faulty 4850?

[pentium]

So I bought a brand spanking new (as in I was the first to open the packaging) Sapphire Radeon HD4850 off my friend (he bought it but never had a use for it) for $100 so I could replace my older 7300GT and this so far has been a f$#@&ng nightmare.
For starters, It's not sending any signal at all (that I know of) through DVI (even at POST) so I'm stuck with VGA monitors and it is not helping that the linux catalyst drivers, touted to be better than the Nvidia drivers, is complete crap. The interface does not even work and won't even modify the xorg.conf file. I'm also locked at 1280x1024 unless I notch up the refresh rate to above 60, at which point my max resolution drops to 1024x768.
Still, That's probably a software issue but why no DVI? I tested both the cable and the monitor on an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro in my parents computer and it worked flawleslly so why no here?
There's no way I can RMA it however it is still under the newegg warranty though but I have never done a return on something like this before.

[NxB]

Re: faulty 4850?

Why can't you RMA? I did it with my X850 when it died. Can you enable the DVI in windows? You have to add a second monitor and then make it your primary through catalyst. The setting should hold in linux and through post once you set it up. I have to do this for my NEC plasma.

Ati driver in linux is better than windows (no smartgart for me). The software they include is crashy. Hit the wrong thing and you can lose all output.

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

Apparently this is out of the RMA window now but still in the warranty.
Also, this card is strictly for Linux and the Catalyst control center is not even detecting a DVI monitor as being connected. It only sees VGA monitors which defeats me even using this nice and newly repaired widescreen LCD panel.

[sofTest]

Re: faulty 4850?

Your cable might still be the problem, if it's a DVI-D or a DVI-A cable, depending on what output mode your card uses, and what signal type your monitor supports. DVI-D is a digital only cable, and DVI-A is a analog only cable. For a cable that supports both modes, a DVI-I cable is used. Read more about the different different DVIs here. You might also check the menu of your monitor, if you can switch between analog and digital input. If the card is the dual head DVI version, have you tried both?

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

Well I'm using a regular DVI-D single link cable to connect this SyncMaster 225BW to the card. I already tested both the card and the cable on another system (using a Radeon 9600 Pro) and it did detect and display video on the card however I din't check to see if it had video during boot but I'm assuming that it would so long as nothing was plugged into the VGA connector.
Another thing I have noticed is that while I can't use DVI monitors, I can still use analog VGA monitors so long as I sue the DVI-VGA adapters and now i'm noq quite sure myself if it really is the card.
While I was waiting for the night to pass I pulled 4850 and installed a 7300GT and plugged the monitor into its DVI port. Again, the system booted up but gave nothing out of the DVI port unless you have a VGA monitor with the adapter plugged into it. I'm almost thinking the motherboard itself might be somehow switching DVI off but that's not possible, right?

[sofTest]

Re: faulty 4850?

DVI is on, as the analog signal part of the interface (via the VGA adapter) works. Somehow the digital signal part of the interface doesn't get through. Do you get the "No signal source" on the monitor? I checked the manual for your monitor, which you can find here, and you can set the signal source to auto, analog or digital. There is a troubleshooting procedure in there for testing for signal faults. You might want to try to set your monitor to the digital signal source setting, in case if the auto detection doesn't work. Can you test/borrow another DVI cable, in case your is dodgy? Again, if the card got dual heads, did you test both?

[NxB]

Re: faulty 4850?

My x850 pro did not switch to dvi by default automatically. It would display nothing until I set it up in windows . Only displayed on the VGA. Install XP on a small partition and see what it does under that.

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

DVI is on, as the analog signal part of the interface (via the VGA adapter) works. Somehow the digital signal part of the interface doesn't get through. Do you get the "No signal source" on the monitor? I checked the manual for your monitor, which you can find here, and you can set the signal source to auto, analog or digital. There is a troubleshooting procedure in there for testing for signal faults. You might want to try to set your monitor to the digital signal source setting, in case if the auto detection doesn't work. Can you test/borrow another DVI cable, in case your is dodgy? Again, if the card got dual heads, did you test both?

