Triple display issue

Poultrygeist · August 7, 2018

I hope I post this in the right section. I have a small issue with my triple monitor setup. I have a Gigabyte Windforce R9 280X graphics card and I'm trying to connect 3 monitors to it. Now I have been reading online for the passed 3 hours on how to fix it and nothing seemed to work. My current connections are:

DVI to VGA to 2nd monitor

HDMI to HDMI to main monitor

Mini DisplayPort to HDMI to 3rd monitor (the only one not displaying)

According to some sites I need an active mini dp for it to work but most sites said that the newest updates from AMD does not require an active adapter. The card only has DVI, HDMI and 2x Mini DP. So it's making it really difficult for me. The triple setup worked just fine on my 760 regardless of the weird resolutions. I tried the duplicate then extend method as well as updates, reinstallations and rollbacks.. Nothing seemed to work. Does anyone else have any advice on the issue?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I booted to my Ubuntu drive and all 3 picked up fine from the same card. Has it something to do with Windows 10?

MedievalMatt · August 7, 2018

10 minutes ago, Poultrygeist said:

I hope I post this in the right section. I have a small issue with my triple monitor setup. I have a Gigabyte Windforce R9 280X graphics card and I'm trying to connect 3 monitors to it. Now I have been reading online for the passed 3 hours on how to fix it and nothing seemed to work. My current connections are:

DVI to VGA to 2nd monitor

HDMI to HDMI to main monitor

Mini DisplayPort to HDMI to 3rd monitor (the only one not displaying)

According to some sites I need an active mini dp for it to work but most sites said that the newest updates from AMD does not require an active adapter. The card only has DVI, HDMI and 2x Mini DP. So it's making it really difficult for me. The triple setup worked just fine on my 760 regardless of the weird resolutions. I tried the duplicate then extend method as well as updates, reinstallations and rollbacks.. Nothing seemed to work. Does anyone else have any advice on the issue?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I booted to my Ubuntu drive and all 3 picked up fine from the same card. Has it something to do with Windows 10?

the reason that the active adapter is called for is typically an HDCP thing. If you have a passive adapter on a port that needs an active adapter, the port may not be getting the right signals to initiate a handshake and register the display.

Linux works very differently to windows in how it handles HDCP. Mostly in that it doesnt seem to require an HDCP handshake for a display to work.

Poultrygeist · August 7, 2018

Thank you very much. Makes a lot more sense now. Fortunately for me I don't want to use the triple setup for Eyefinity (due to the strange sizes; 22", 27", 32"). However I managed to fix my issue through the BIOS and enabling integrated graphics together with external video card. So 2 of my displays are connected to my card and the other one on the mobo and it works perfectly now. Thank you very much for the help.