Display Issues - Bad 3080 FE? Monitors? Other?

Cadder · 17 Sep 2021 at 12:48

Hi all,

I'm having a bit of a chew on with my graphics and/or displays. There's a bit of background below or you can jump straight to the issue.

I previously had 2 x electriQ 1440p monitors working fine one two separate 3060 Ti FEs and then my 3080 FE, until one of the displays had a dead pixel line and went back. Since then I purchased the two MSI units from OCUK and seem to be having issues. Not sure if it's the GPU or the monitors, or anything in between.

My PC build is in my sig. The dual monitors I have are the MSI g273QF units.

The Problem(s):

One display enters 800x600 resolution when freshly booted up on a morning and logged into Windows. It is the same display regardless of power supply and/or port in the GPU
When I play anything that is demanding enough to make the GPU fan spin (and cause coil whine) one of my displays suffers. For example when playing Satisfactory, one display has the game on full screen all on Ultra settings, while the other screen is off, occasionally flickering on, looking "glitchy" and then going black again. It's constant but has no pattern - the second display is flickery at best. This problem occurs regardless of which display is used for the game.

I don't know if I have a dodgy 3080 FE that just can't handle life in my PC, or if the two monitors are playing up. I'm going to try completely replacing the DP cables as I have a few spare, and see how that goes.

I have the latest Game Ready Driver (471.96 at time of this post) and everything else seems to be up to date. BIOS may be an old version.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Cadder · 17 Sep 2021 at 15:06

A combination of undervolting (912mV / 1905MHz) and turning off G-Sync has improved the issue slightly.

If I turn down the settings in Satisfactory I can get the second display to stay consistent. What's the point in having a 3080 if you can't use decent settings though? It would be good to keep the second display running reliably while I am gaming but as a last resort I could turn it off so it doesn't keep flickering and turning off/on randomly.

LuckyBenski · 18 Sep 2021 at 12:06

I would firstly try to rule out display cables as I think we're finally starting to see the quality of DP cable matter. Simplest solution is to swap which monitor goes to which cable (swap at monitor end, not PC) and see if the problem moves over. That should point to the issue being related to either the cable or the graphics card port.

I'd also try changing windows display settings to swap the monitors, totally switch what you're running on each, see if it's the usage setup which causes the issue.

I don't think things like flickering and disconnects should be performance related - it implies an issue with the data or data link. Though I've heard of issues with mixed refresh rates. I presume both your screens are setup for the same refresh... Maybe G-sync upsets this if it's trying to trigger frame refresh differently for each monitor.

Cadder · 19 Sep 2021 at 12:15

@LuckyBenski thank you so much! I switched the DP cables between the monitors and the flickering occurred on the primary display this time. I removed the 30cm extension with 90 deg connector on it and now everything is running smoothly. Like you say, it seems the data transfer in the short lead is causing the problem.

I will now look for decent quality DP leads which have a 90 degree connector end so I am not using 2 leads per monitor. Really glad that's sorted now. I was very concerned it was the GPU. Thankfully it was the cheapest item in the chain.

I am curious as to how the PC knows which monitor is on which side when I swap them, as somehow they stay set up the same. I can switch the cables at GPU end or at monitor end and the PC sets them up the right way round.

LuckyBenski · 19 Sep 2021 at 12:36

Ah, result!

That's great. It is interesting now display data is so advanced with high resolutions, adaptive sync, etc. It definitely seems to be important to get quality cables now.

Cadder said:
I am curious as to how the PC knows which monitor is on which side when I swap them, as somehow they stay set up the same. I can switch the cables at GPU end or at monitor end and the PC sets them up the right way round.

I wonder if the two displays have a unique identifier then, which the PC assigns settings to? I know the EDID is sent from monitor to PC but I thought it was just an ID for the monitor's particular model.