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Replacement GFX for 'the wife'?

Cenedd

Cenedd

Cenedd

Soldato
Joined
4 Jun 2007
Posts
2,990
Location
Watford, UK
I'm lost and confused and hoping someone can talk some sense into me :D

I mostly work from home and now my wife is working more in my home office. I've just bought her a 24" AOC to replace one of the random small LCD's I'd found lying around. Had to upgrade the onboard graphics as it wouldn't do 1920x1080 so I put in a Sapphire HD6450 I had lying about as surplus from a job. I was dismayed to find a massive black border around the screen even though it was running at native res. Found out that for some reason that is totally beyond me, AMD set underscan at something like 10% by default so you get a stupid border and OCUK nearly get an RMA'd monitor.
Next problem is that every now and then the card blanks out the monitor for a few seconds - which is damned irritating. This actually was why I had the card lying around. I'd put it in for a customer (to support two screens) and this happened. We changed the card out, after first swapping the monitors and the cables and eventually had to replace it with an Nvidia card to resolve the problem. I had hoped that an entirely different machine might not have suffered the issue but no such luck. Firstly, is this a known problem with a solution?

If not, I was looking at a few options:
1. A 2nd hand Nvidia NVS290 at £13. Dual-DVI. Will run 1920x1080 for two screen but nothing more really. Passively cooled and only uses 21W of juice.
2. An Nvidia 730 at £50. Could handle some gaming if I happen to have a friend round once in a blue moon (I have a 580GTX under water). 38W actively cooled, hopefully quietly but unspec'd. Low profile but hopefully comes with a full-height bracket or I'd have to bodge it.
3. An Nvidia 740 at £72. 64W actively cooled. More power, no issues with low profile but could be noisier still - again unspec'd.

Am I missing anything that's a sweet spot of low price for reasonable performance that isn't AMD? Am I looking at spending too much cash on something that probably won't see any gaming? (probably)
Got any other suggestions?

Many thanks for reading my rant :D

Gareth
 
the 6450 will be fine for 1080p.. not sure why the card would not support it.. we use them at work for double and triple screen set ups...

i would uninstall all drivers to do with the gpu, disable onboard gpu in the bios, boot into safe mode and install the latest drivers for the gpu
 
The 6450 will do 1080p, it was the onboard GFX that wouldn't. Latest (non-beta) drivers installed already. No previous AMD or Nvidia drivers installed, just a relatively new Win8.1 install with onboard GFX drivers supplied by Windows Update.

The screen blanking issue happened on this card and its replacement (same make and model) in other machines which were fresh installs and with older drivers (simply because it was last year some time). It's entirely possible that there was a faulty batch of Sapphire HD6450's that spanned several months so it could be that the only fix is to throw it away and replace it....but I was sort of hoping that someone might have seen this before and know of a magic fix like the turning off under/overscan.
 
Cene overscan usually happens when you hook through hdmi; happens on Nvidia or AMD as they see the screen they are hooked to as a TV.

I'd try slightly older driver set with the 6000 series; like 13.12 or 13.9s I can't remember last real set that was opped for 6000 series :) that might help with that issue. I've had to do the same for older Nvidia cards and AMD.......
 
Thanks. Useful to know the 'why' on the overscan front. Ironically, I only hooked it up via HDMI because I wanted to know if the monitor would accept audio over HDMI rather than running the second cable. It does but the speakers are naff so stuck with the Logitech Z120's.

Just looked up what version was used on site where we had it running dual DVI rather than 1xHDMI and 1xDVI-->Analogue and it was the 13.1 and 13.12 WHQL drivers and then 14.3 Beta V1 B22. Currently installed on this machine is 14.12.

If this isn't something people have seen before with AMD cards, I'm guessing it's a hardware batch issue. If it were more common it'd be all over the place like the coil-whine issues are.
 
The underscan issue? It is all over the place, but it's well known and one of many reasons I advise against using HDMI.

This may be of use to you: https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus/ Scroll down a bit past the nVidia over HDMI problems to find the AMD scaling fix.

Edit: Just re-read the OP, sounds like a fault with that card if it's blanking out, though others may have more useful suggestions.
 
Now there's a man after my own heart! Trouble of course is that I'd have to the get a rad, pump, res, tubing etc and then you have to do the CPU too...well, you would, be criminal not to! And I'd almost certainly have to upgrade my motherboard and hence CPU and RAM ...and if you're doing that, the case probably too and, well I'm up for the challenge but she wouldn't appreciate it I'd just get moaned at because she could use it while I was waiting for more WC fittings to be delivered. If someone wants to buy me the stuff though, I'd force myself to enjoy it! :D
 
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