My day with my Radeon 5850

...was interesting. And a nice summary of all the issues I've so far been experiencing on a more or less regular basis.

But first, the basics:
Windows 7 64Bit
Catalyst 10.1

Core2 Duo E6400 @ 3.2Ghz
Gigabyte 965P-DQ6
2*2048Mb DDR2 Ram AData Vitesta
2*1024Mb DDR2 Ram Corsair XMS2
Asus Radeon 5850
Cougar Power 750Watt PSU
Samsung F3 1Tb
Samsung F1 640Gb
2*Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500Gb
Samsung Sata DVD-Writer

Dell 2407WFP (connected via DVI, Display #3 according to CCC) (to my left)
Samsung 2493HM (DVI, #1) (center)
HP Compaq LA2405wq (Display Port, #2) (to my right)
LG 32LF2500 (HDMI, I guess #4) (to my far left)

Now then, let me begin:
For ordinary Internet/"productivity"-use my Dell is set up in Portrait mode, the Samsung and HP in Landscape.

Today at noon I decided to play a bit of Forza3 on my Xbox360 that is connected to my LG TV by way of an HDMI switch. Connected to said Switch is also the PC. The switch tends to automatically switch to a signal when it gets activated.

Well then, I was racing around the tracks when my PC sent its 3 screens into sleep mode. I woke them up pretty much before they managed to go to sleep. But lo and behold, all of a sudden my Dell is missing. In fact, CCC only showed the Samsung and HP screen as connected. Hm... Where did my TV go, where my Dell?

Thinking "A restart fixes most problems" I did just that. That ordinarily wouldn't be a big thing, except that I have to turn off my HP Monitor. Why do I have to do that to reboot? You see, my PC is over clocked. Oh, and it won't boot past the memory check, if the Display Port Monitor is turned on if it's over clocked, or rather if any BIOS settings involving clock rates are changed by even one digit. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that after disassembling my PC to troubleshoot that issue.

Anyway with the HP screen turned off, my HDMI-switch got the signal from the PC to switch its inputs around and show me the BIOS boot up on TV instead of the signal coming in from my Xbox360. Funny thing, a race was about to start. Well, actually not that funny for me.

Anyhow. after scrambling around madly and turning the Display Port screen back on, the PC yielded control of the HDMI port back to my Xbox.

Well, so far so good.

A couple of hours later and having finished Forza3 I read about Google Earth now having my home town, Vienna, with 3d building. I needed to check out, and well, it's true, there it was, Vienna with most of its building in badly textured polygons.

Playing around a bit with the graphics options of Google Earth yielded slightly nicer polygons. Fooling around a bit more I wondered about texturing the 3d buildings not realistically but just in grey. Well, that locked up my Computer. the second freeze I experienced so far after installing the Radeon 5850. Then again slightly before installing the Radeon I also switched to Windows 7 from Vista and installed the Samsung F3 HDD. I guess I can't solely blame the Radeon for these freezes.

Anyhow... as with the last freeze, after forcing the system to turn off, and turning it on again it wouldn't boot anymore, just start for a second or two and before any imagine appeared on either screen turn off again. And it did this ad infinitum.

Oh well, disconnecting it from the power outlet for several seconds solved that. I just kinda forgot to turn off the DP Monitor, so I got an instant reboot as my over clocked settings where still in effect. *sigh* Turning the DP screen off and restoring my over clocked settings I rebooted into Win7.

Hm, something's different here... Oh yeah, my Samsung screen is dark, and the resolution has changed to 640*480. Well at least my HP is still the secondary screen.
But my Dell is not in portrait anymore?
Hm.. well, trying to load my CCC-profile for that set up at least managed to restore the proper resolution and turn my Samsung on again. But why is my Dell still in landscape?

Ah well, profile loading never works the first time, just load it again... to no avail.
Hm, something's amiss here. So I tried to manually rotate the dell, wouldn't work. Neither in CC nor in the Windows display options. Funny thing.

And a reboot didn't fix it either. *sigh*

But at least I could switch between my eyefinity profile and my other 3 screens individually configured profile rather seemlessly. Well, it still misremembered the position of one of the screens after switching out of eyefinity, but loading the profile again it actually got that right too.

*sigh*

So in summary:
1) PC doesn't boot past the memory check and showing in what mode the memory runs (in my case dual channel interleaved) if _any_ clock speeds are changed. It doesn't even matter if I set PCIe settings from "Auto" to "100 Mhz" or over clock my CPU by 1 measly Mhz. It simply won't boot past the memory check if the Display Port connected monitor is turned on at the same time, when the PC is turned on.
2) If any monitor is turned on or off (either manually or automatically) while in Windows CCC redistributes the connected screens randomly.
3) If turning off the TV after connecting it by choice and reconnecting (in CCC) either monitor, it keeps the resolution of the TV and does not switch back to the resolution of the monitor.
4) Catalyst 10.1 suddenly doesn't allow me to rotate any screen anymore.
5) When watching a flash video or Youtube the screens flicker slightly just when it is loaded and again when it's closed.
6) Profiles obviously don't work.

So... before I go mad, is there at least a slight chance that I got a faulty card, and that exchanging my Asus Radeon 5850 would solve at least some of my issues? Or are at least some of them more widespread? In that case I'd seriously appreciate seeing that I'm not alone.
At least with the non-rotation issue there's someone else here that had the same thing yesterday and solved it by going back to Catalyst 9.12. *sigh*

[also posted on the AMD/ATI Radeon Forums]