Displayport Adapters: Active vs Passive

[Nicosuave1986]

So I've had a 3 monitor(all are HDMI only) Eyefinity setup for about a year now. I'm using 2 R9 290s(Sapphire Tri-X). I've always had intermittent problems when booting or waking from sleep. The displayport monitor would either come on much slower than the other 2, or simply fail to detect any signal. Sometimes this would be solved by turning the monitor off/on but not always. I just read on another forum about Eyefinity not playing well with passive adapters, which is what I'm using. Does it sound like that's my problem? Do I need an active adapter? All this time I just chalked it up to lousy drivers...

[FlighterLuid]

There's a post on OC.net about active vs. passive DP adapters.

"Passive adapters are merely a cable to go from displayport to DVI/HDMI/VGA/w.e. The video card detects the monitor as such, and outputs the required signal (DVI/HDMI/VGA). This does require one of the two aformentioned clocks, hence why they do not work with eyefinity cards.

Active adapters, on the other hand recieve a displayport signal from the video card, and convert it to DVI/HDMI/VGA. They will always have some sort of onboard DAC or video converter chip which they use to convert the dp signal."

[Nicosuave1986]

 

 hence why they do not work with eyefinity cards.

 

 

I've read that post, but this was the part that confused me. Don't work as in have problems? Or don't work as in shouldn't work at all? Because it does work most of the time, and never disturbs my gaming. I'm trying to figure if it applies to me or not.

[FlighterLuid]

I've read that post, but this was the part that confused me. Don't work as in have problems? Or don't work as in shouldn't work at all? Because it does work most of the time, and never disturbs my gaming. I'm trying to figure if it applies to me or not.

"Eyefinity requires an ACTIVE adapter to enable a third monitor on HD 5000 cards."

My guess is that since the HD 5000 series AMD has tried to get passive adapters to work, but couldn't fully fix the issue, which is why you're having problems with the passive adapter.