OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Per E. Johannessen on November 12, 2024, 06:35:38 pm

Title: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 12, 2024, 06:35:38 pm
Hi,

I'm planning to purchase a new monior, minimum 32 inches, must have DP and/or HDMI.
Noticed that there are lots of relatively cheap 60 Hz available, what's the minimum "good" Hz these days?

Any recommendations?
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Pete on November 12, 2024, 09:08:27 pm
Hi Per

I am pleased with the Dell p2222h monitor I bought a few months back so am happy to suggest Dell as a brand - possibly this may be of interest  https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-32-4k-uhd-gaming-monitor-g3223q/apd/210-bdxs/monitors-monitor-accessories


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on November 12, 2024, 09:11:05 pm
The monitor and your display hardware will negotiate to offer a set of display resolutions. It's difficult to predict what that set might be. You may want to try several monitors with your hardware and buy the best one.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on November 12, 2024, 10:11:36 pm
Per,

What is the functionality you are specifically looking for, if any?

Here is what I mean:

1) if you want high-quality colour reproduction, you'd want something that covers a wide colour spectrum, there are specific ratings for this (CG, CIE1976 Colour Gamut, etc.), luminance or viewing angles

2) if you want a general 'home computing' display, I would suggest you look for something with a good contrast, wide viewing angle and good colour gamut

Refresh rate on the other hand, we are talking the gaming monitors type stuff is all tied to actual game FPS ratings and therefore things like response time become extremely important.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 12, 2024, 10:43:06 pm
The monitor will be used for gaming (Win) and office-apps (AOS) so most likely it will be a "gaming-monitor".
At the moment I'm using a Radeon RX 580 and it has worked fine for years with my 13 years old monitor, 27 inches, 60 Hz, 1920c1080.
This GPU is now showing signs of "giving up", so I'm going to replace both GPU and monitor.

However, I've just tried a Radeon RX 7800 XT with the same monitor and have some issues;
Sometimes when I switch on the pc I only get a black screen.
Other times I get to the Lenovo splash screen (and can enter BIOS) and after the splash screen it goes black.
And then there are times it boots ok, get to the Airboot menu and can boot AOS or Win.
If I reboot from AOS or Win I randomly get one of the above mentioned scenarios.

I bought new DP and HDMI cables, not cheap ones, and have the same result whether using DP or HDMI.
Any suggestions for quality cables?

Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Pete on November 13, 2024, 02:49:10 am
Hi Per

The issues with the rx 7800xt are more likely to be a graphics card failing than cheap/dodgy cables.

You could check that the graphics card is seated in slot correctly.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 13, 2024, 03:49:25 am
Hi Pete,

I have checked that the card was properly seated several times, also tried different slots.
A friend of mine checked it in his computer and the card worked fine there.
I opened a ticket in a Lenovo forum and hopefully someone comes up with a solution.

If not, I'll get a new GPU, any recommendations for one with minimum 12G RAM?
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Pete on November 13, 2024, 05:57:29 am
Hi Per

I seem to recall reading somewhere that some recent/current graphics cards will only work properly with a UEFI bios. Cannot find where I read that though to double check...

If the above is right are you using the rx 7800xt with a UEFI system?

No, Sorry, cannot recommend any particular current graphics card.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 13, 2024, 11:00:48 am
I was wondering about that as well and asked Sapphire, they replied: This model is hybrid bios support both Legacy/ UEFI mode, no worry for this.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Pete on November 13, 2024, 08:14:06 pm
Hi Per

A few years back I had a monitor that was failing. Sometimes at Power On I had a blank screen other times the screen was a "white out". This happened less often during reboots.

I initially thought the graphics card was failing but that tested OK in 2 other systems. I then swapped monitors and the problem moved to the system that I had swapped monitors with. Turned out to be a power supply intermittently failing in the monitor.

Could it be the monitor rather than the RX 580 graphics card 'showing signs of "giving up"'?