I ahve two other DVI-D cables and tried both of them as well on both of the DVI ports and still no dice.

My x850 pro did not switch to dvi by default automatically. It would display nothing until I set it up in windows . Only displayed on the VGA. Install XP on a small partition and see what it does under that.

Can't really do that as I partitioned the two drives (running ubuntu and have one drive as / and the other as /home) in such a way that I can't make room for an additional partition. Still, with most people gettig LCD panels now, I would expect that you would be able to get a DVI signal by default if not by drawing from that analog interface on the DVI port.

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

Oh yeah, I also set the input selection to manual and toggled from VGA to DVI and all I got was a blank screen. I kinda expected that as not even ubuntu detects a DVI panel being plugged in.

[ratdude747]

Re: faulty 4850?

maybe your card is a DOA

hey, it happens

hope thats not the case, but sometimes things die

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

maybe your card is a DOA

hey, it happens

hope thats not the case, but sometimes things die

Does not explain why a completely different brand of card also refuses to output a digital video signal.

[KeriJane]

Re: faulty 4850?

I had this problem once.

It was due to the different kinds of DVI condition as described above.

I was using an Apple Cinema Display on a Radeon 3850 card (in a PC).
No boot, no nothing but would work fine as a 2nd monitor. A different card was OK.

Updating the cards Firmware did it for me. The Firmware update was actually intended to correct something else but corrected the DVI issue as well.

Ultimately, buying a Mac Pro to go with the ACD was where I went.

Have fun,
Keri

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

So you think a firmware update will fix this?
I'm doing a search and so far I have not come up with any firmware updates.
If need be, I can shoehorn the card into a spare slimline dell system with a pci express slot for the upgrade as I don't think linux will let me do that (flash the card).

[KeriJane]

Re: faulty 4850?

Hi pentium

I really couldn't say about the 4850.

The early ATI-built 3850 cards had a firmware update that corrected the inability to OC using the ATI Catalyst panel.
The update was extremely hard to track down and correcting the DVI incompatibility issue wasn't on the list of fixes.

After flashing the card it would then boot OK using the Apple Cinema Display and I was then able to run it on only the one monitor. It had always worked OK using a Sony display. Before the flash, I would either have to disconnect the ACD (no display) or have a 2nd monitor connected for the computer to boot.

This is what happens when a standard such as DVI is loosely defined. One gets odd incompatibilities. Probably the card will work fine with a different monitor.

Good Luck,
Keri

PS. Bluetooth is another loosely-defined standard with a TON of compatibility issues.

[ratdude747]

Re: faulty 4850?

sorry, missed that

yeah, xp it long enough for the flash, then go back to linux

[ratdude747]

Re: faulty 4850?

<<PS. Bluetooth is another loosely-defined standard with a TON of compatibility issues.>>

so was agp... 1x 2x 4x 8x

and the cards/slots that were "universal" so the card fits into the slot (or vice-versa) but was not, resulting in dead cards and mobos

and agp pro was funky too

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

<<PS. Bluetooth is another loosely-defined standard with a TON of compatibility issues.>>

so was agp... 1x 2x 4x 8x

and the cards/slots that were "universal" so the card fits into the slot (or vice-versa) but was not, resulting in dead cards and mobos

and agp pro was funky too

I remember killing three AGP motherboards with ym Wildcat 3000 before I stuffed it in my Dell and it didn't kill it.
I'll try the shoehorning after I sleep and if the monitor works there.....well. :/

[NxB]

Re: faulty 4850?

Bios update on the card won't help you. I doubt they would omit something like this. I've only used them to unlock pipes or overclock and in one case to test a mac 9800 pro (ppc bios is inc.) Boot XP and setup a second display as DVI then switch it to primary otherwise have fun with vga. You have to have some really old or crappy hard drives to install it on. Once you set it up it *SHOULD* hold until you change it, mine does. If it won't run a second display as DVI something is actually broken.

[pentium]

Re: faulty 4850?

...
One thing I hate about nights is I get no time at all anymore to do stuff.
You will have ato wait a few days until I get my time off before I can test this now.