Horizontal lines scaning my monitor display, please help - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: kuddo
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 12, 2013, 04:12:07 pm
content: I've tried the card on two PCs'PC1:CPU AMD Phenom II x4 955 stockRAM Corsair 2x2Gb DDR3 1333Mhz CL9 stockMotherboard AsRock N68C-S UCCVideo Card HD 7770 Ghz Edition 1GB DDR5 stockPSU Sirtec High Power HPC-500-G12S 500W 80+PC2:CPU AMD FX-8350 8CoreRAM Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit stockMotherboard Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3PSU: Seasonic 600WOther Hardware Information :Monitors1x Samsung SyncMaster E2220 1920x1080 on 60hz (VGA port only), 1x Samsung SyncMaster 244T 1920x1200 on 60Hz (has both DVI and VGA ports)HDD/SSDs: SSD Kingston 60Gb V300 Sata3, Western Digital 500Gb Sata3, Hitachi 160Gb Sata2.Optical Drives: LG DVD-RW Sata2Software Information:Operating System : Windows 7 x64 Home Premium (both Pc's)Video Card Drivers in Use ( and tried ): 12.11 beta 11 and many othersMotherboard Drivers Used: LatestApps/Games causing issues ( and if they've been patched ): Every GameAll major components check 100% after thorough testing ( eg. Memory & Memtest86 ): 10000%System clean of viruses / spyware etc: 1000% clean, fresh windows install on both PC's after formating everything.Other things tried: Read downIssue detailI've recently bought this HD 7770 video card. I have a Samsung E2220 VGA monitor display (runing at 1920x1080 on 60Hz), no DVI. When i play games i can see horizontal lines scaning my monitor display on darker colors (like dark green, dark blue etc). I tried the GPU on a friend's PC that has a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard, a AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz cpu, 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz and a Seasonic 600W PSU and i had the same horizontal lines. I tried a second different Samsung monitor on the vga (1920x1200 on 60hz) on both computers and i got the same horizontal lines. The second monitor had a DVI so i tried it on the DVI...the lines were completely gone !All my and my friend power outlets are properly grounded and i didn't used an UPS. I tried 8 different VGA cables (all with ferrite cores) and 6 different DVI-to-VGA adapters and i tried different power cables for the monitors and psu but the horizontal lines were still there. I also tried different video card drivers. For example if i start Far Cry 3 and then i minimize the game and go to a dark-blue website, i can clearly see the horizontal lines on the website. This happens only on the VGA.What is this phenomenon ?Sorry for my bad English.

author: Jonny
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2013, 06:38:21 pm
content: If the card is brand new, take it back, demand it is faulty and get a replacement. If the card is second hand (used) maybe it is suffering hardware failure and if you're lucky you can get your money back from the seller.As you have eliminated all other hardware by trying it in different systems and screens etc, I'm going to go with, it's the card.Good luck!

author: kuddo
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 12, 2013, 06:44:00 pm
content: The thing is...i tried different cards (GTX 550 Ti and HD 7850) and i got the same horizontal lines. So it's not the card.

author: Jonny
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2013, 06:48:26 pm
content: Sorry, may have jumped the gun there.... you're using an HDMI to VGA converter of some sort. Maybe given it's such a high end card there's something a little different about the signals coming out of it that a VGA input circuit may struggle with. Would be interesting to see if these lines existed on an old CRT type screen as LCDs have D/A conversion going on and it could be getting messed up in there. See if dropping the resolution (e.g. to 1024 or less) helps. Otherwise you might have to get a screen with DVI

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2013, 12:57:27 am
content: So, you have interference lines visible in dark colors on screen, but only when using a VGA cable, and only while the GPU is being churned by running game software. True for multiple computers and monitor combinations (but same graphics card). Does not happen when using a DVI cable. Doesn't happen when the GPU is not active, right?Sounds like a problem with the ground return of the (considerable) GPU supply current. Varying GPU current is coupling to the ground of the analog video output drivers.It might just be a bad design on the graphics card - failure to isolate the ground planes of the digital and analog portions.Can't you just use a monitor with DVI? If you're using a nice GPU graphics card, why are you using an old monitor without DVI?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2013, 04:00:31 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on March 13, 2013, 12:57:27 amI actually have a nice S-MVA LCD monitor connected to my 560ti over VGA because the monitor has some strange bug that causes it to slightly zoom its HDMI inputs. I plan to hack the EEPROM hoping that I'll be able to resolve it (or replace the driver board with one based on a low end FPGA or one out of a broken LCD monitor), but it otherwise works fine so I'm leaving it alone for now.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2013, 07:13:12 am
content: It may not be a bug, it could simply be that it's programmed to overscan slightly so as to hide some of the artefacts that exist at the edges of some channels' TV signals. Some TV sets have the option to turn this off and display the image 1:1, maybe your screen has the same buried in a menu somewhere?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2013, 09:40:50 am
content: i saw this on a monitor a year or so back and i think it was also a SamsungIt required some tweaking of the pixel clock and associated settings inside the OSD menu in order to get rid of it.The monitors automatic detection would always bring the problem back if i hit the auto button.Use this 50/50 black/white pixel image to help identify the correct settings.http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/images/dots-600.gifDrag around the picture onscreen, if it just flickers a bit that's ok, but if you see curved lines appear your OSD pixel clock settings are out.