AMD Windows 10 clone four displays help

[tomd96]

Hi guys,

I'm hoping someone will be able to help me figure out a problem I'm having. I've tried Googling as well as searching the OcUK and AMD forums with no luck.

Basically, I can't seem to get Windows or Radeon settings to clone my desktop across four 1080p displays from my 7970. It worked perfectly for a couple of years on Windows 7, and also worked after doing the Windows 10 upgrade (64-bit Home version) about a month ago, but since completing a clean install of Windows 10 over Christmas I just can't seem to get it to work and I can't find a setting to manually set it up.

My 7970 (Gigabyte Windforce GHz Edition) has one DVI, one HDMI and two Mini-Displayport outputs. I have a monitor connected to the DVI, a Plasma TV connected to one of the displayports via an active mini-DP to HDMI converter, an LCD TV connected to the other displayport in the same way, and finally the HDMI output is connected to an Onkyo AV receiver. The monitor and Plasma are in one room, with the LCD and the Onkyo in my bedroom and lounge respectively, hence the desire to just clone the same display on all four.

If the plasma is switched off, Windows "forgets" it is plugged in, and will clone the display across the remaining 3 displays without a problem. However, as soon as I turn the plasma on, the system completes its handshake process and suddenly Windows automatically switches to two separate cloned desktops (i.e. cloning as 1,2 and 3,4 separately), despite not creating a second virtual desktop (so I can't just disable the second desktop.) I've dug through the Windows display settings, Radeon settings and Radeon additional settings and can't find a way to just tell the system to clone the same display across the four monitors - it only gives me the option to change which two displays get grouped for each desktop.

I have tried rolling back to the 15.11 drivers, as those were the ones I had installed up until I did the clean install of Windows 10 (so the four-display cloning worked on them before) but the same problem persists.

If anyone can point me towards a setting I've missed or another way to fix this problem that would be really appreciated!

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[tomd96]

Just wanted to bump the thread in case anyone who might be able to help didn't see it before it dropped off the front pages.

Thanks again.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I was having huge trouble getting my tv working via hdmi on Windows 10 when it worked fine as a third monitor on Windows 7/8/8.1.

I tried loads of things to get it working and ultimately I still am not 100% sure the certain way to make it work. The key seems to be, if you right click on desktop and go to display settings, this is somehow, amazingly stupidly, a different group of settings to the display settings if you go through control panel.

So if I turn on tv then right click desktop>display settings, it doesn't recognise the tv at all. If I open up the control panel> adjust display settings, have that open then turn on the tv, the tv works.

It gets a little silly, sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does. Windows 10 has got this very very wrong, it's still very unreliable and it still sometimes takes several reboots and trying different combinations of opening control panel display options, closing, turning tv on. It's a joke. This worked flawlessly in Windows 8 before I upgraded. Never one issue, turn tv on, instantly recognised every single time. That they can have two different display settings areas within windows with no outwardly obvious difference is insane, more to the point I can't think of why you'd code in extra work to provide such an option, it's entirely absurd.

 

[tomd96]

Thanks for your response. I agree it's stupid that Windows has separate and different display settings depending on the route you take. It's also annoying that AMD have split their own settings between the new Radeon settings and a restricted version of CCC with the new Crimson software - it all seems more complicated that it should (and used to) be while somehow losing key options and functionality.

For now I've just ignored the fourth display, but hopefully I'll find a way to get it working reliably soon, as it's the best screen to use for certain things - racing games with a steering wheel or first-person games 2-3 feet from the 42-inch screen are brilliant, but right now I can't find a way to get it working properly without disconnecting the other screens.

 

[tomd96]

Just in case anyone else has a similar problem, I thought I'd add that I managed to restore the functionality by downgrading to the AMD drivers released at the same time as Windows 10, so I've removed Crimson and gone back to Catalyst. Hopefully future versions of Crimson will restore this functionality for me, but I prefer the layout of Catalyst for now anyway and game performance doesn't seem to be impacted.