Regards

Pete


Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 13, 2024, 08:48:11 pm
Hi Pete,

I've actually tried another monitor and the results are the same.
As you've mentioned before it could be that the card is not seated properly although each time it feels like it is correctly in place.
Think I'll try some cleaning of the slots and give it another try.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dave Yeo on November 13, 2024, 09:03:14 pm
Another possibility is the power supply not being powerful enough or starting to fail. Some of these graphic cards eat a lot of power.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 13, 2024, 10:28:56 pm
The PSU is 900W. If it's starting to fail I'd believe that the other GPU (RX580) also would be unstable, (although it is less power hungry).

I have, once again, tried the RX 7800 and I'm sure it was properly seated. Power and DP also properly connected. It still behaves as before.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: ivan on November 14, 2024, 04:40:48 pm
I find it strange that there is so much problems with OS/2 video.  I have a dell 30inch 2560x1600 monitor that runs without any problem.  No problem with video cards, I don't have one, it runs from the built in video of the Ryzen 3 processor.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on November 14, 2024, 04:56:21 pm
It is not a problem with OS/2 video, same trouble with Win, like I mentioned:
---
Sometimes when I switch on the pc I only get a black screen.
Other times I get to the Lenovo splash screen (and can enter BIOS) and after the splash screen it goes black.
And then there are times it boots ok, get to the Airboot menu and can boot AOS or Win.
If I reboot from AOS or Win I randomly get one of the above mentioned scenarios.
---
For some reason this specific GPU will not work reliably with the ThinkStation P520 and Lenovo seems to be out of ideas.
(In another pc the GPU works fine.)


Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Andi B. on November 15, 2024, 04:13:11 am
I find it strange that there is so much problems with OS/2 video.  I have a dell 30inch 2560x1600 monitor that runs without any problem.  No problem with video cards, I don't have one, it runs from the built in video of the Ryzen 3 processor.
I observe different problems with OS/2 video output nowadays.

1) The BIOS decides which output is to be uses or not. Not used are sometimes switched off here. F.i. when  at boot the HDMI output is attached on my RX550 (?) the Display Port output is switched off. And vice versa. When both are attached I think DP is used and HDMI is switched off. But when something is attached to the internal Intel GPU (DP or HDMI or VGA) in parallel to the outputs of the extra graphic card, things go to complicated to describe very fast.
 
2) Integrated Intel GPU on my system does work but not with 4k. So it's kind of useless on my 3840x2160 Monitor. Needed to put in a extra graphic card and needed a ticket and work from David A. to get this card to work at full resolution.

3) Ryzen 7 integrated GPU does not work in 4k with ArcaOS too. Of course it works with the other OSes I've installed. No clue if David can fix this, need to create a ticket for that.

4) Output (DP or HDMI) is switched off when I switch the KVM to another source. But it is not switched on again when I switch back to ArcaOS. So you don't see any output anymore from your running system until reboot. Of course the other OSes switches back on the output (tested with DP and HDMI on Ryzen 7) when the KVM switches to that input.

There are even more problems with video on our platform I don't wanna go into detail. Some of them are nice to have things which result from the way we are used to work nowadays. But the above are the most annoying.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Eugene Tucker on November 22, 2024, 11:02:43 pm
I just bought a 24 inch Asus VA24D and it is working fine. It has a display port and a HDMI port it also has a VGA port sorry no DVI port. I got the monitor from Amazon. I did get a Monitor from New Egg it was an LG and it only had HDMI ports. I sent it back as I use Display port. The video chip is in my AMD processor.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on December 06, 2024, 10:08:45 pm
I'm now testing;

GPU: Asus Geforce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, (Nvidia).
Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G8 G80SD 32" 4K OLED.
Connection: HDMI

Max resolution offered by Panorama is 1280x1024.

Is there a "safe" way to get a higher resolution or do I simply have to experiment.






Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 06, 2024, 11:46:16 pm
I'm now testing;

GPU: Asus Geforce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, (Nvidia).
Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G8 G80SD 32" 4K OLED.
Connection: HDMI

Max resolution offered by Panorama is 1280x1024.

Is there a "safe" way to get a higher resolution or do I simply have to experiment.

