Fixing display issue for high-resolution screen, Mavericks, Haswell, GA-Z97

[JestaGeek]

Fixing display issue for 1440x3440 resolution, Intel HD4600 i5-4690K, Mavericks, Gigabyte 9-series

I've just built a system around a new LG UltraWide display, LG 34UM95-P (http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00HG7EB64/?tag=tonymacx8603-21), which requires HD4600 or greater integrated graphics (or modern discrete graphics card). The cards that are recommended add an extra 200€ to my build price and double (or more) the power draw, so, since I'm no gamer and don't do video editing and stuff very often, I figured I could just go with the integrated graphics. It's worked nicely for my previous builds done in the past couple of years. Choosing this display was partly driven by the reasoning that it keeps the build simple (getting multiple displays to work on a system with integrated graphics can be a bit of a pain and a single HD monitor is just not ideal for my work).

Anyway, I chose the GA-Z97X-Soc Force, since it was on the Buyer's Guide "motherboard list" here and I found a good price and it included DisplayPort, which I figured I'd want for addressing this display at appropriate resolution/refresh rate, etc. Anyway, it looks great during the setup process and looks fine attached to my MacBook (at lower refresh rate), but after the installation is all done and I'm booted up in Mavericks on this new system, the graphics are distorted at the bottom of the screen with this repeating pattern. I suspect it is the bottom past 1080 pixels (i.e. the bottom 360 pixels of the screen, between 1081 and 1440 pixels). See image... BTW, I get the same thing if I connect via HDMI (from that computer).

I'm using Mavericks since I'm not convinced I want to migrate to Yosemite, yet. I've not heard good things and don't want to pay for any upgrades (of other applications) just to use the latest OS X. I've also heard that Yosemite may not be ideal for using Intel integrated graphics. So I'm also open to recommendation/suggestion here and getting feedback about this. ;-)

Thanks for any help anyone can provide. I'd like to produce a guide for this mobo if I can get it working right (and otherwise am ready to move to the Asus Z-97A with Firewire add-on card, if this board is the real issue).

 

[JestaGeek]

The screen image has a weird pattern at the bottom

Note that it's not totally clear from the screenshot I attached, but it looks like it's displaying the top 1200 to 1220 pixel-rows cleanly, across the whole 3440 pixels of width. The bottom strip that is garbled is actually doing some kind of overlapping/tiled pattern that looks like the whole desktop. This issue is not apparent in an OS X screenshot, hence the photo of the display.

The "System Report" shows that I'm running at the full native resolution of the monitor, as I want to: 1440 x 3440; CE/CI are active and the IGPU (HD4600) has 1024MB of VRAM (when I first did my installation, with 2 sticks of RAM installed -- 16GB -- I had 1.5 GB of VRAM, so this has gone down; I'm not sure why, but it seemed that when I redid my whole installation process with just the recommended-on-install 1 stick of RAM (8GB), I got downgraded to 1GB VRAM. Now, even though I have 32GB on-board, the VRAM is staying at 1GB. I don't think this issue is related, though, because I think this problem showed up even in that first installation attempt. Anyway, I'd like to allocate 2GB+ to the IGPU, if possible, but I'm not sure how. With 32GB on the board, I think I can spare it for video, especially if it helps prevent the need for a discrete graphics card. With 1GB the video does seem noticeably more sluggish than when it had 1.5GB.

 

[nobodynose]

Note that it's not totally clear from the screenshot I attached, but it looks like it's displaying the top 1200 to 1220 pixel-rows cleanly, across the whole 3440 pixels of width. The bottom strip that is garbled is actually doing some kind of overlapping/tiled pattern that looks like the whole desktop. This issue is not apparent in an OS X screenshot, hence the photo of the display.

The "System Report" shows that I'm running at the full native resolution of the monitor, as I want to: 1440 x 3440; CE/CI are active and the IGPU (HD4600) has 1024MB of VRAM (when I first did my installation, with 2 sticks of RAM installed -- 16GB -- I had 1.5 GB of VRAM, so this has gone down; I'm not sure why, but it seemed that when I redid my whole installation process with just the recommended-on-install 1 stick of RAM (8GB), I got downgraded to 1GB VRAM. Now, even though I have 32GB on-board, the VRAM is staying at 1GB. I don't think this issue is related, though, because I think this problem showed up even in that first installation attempt. Anyway, I'd like to allocate 2GB+ to the IGPU, if possible, but I'm not sure how. With 32GB on the board, I think I can spare it for video, especially if it helps prevent the need for a discrete graphics card. With 1GB the video does seem noticeably more sluggish than when it had 1.5GB.

What are your BIOS settings for the integrated graphics? According to the guide from thelostswede (which is for Gigabyte 7-series motherboards, but should also apply to 8- and 9-series), they should be:

• Internal Graphics Memory Size: 64M
• DVMT Total Memory Size: MAX

(These settings should be what you get when you load optimized defaults in the BIOS.)

 

[JestaGeek]

What are your BIOS settings for the integrated graphics? According to the guide from thelostswede (which is for Gigabyte 7-series motherboards, but should also apply to 8- and 9-series), they should be:

• Internal Graphics Memory Size: 64M
• DVMT Total Memory Size: MAX

(These settings should be what you get when you load optimized defaults in the BIOS.)

Thank you for your response, nobodynose. What a coincidence, too! I was only just (yesterday, I think) reading your build notes for clues as to how to get full support from the HD4600.

I checked today and the memory size had been set to 64M originally, I think, but was at 32M this morning. I guess I'd tried the suggestions from another guide that used 32M in the BIOS. Anyway, either seems to work the same. Neither setting seems to affect this. It's back to 64M now. And still the bottom 220–240px of the monitor (when running at full resolution) is garbled. I measured, today, and it seems it may be exactly 1200 or 1220px that is displayed without issue. It's a clue, but I think I'm done trying to solve this mystery.

That said, thank you again. As I hinted, I've already decided to throw in the towel with trying to get the HD4600 to do this for me... Instead, I'll work on a revised build plan that will cost a bit more, but should hopefully be easier to get full support. I'll document my build.