Video card: DVI to monitor HDMI out to JUST audio?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

So I have a new 980TI, I have my old 1080p monitor hooked up via DVI, it works fine. I have also 2 display ports and an HDMI out on the card. I want to send the HDMI to my receiver for surround sound. Doing that tho it identifies that I now have 2 monitors hooked up, despite the fact that there is no monitor past the receiver. Worse, it makes the HDMI display display #1. So I can see the black background of Display 2, and see all of the stuff in my menu bar, but I can’t tell the settings window to swap to display #2! And I can’t reverse them because I don’t have a display to swap to.

I could hook up an HDMI monitor to it temporarily but where is the fun in that? Anyone got an easier more permanent fix?

2

Do you not have an optical out that you could run to the receiver?

3

Windows 10 does not support Surround sound over optical. I’m using it now for stereo.

4

Welcome to the future!

(No, seriously, it doesn’t? Good lord. How is that even possible? Good thing I didn’t go with that plan with my speaker replacement.)

5

I know, right?

6

It looks like Soundblaster and MS might have gotten that working, I am downloading new drivers now, tho the X-Fi is officially EOLed. Will see if that works, but still, I’d like to figure this one out with the HDMI way.

7

Do you have one of these lying around (may have come with the GPU even).

Then just attach the monitor via the receiver.

8

The other thing you can try is disabling the HDMI monitor via the display/resolution settings (pic below is win8.1), or the win+p hotkey:

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s
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Then go to sound settings and see if you can set the 980 HDMI to default audio (hopefully without it re-enabling the monitor):

9

That’s what you aren’t getting. I cannot bring the Win P display up. It is showing on display 1, the HDMI port, despite there being no monitor attached. DVI defaults to Display 2. There is no way that I know of to force Windows Options to show on all screens, or to get it to change displays.

Rather than buy a DVI to HDMI cable I will hook an older HDMI monitor up to my receiver tomorrow, f it.

In the mean time, I downloaded the unofficial SB drivers off of “Daniel’s” site and they worked. I hope there is no malware on there. F Soundblaster/Creative and their shitty support. =)

Thanks for the input tho both of you, it’s very appreciated!!!

10

Ah yeah, that be a pain alright!

Try:

win+p, up arrow, enter

or:

win+p, up arrow, up arrow, enter

If it is defaulting to second screen only (HDMI), one of the above should at least switch to duplicate, extend, or the other monitor.

I used to have to do that trick just to wake a monitor that would refuse to wake KVM.

11

You can always Win+Shift+Right/left arrow to bring it to your active screen.

12

Will try both methods tonight, thanks!

13

Yeah that totally didnt work. I added a second monitor temorarily and it looks like in Win 10 it’s up and down not left and right and you need to actually select it. What a flipping PITA. Sticking with optical for now…

14

Quick update: took the piece of shit sound blaster out of the loop. 989ti to receiver vi HDMI, HDMI to DVI out to monitor. All good now