Change video cards? Nvidia is known to not be friendly with no way to patch its BIOS for higher video resolutions. You could open a ticket but I think you will be told the same thing.
Dave
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Andi B. on December 07, 2024, 09:29:54 am
Quote
Max resolution offered by Panorama is 1280x1024.

Is there a "safe" way to get a higher resolution or do I simply have to experiment.
My tests with a new system tought me to -
- better use AMD
- better use DisplayPort
- don't connect both (or 3) outputs at the same time (DP, HDMI, DVI VGA) especially from cold boot.
- don't disconnect output from monitor, don't use KVMs (no KVM works here reliable either DP nor HDMI)
- HDMI output here only offers 1400 x 1050 sometimes. When DP is connected too it magically offers full 3840x2160 but system traps when selected afterwards while boot.  Of course I use short high quality cables only.
- DP usually offers full resolution (or most complete list)
- Panorama with integrated AMD Ryzen only offers 2560x1440 altough the system runs 3840x2160 perfectly well with other OSes (except Win7 which only can do 2560x1440 cause Ryzen 7 is not supported anymore with AMD Win7 driver).
- AMD RX550 works better with Panorama (and Win7) then integrated GPU
- 3840x2160 on one system (UEFI) leads to trap 000e in VMAN while 2560x1440 works.

You can also look at the tickets in mantis to find the log file of video (gradxx?) which is written at boot up to see what Panorama driver has to say. Or look into 'testlog generic' output.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on December 07, 2024, 04:59:13 pm
Now testing;

GPU: Radeon RX 7800 XT 16GB
(Same GPU I had a lot of trouble with when using an old Samsung monitor, SyncMaster SA950 27")
Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G8 G80SD 32" 4K OLED

Results;
HDMI: Offers same resolutions as the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, max 1280x1024
DisplayPort: Offers lots of resolutions up to 3840x2160

Other issues;
When rebooting everything seems fine until the point where it normally displays the desktop, screen goes black with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.
If I choose "Power off" the system shuts down as expected. When switching on again the system boots fine.

Just noticed another issue, don't know how/if it is related but it hasn't happened before.
After the cold reboot I wrote this message with Firefox and closed it when finished.
When trying to start Firefox again I get:
"Couldn't load xul.dll (OS/2 error 8, faulty module:
G:\programs\firefox\xul.dll"
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 07, 2024, 05:22:34 pm
So things work fine after a cold boot but not a warm boot? Strange and perhaps you should open a ticket.
Firefox failing to start after a warm boot is also strange and something I've never heard of. Unluckily the error message isn't very informative on exactly what didn't load. Have you looked in popuplog.os2 for anything related? What is your VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT in config.sys? Perhaps test with 2560. Did you ever run ffturbo install? If not, try running it.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on December 07, 2024, 06:44:15 pm
The system works fine after a cold boot except that Firefox can only be started one time only. Closing Firefox and then trying to start it again gives the "Couldn't load xul.dll". This is with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMT = 3072.
With VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 it boots ok until it is about to start the desktop and then it goes black.

One thing came to my mind, earlier when trying the Radeon GPU with the old monitor something changed with the system. The shutdown dialog used to give me the possibility to choose which system I'd like to reboot to, I could choose any of the other OS installations on this system. At some point this has changed to the ordinary shutdown dialog with only the options "Power off" and "Reboot".

In order to change VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT back to 3072 (from 2560) I cold booted another AOS 5.1 installation and edited config.sys for the troubled "G:\" installation which is AOS 5.0.6 and has all available updates installed.
From the AOS 5.1 installation, which has VIRTUALADDRESS=1536 and Firefox works fine, I was able to choose "Reboot to G:" and it actually worked fine.

So, obviously something has gone wrong on 5.0.6 on "G:\".
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: ivan on December 08, 2024, 08:50:53 am
Regarding your problem on 'G', have you run CHKDSK against that drive?
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Andi B. on December 08, 2024, 10:30:46 am
Quote
it again gives the "Couldn't load xul.dll". This is with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMT = 3072.
With VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 it boots ok until it is about to start the desktop and then it goes black.

