Why is my 1440p 240Hz monitor limited to 165Hz?
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MellowBirch42
I recently built a PC with a Ryzen 5 5600X and Radeon 9070 XT, along with a Lenovo Legion 27Q-10 OLED 1440p 240Hz monitor. After installing the drivers, everything worked except the display was limited to 165Hz in Windows Advanced Display settings. I tried multiple DisplayPort 1.4 and 1.2 cables, different monitor ports and settings, enabling and disabling FreeSync and HDR, reinstalling monitor and graphics drivers, disconnecting my second monitor, changing power and OLED settings, and creating a custom resolution in AMD Software. I also restarted the PC after each attempt, but 240Hz never became available. Could bandwidth, color depth, DSC, or the type of cable be causing the limitation?
Answers
You can also test 8-bit color output in AMD Software. Open Settings, go to Display, and change Color Depth from 10 bpc to 8 bpc. Lowering the color depth reduces the required bandwidth and may make higher refresh rates available, especially if DSC is unavailable.
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Check whether Display Stream Compression (DSC) is disabled in the monitor's on-screen settings. At 1440p and 240Hz, the display may need DSC to fit the signal within the available DisplayPort bandwidth. Enabling DSC resolved this limitation and allowed the monitor to run at 240Hz.
MellowBirch42: That fixed it! Enabling DSC in the monitor settings unlocked 240Hz. The monitor supports DisplayPort 1.2 and 1.4, while HDMI 2.1 may also provide enough bandwidth with the right cable.
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A certified HDMI 2.1 cable is another possible solution if the monitor supports HDMI 2.1 at 1440p and 240Hz. A higher-bandwidth connection can avoid the 165Hz limit, but check the monitor's specifications and enable DSC first if it is available.
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MellowBirch42: I tried switching to 8-bit, but it did not solve the issue in this case. Enabling DSC was the setting that finally worked.