Display Issues - Bad 3080 FE? Monitors? Other?

[Cadder]

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.

Spoiler: A Bit of Background

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):

1. 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
2. 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]

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.

 

[Cadder]

@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.