No HDMI audio device at low resolutions!

[Domarius]

Hi guys,

I used to have a AMD Gigabyte HD Radeon 5770, all was fine.

Then I upgraded to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti and started experiencing these problems with HDMI out;

- The HDMI sound device becomes unavailable at low resolutions, and so older or indie games have no sound (it switches to my headphones in my onboard sound). I don't know what the exact threshold is yet, but resolutions above 1650x1080 seem to work.

- In YouTube, when I go full screen or whenever I click the playhead to a new position, it causes my TV to do a "resolution change" where it goes black for about 2 seconds and displays some resolution info (eg. 480p) before the picture shows up. This means I have to keep pausing the damn video and wait, so I don't miss anything. REALLY really annoying when showing people something. I never had to put up with this with my AMD card.

- I had to use the Nvidia control panel to adjust the scale to compensate for overscan on the HD TV. For some reason I didn't have to do this on my AMD card, it just got it right somehow. Not a huge issue but worth mentioning.



Has anyone experienced this before? I would almost go back to my Radeon 5770 just to avoid this *** - but I'd prefer to upgrade than paying for something I already sold... What is a card that doesn't exhibit these problems?

 

[r4t1nhu]

have you installed the latest video card drivers? you can also try to remove the Radeon drivers before install the new ones, to avoid conflict

 

[bigshootr8]

Yea i would just ensure you are running the most up to date drivers and that you don't have conflicting issues between having both amd an nvidia drivers installed if you do.

 

[Domarius]

Thanks for the suggestion, but it's definitely not a driver issue, they're up to date, and I've re-formatted since then.

It's seems to be an issue with the card itself, I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior...

 

[Domarius]

Ok here's a better way of describing the problem. When I have a game running at lower than about 1650x1080 running out my HDMI port on my video card, the computer refuses to use it as a sound device, and switches to my onboard sound.

I've actually had to set all my DosBox games to scale up to 1920x1080 rather than run at native res, for the sound to come out my TV. And some indie games lock their resolution very low, so they will never have sound while played on my TV.

 

[spmike]

I had the same problem with a GTS 450 card, along with video problems using the HDMI out. My solution was to use one of the DVI outputs along with a passive DVI to HDMI adapter. On my card, they are providing audio out the DVI ports, so when used with the HDMI adapter I get audio on the TV via the HDMI. Most people think there is no audio out the DVI port but many of these cards have it available.

I used this adapter:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812270286

Audio and video work fine this way, at least on my card. Your mileage may vary...

 

[Domarius]

I had the same problem with a GTS 450 card, along with video problems using the HDMI out. My solution was to use one of the DVI outputs along with a passive DVI to HDMI adapter. On my card, they are providing audio out the DVI ports, so when used with the HDMI adapter I get audio on the TV via the HDMI. Most people think there is no audio out the DVI port but many of these cards have it available.

I used this adapter:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812270286

Audio and video work fine this way, at least on my card. Your mileage may vary...

Thanks man - I will have to try that out. Glad someone else in the universe is talking about this same problem...