The latest computer challenge

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
05/19/2020 at 02:39 • Filed to: None

I’ve installed the 27" HP medical monitor I purchased a few weeks back. I use an HDMI switch to connect my four main computers to my primary monitor, with my old VGA KVM handling the USB connections.

I connected up the gaming rig first, using the GTX 1080 to drive the display. No problem - it easily allowed me to run at the native resolution of 2560x1440. Then I hooked up to the workstation which is running a FirePro W7000 video card. For whatever reason I couldn’t get it to go higher than 1920x1200, the native resolution of the previous monitor.

The W7000 has four DisplayPort connections and nothing else. I noticed that I was going from DP to DVI, then another adapter to go from DVI to HDMI. I simplified that to just one adapter, DP to HDMI. Same problem - can’t go higher than 1920x1200. I tried a different adapter and a different HDMI cable - same problem.

If I go DP to DP, I can get the full, native resolution on the workstation . Yes, it’s a solution, but not an ideal one in my book since I then have to switch inputs on the display instead of the switchbox . I’ve tried updating and reinstalling drivers for the monitor and the video card, but the problem remains. I thought I’d try using a DP-HDMI cable, but as it turns out I don’t have any, much to my surprise. I suspect that, even if I bought such a cable, the problem would remain. I can grab one at Micro Center tomorrow, but I don’t know if it’s worth the hassle.

So, any idea why the W7000 won’t let me run 2560x1440 over HDMI? It doesn’t make a lot of sense that I should be forbidden to do that since HDMI is capable of handling higher resolutions (4K anyone?)

As always, thanks in advance for any insight into this problem.

DISCUSSION (18)

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 03:11

When I got my VR I had to get an adapter for that too, annoying!

jimz > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 06:58

It’s a crapshoot whether PC graphics cards and monitors will work at higher than 1920x1080 over HDMI. My experience is that they usually don’t, you have to use DP.

HDMI just doesn’t have the bandwidth to support 4K at 30+ Hz and full color resolution. TVs can get away with it by stepping down the frame rate or chroma res.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:02

HDMI has only been capable of 4K since HDMI 1.4, and even then only at 30Hz (even fairly recently you could buy motherboards where the HDMI port couldn’t do 4k@60Hz, you had to use display port if you wanted to drive a 4k screen at a reasonable refresh rate) . 1440p@60Hz support is older though going back to HDMI 1.3. Prior to that the maximum resolution was 1920x1200, so if your switch is an old HDMI 1.2 model, it might not work.

Also, while I think things have gotten better, it used to be the case that unpowered Displayport converters would max out at 1920x1200 as well (e.g. on my setup, I could drive my 1680x1050 screens just fine off of a cheap display port to DVI adapter, but for my main 2560x1600 screen I needed an expensive powered adapter. Those were all DVI, but HDMI is similar enough under the hood that I’d assume same sorts of limitations applied ).

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > jimz
05/19/2020 at 07:05

It works just fine on the computer using the GTX 1080 but doesn't work on the computer using the W7000. The W7000 is capable of this resolution, so why should it matter if I adapt it from DP to HDMI?

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
05/19/2020 at 07:09

The switch and cabling are fine since I can run the computer with the GTX 1080 at the full native resolution of the screen. I just can’t get the workstation with the W7000, the one that has only DP ports, to do the same thing.

jimz > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:16

Only thing I can think of is you might need an active DP-HDMI adapter. With just a passive cable the cards output falls back to HDMI and it may be refusing to do more than 1920x1080.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > jimz
05/19/2020 at 07:23

Perhaps I'll give that a try. This reminds me of a problem I had to solve on a Mac Pro about 8 years ago, and that required active adapters to drive the three monitors off of the one card.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:29

Were you running the 1080 off of its display port or off of HDMI?

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
05/19/2020 at 07:34

The 1080 was running HDMI all the way - from the card to the switch to the monitor. No converters involved.

Perhaps I need an active adapter to go from DP to HDMI on the W7000. I don't want to spend the money, but if it works...

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:36

Yeah, that makes it sounds like the DP -> HDMI converter can’t handle it. Easy enough to test by hooking the 1080 the same way you would the W7000

JawzX2, Boost Addict. 1.6t, 2.7tt, 4.2t > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:48

The supported HDMI standard of the video card makes the difference. HDMI 1.3 and below support a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, HDMI 1.4 ads bandwidth for wuxga and 2k, and also 4k at 30fps, HDMI 2.0 added the bandwidth for 4k at 60fps, the a and b versions of HDMI 2.0 upped the capability slightly to include things like HDR metadata. HDMI 2.1 added support for 4k at more than 60fps as well as 8k and 10k resolutions and the aARC audio interface. The thing to remember is that HDMI was created primarily as a consumer audio/video interface intended to pass high quality image/audio while also making it difficult to copy. HDMI inc orporates HDCP, a hardware-based content encryption and locking protocol. Some early HDMI capable computer monitors and graphics cards ignored the HDCP protocol entirely and could “push” the standard to display higher resolutions than the officially supported HDMI version at the time, however software that follows the HDCP standard would refuse to display video (or full resolution video) over suck connections. As HDMI and HDCP are integrated at a hardware level, firmware updates are not capable of increasing the supported bandwidth for resolution, only feature sets like the upgrades from 2.0 to 2.0a or b. If your video card only supports HDMI 1.3, then no mater what it can do via displayport, and HDCP compliant monitor will never display higher than 1080p from it. As far as I know, no recent production monitors that support resolutions higher than 1080p will ignore HDMI versions to display non-HDCP content at higher resolutions... And then your video card would also have to support operating outside the standard.

A quick Google shows the Firepro w7000 supports HDMI 1.4 natively (it is often a pain to get systems to display 4k30fps, especially through a switchbox or adapted cable and early indications are there may be driver issues doing so with the w7000 ) Now, since the firepro w7000 can output 4k60fps via Displayport, an “active” HDMI converter with it’s own HDMI/HDCP hardware can make it work.

This adapter for example, supports the HDMI 2.0 standard coming from Displayport:

https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-DisplayPort-Supports-displays-3840x2160/dp/B00S0C7QO8

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
05/19/2020 at 07:50

I’m not sure what that test would prove. The 1080 is fully capable of working the way I want it to.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 07:53

If the 1080 can output 1 440p over your display port > HDMI converter, then presumably the converter is not the problem (unless things are weird). If it is limited to 1920x1200 when using the converter, then you have identified the issue, and just need a converter that can support higher bandwidth connections.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
05/19/2020 at 07:59

Oh, gotcha. I thought you were saying to run DP straight off of the 1080. Duh. Test with the adapter - of course...

It’s 7am and I still haven’t slept yet, so I'm not my sharpest right now...

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
05/19/2020 at 08:24

OK, I tried a pile of DP adapters, both HDMI and DVI, on the 1080. They must all be passive since I couldn’t get the resolution any higher than 1920x1080 using any of them. I guess I’ll grab an active adapter later today and see if that fixes the problem, which I suspect it will.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 11:17

Yeah... converting between DP/HDMI/DVI at resolutions over 1080p is a massive crapshoot in my experience.

Roadkilled > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/19/2020 at 11:31

https://xkcd.com/927/

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
05/20/2020 at 11:09

Probably.