LG W2442PA..... Chris

------------------------------------LG_W2442 (mod).inf------------------------------------
Code: 
; INF file generated by Monitor Asset Manager (2.60.0.972), 20/03/2013
; Copyright (c) EnTech Taiwan, 1995-2011.
; Internet: [url=http://www.entechtaiwan.com]http://www.entechtaiwan.com[/url]

[Version]
Signature="$WINDOWS NT$"
Class=Monitor
ClassGUID={4d36e96e-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Provider=%MFG%
DriverVer=20/03/2013, 1.0.0.1
;CatalogFile=YourSignedCatalogFile.cat

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir=23

[SourceDisksNames]
1=%DISC%

[SourceDisksFiles]
;YourColorProfileFile.icm

[Manufacturer]
%VENDOR%=EDID_OVERRIDE,NTx86,NTamd64

[EDID_OVERRIDE.NTx86]
%PRODUCTID%=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install, MONITOR\GSM56D9

[EDID_OVERRIDE.NTamd64]
%PRODUCTID%=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install.NTamd64, MONITOR\GSM56D9

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install.NTx86]
DelReg=DEL_CURRENT_REG
AddReg=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.AddReg, MODE1, DPMS
CopyFiles=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.CopyFiles

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install.NTamd64]
DelReg=DEL_CURRENT_REG
AddReg=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.AddReg, MODE1, DPMS
CopyFiles=OVERRIDDEN-EDID.CopyFiles

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install.NTx86.HW]
AddReg=OVERRIDDEN-EDID_AddReg

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.Install.NTamd64.HW]
AddReg=OVERRIDDEN-EDID_AddReg

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID_AddReg]
;Base EDID
HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE,"0",0x01,0x00,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0x00,0x1E,0x6D,0xD9,0x56,0x61,0x88,0x04,0x00,0x03,0x13,0x01,0x03,0x80,0x35,0x1E,0x78,0xEA,0xAE,0xC5,0xA2,0x57,0x4A,0x9C,0x25,0x12,0x50,0x54,0xA7,0x6B,0x80,0xB3,0x00,0x81,0x80,0x81,0x40,0x71,0x4F,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x01,0x02,0x3A,0x80,0x18,0x71,0x38,0x2D,0x40,0x58,0x2C,0x45,0x00,0x13,0x2B,0x21,0x00,0x00,0x1E,0x02,0x3A,0x80,0x18,0x71,0x38,0x2D,0x40,0x58,0x2C,0x45,0x00,0x13,0x2B,0x21,0x00,0x00,0x1E,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xFD,0x00,0x38,0x4B,0x1E,0x53,0x0F,0x00,0x0A,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xFC,0x00,0x57,0x32,0x34,0x34,0x32,0x0A,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x20,0x00,0xE1

[DEL_CURRENT_REG]
HKR,MODES
HKR,EDID_OVERRIDE
HKR,,MaxResolution
HKR,,PreferredMode
HKR,,DPMS
HKR,,ICMProfile

[DPMS]
HKR,,DPMS,,1

HKR,,PreferredMode,,"1920,1080,60"
[MODE1]
HKR,,MaxResolution,,"1920,1080,60"

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.AddReg]
HKR,"MODES\1920,1080,60",Mode1,,"30.0-83.0,56.0-75.0,+,+"

[OVERRIDDEN-EDID.CopyFiles]
W2442.ICM

[Strings]
MFG="EnTech Taiwan"
DISC="Monitor EDID Override Installation Disk"
PRODUCTID="LG W2442 (EDID Override)"
VENDOR="LGE"
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I did plenty of googling to try and get the right answer, but obviously the solution for a problem like this won't be the same for every hardware/display config. The link you provided does contain a small amount of supplemental info not mentioned in this thread, but it will not be the exact solution for every person experiencing this problem.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

I thought this thread was dead but randomly dug it up today to show to someone and saw this post. Your problem and solution are very similar to the one I had, but differs slightly due to the monitor config not being identical. Thanks for sharing your .inf though! Hopefully everything that's accumulated in this thread now will help save someone's sanity or at least some of their time.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom