Hi all, Lately it seems you guys help solve one problem & a new one creeps up. This time it is new graphics card that I just bought. I have 12 Monitor setup that is run by three ATI FirePro 2460 GDDR3 512 MB cards. It is a Dell T-7500 workstation with PCI Express 2.0 slots & 12 GB RAM. I am using Win-7 Ultimate. Each card has 4 ports so each runs 4 monitors. I have been using this setup or last 5 years for charts as well as using other regular applications including playing YouTube & regular videos. I DO NOT play any games at all. I never had any problem with this setup for last 5 years. Recently one of the cards died so I bought a brand new one. But new one has identical specs except it has GDDR5 instead of GDDR3. Now whenever I play YouTube videos, the new card crashes after few minutes. So 4 monitors that are connected to that video card goes blank & also keyboard & mouse freezes. So I have to shut down the system using power button & Restart it & again all 12 monitors start working. But then if I play YouTube videos, new card crashes after a while. Crashing time is random. What seems to be a problem ? Is it because new card has GDDR5 instead of GDDR3 that other two cards have & thus it is not compatible with two other cards ? All cards are identical except the new one has GDDR5 instead of GDDR3. Please help. Thank you.
You know computers can sometimes be fickle, and you can't always know right off the bat as to why. BTW, did you find the cause of your "getting shocks" and fix it? If not not then get that fixed first. After you've fixed the "shocking".... have you run the GDDR5 card + 4 monitors alone? If the problem disappears, then if I were you I'd either get another used GDDR3 card off of ebay or 2 new GDDR5 ones. What you have isn't working... you gotta try something.
Yes Scat, I just did get that Shock Problem fixed & have posted it in that thread & expressed my gratitude to all of you. As you suggested previously in my other thread before purchasing this card, I could not find a used or new GDDR3 cad so I bought the brand new GDDR5 card. First day, I tried only this new card alone for a day & it ran fine but can't remember how long I used YouTube. Buying 2 more GDDR5 cards plus a spare totaling 3 would be a pricey deal & even then how would we know if they will work ? But then there is no other choice because I can't find GDDR3 card anywhere.
Yup, you may not have much choice. Windows "extended desktop" can be fickle on its own. I couldn't get IB's TWS to run on my secondary monitor array at all and I've found problems sometimes with a particular monitor in a particular position in the array. You did right buy having all video cards the same model. But now that you've had to replace a GDDR3 one with a GDDR5 one, they may no longer be "same enough"(??). I dunno on that. I thought perhaps mixing GDDR3 and GDDR5 wouldn't be a problem, but perhaps it is. You could save some money buying used ones. Used isn't really much of a risk if the seller has a decent return policy. If the card is no good, you'll likely know right away. I've bought LOTS of used video cards on eBay. All have been good except for once when I bought a lot of 10, tested them right away and found 5 didn't work. I notified the seller and he gave me refund for the 5. (He was so quick and unquestioning with the refund, he probably knew.... or at least suspected... that half of them were bad when he sold them to me.... but all ended well.)
http://forums.justlinux.com/showthread.php?150954-DDR3-video-card-with-DDR2-motherboard Try placing a card from a slot that hasn't crashed into the slot that has. That will diagnose the slot. They can go bad.
Just found out another problem that has never happened. I could not shut down the system using start button. Had to use system power button to shut it down.