* What specific Dell monitor?
6x U2414H REVA00
* What specific computer model, desktop/laptop?
Lenovo i7 QuadCore
* What operating system?
Windows 8.1
* What video card?
Club 3D Radeon HD 7870 Eyefinity 6
* What video out ports are available on the video card?
6x Mini-DP
* What video out port are you using from the video card to what video in port on the monitor?
6x Mini-DP to DP (1.2 disabled)
* What cable are you using to attach the video card to the monitor?
Dell supplied Mini-DP to DP cable that came with the monitors. Funny enough Dell shipped two different cables. 3x Amphenol and 3x BizLink. Both perform the same.
* Are you using the Dell supplied cable?
Yes.
* Full description of the monitor issue?
I'm experiencing the unreliable DP connection that TFTCentral wrote about in their review of the monitor and which others reported in various postings. I have tried different video cards and different cables but the DP connection always behaves unreliable. There is a bunch of symptoms (link loss, DP communication errors) but the most prevalent and annoying issue is that the monitor is not recognized correctly about half of the time. With 6 monitors there always is at least two that won't work at the start of the day (always different ones at random). They can show up as Generic Non-PnP Monitor with a resolution of 640x480 or as Generic PnP Monitors with a little higher resolution. Most of the time however they correctly show up as Dell U2414H(DisplayPort) monitors but the refresh rate maxes out at 30Hz interlaced instead of 60Hz. this means that the picture will have a lot of jitter and is unusuable. It will then take a lot of power-cycling and Detect-button hitting, until all 6 monitor are correctly recognized.
Additionally once a day the graphics card driver will crash, which I would not normally fault the monitor for, but since it doesn't happen with other DP monitors and since TFTCentral mentioned a crashing driver in their review, I do in fact suspect the monitor is somehow not speaking the DP protocol right and confusing the driver. I tried 1.2 DP version enabled and disabled and it doesn't make a difference.
At this point I'm fairly certain there is an issue with this particular models DP communication. What I want to know is:
- Did Dell manage to reproduce this behaviour since it was first reported 3 months ago?
- Is Dell working on a firmware update to fix these issues?
- And most importantly: Will this future firmware update be field-upgradable?
If the monitors are unable to get a firmware update that can be applied by us users I would like to know as I will have to return these monitors. As they are, they are basically unusable.
I love everything else about the monitor though and will have to get new ones when a fixed version is available.
Thanks for any inside information.