ASUS HD4870-1GB display issue (yes, it's old)

Tex Arcana · November 21, 2017

Just hooked up a new TV to my elderly "gaming system", specc'd thusly:

i7-920 2.67GHz
6GB triple-channel RAM
ASUS P6T Deluxe MB
ASUS HD4870-1GB vidcard
CoolerMaster case
800W PS
Win7 Ultimate X64

System was built in 2009. It was originally hooked up to a lovely Samsung 58" Plasma 1080P TV, same year. The TV finally decided to go to that great TV place in the sky (well, the garage, until I figure out what to do with it).

So I moved my roommate's TV in to replace it, a Hisense 55H6B 55" smart tv. For some reason, when the comp fired up, the drivers thought there were two monitors hooked up to it, and expanded the desktop off to the left by about half, making seeing dialog boxes impossible to see & click. Trying to get it back to one, the entire display went blank, and wouldn't show unless I was in safe mode, and fiddling with settings there didn't help the problem. Solution was to uninstall drivers in safe mode, then download the "latest" Catalyst drivers from AMD (2010 vintage), where I found that the drivers identify the TV as having *3* monitors (go figure--I think it's the inputs available, very odd).

Once sorted & working, however, I was unable to get the screen to fill all the way, a 1.5" black border all the way around. I finally dug into the Catalyst settings, and found that the card was set to *UNDERSCAN* by about 5%. :wtf: Default, out of the box, as it were. So I reset it, and yay, proper picture.

NOW for the problem: it won't STAY set to 0% underscan. When the computer goes to sleep, and the TV off, powering on the TV & bringing the computer out of sleep results in the underscan situation again, It won't retain the scan settings.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm desperately happy to entertain them. Please.

Thanks in advance.

Tex