Now I've here two systems which behave very strange when trying to use VIRTUALADDRESSLIMT = 3072. I've not a single system/installation which works okay with this setting. I've the same intermediate 'out of memory' errors loading some programs. That's what in my config.sys about -
Code: [Select]
REM 20210711 VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 to 3072 because of qt browser
REM 20210711 neither simplebrowser nor Seamonkey nor ndpiso plugin works with 3072 -> 2900
REM 20211023 changed to 0xXX00 as Dave suggested in AN Testers from 2850 to 2816
VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2816

I've to add OpenOffice and VirtualBox also give such errors sometimes with 3072.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on December 08, 2024, 03:04:28 pm
Hi Andi,

Now I've here two systems which behave very strange when trying to use VIRTUALADDRESSLIMT = 3072. I've not a single system/installation which works okay with this setting. I've the same intermediate 'out of memory' errors loading some programs...

What other device drivers, especially the IFS stuff, are you loading? What size cache are you defining for these?

The symptoms you describe all look & feel like the "out of memory" stuff I was seeing when testing the very large (>1G) JFS cache sizes here.

On a running system, can you capture the output of mem.exe?

Here is what I see after 2 days of uptime:

Code: [Select]
[G:\util\misc]mem /v

Total physical memory:     12,287 MB
Accessible to system:       3,327 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:    8,960 MB

Resident memory:            1,187 MB
Available virtual memory:     430 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         179 MB
  Private high memory:      1,344 MB
  Shared low memory:           67 MB
  Shared high memory:         282 MB

Can you do this BEFORE and AFTER the issue appears?
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on December 08, 2024, 06:27:42 pm
Forgot to mention that chkdsk has been run several times without any errors and nothing in populog either.

Although the Radeon offers lots of resolutions it's not stable enough for the time being.
I put back the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti and connected with DP it now offers a max resolution of 1920x1080 and so far it seems stable
with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT = 2816
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Andi B. on December 09, 2024, 08:43:27 am
Quote
What other device drivers, especially the IFS stuff, are you loading? What size cache are you defining for these?

The symptoms you describe all look & feel like the "out of memory" stuff I was seeing when testing the very large (>1G) JFS cache sizes here.
I usually let the IFS stuff as it is defined by ArcaOS installer. For older systems I also don't have big JFS cache. HPFS386 is remed out since long as it produces similar problems.

'mem -v' - my last tests on a pretty vanilla ArcaOS system I build up last week leads to 'out of memory' even when trying to open 4os2 or cmd windows. Sometimes afterwards it magically worked for one session but no more. -> very weird behavior with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072. Reminds me on same experience a few years ago with another system.

So for me I can't get any system to work only near reliable with 3072. Wild guess, it may interfere with my 3840 x 2160 resolution. My observations lead me to guess there is a memory problem with the WPS or gradd or VMAN or ... with this high resolution too.

Administrator - this now runs very off topic. Maybe you wann split this thread. Thanks.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Dave Yeo on December 09, 2024, 04:44:54 pm
I think the problem is that IBM never finished the high memory support, or perhaps just buggy. PCI space, which is at the top of the 4GB address range, has grown with newer hardware. You put a video card in that uses address space for its large frame buffer and its BIOS and it takes up a bunch of address space. The JFS cache seems to be implemented up there too. So with 3072 virtualaddress space, it interferes with PCI address space and/or JFS address space and you get an unstable system. So you need a smaller virtualaddress space to be stable.
mem /v should tell you how much memory is accessible to the system, which should point to how much virtualaddress space you can use. Here, it is 3,502MB and using 3072 seems fine.
Title: Re: Monitor suggestions
Post by: Per E. Johannessen on December 09, 2024, 05:42:23 pm
Below is the output of mem /v
With VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2816 the system seems stable.
I'm on thin ice here so, as always, I welcome comments.

Total physical memory:     16,102 MB
Accessible to system:       1,766 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:   14,336 MB

Resident memory:              290 MB
Available virtual memory:   1,382 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         288 MB
  Private high memory:      2,012 MB
  Shared low memory:          234 MB
  Shared high memory:       1,729 MB