Nvidia Surround Issue

[wilks007]

I was hoping maybe someone on these boards can help with my issue. I recently bought a 1440p 144hz ROG Swift and have been loving it. I wanted to add 2 monitors to use with Nvidia's Surround. I've got a 980ti and checked the website for surround and all the ports are supported. I originally got 2 1080p Acer monitors but couldn't get them to work in surround because I kept getting the error that the monitors have to have at least one common timing. There's an option on the actual ROG display to change the hz from 60-120-144, I have put it at 60 and still the same error. I tried getting 3 DisplayPort to DVI wires and still nothing. I thought maybe the timing had to do with the response timing so I went out and got 2 Asus 1080p 60hz monitors that have 1ms response time to match the Asus ROG but still the same timing error. I have tried matching the polarity and changing the resolution on the ROG to 1080p match the other 2 and still same error. I even tried to create an .inf file from the ROG and apply it to the other 2 monitors but then the monitor goes black and says "out of range". Is it possible to get an .inf that would work across all 3 monitors? or any other way to trick nvidia control panel to see them all as the same monitor? Or any other things I've missed that can be tweaked I'd greatly appreciate the help.

[ToastyX]

NVIDIA Surround requires all monitors to have the same resolution, refresh rate, and timing parameters as shown in CRU. This setup is impossible with the monitors you have because the ROG Swift can't display lower resolutions like 1920x1080 without GPU scaling, and 1920x1080 monitors are not likely to support 2560x1440. You need three monitors that can display the same resolution and refresh rate.

[falkentyne]

(09-26-2015 10:38 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  NVIDIA Surround requires all monitors to have the same resolution, refresh rate, and timing parameters as shown in CRU. This setup is impossible with the monitors you have because the ROG Swift can't display lower resolutions like 1920x1080 without GPU scaling, and 1920x1080 monitors are not likely to support 2560x1440. You need three monitors that can display the same resolution and refresh rate.

Some monitors can accept a 2560x1440 signal and downsample it (scaler supersampling, basically) to 1920x1080. You can try it and see, as you have nothing to lose at this point.

One person was able to even get 1800p resolution to be displayed (without GPU scaling) on his 1080p monitor, but any higher than that and it blackscreened. I think it was a dell or something.

You can try these timings, but they will NOT work at 144hz and will probably not work at 120hz. DVI will need the pixel clock patcher, DP will depend on you have a displayport 1.1 or 1.2 monitor.

Manual custom resolution:
2560x1440
front porch 48,3
sync width 32,5
horizontal total 2656
vertical total 1481-1502 (try various values in this range).
refresh rates: 60-100.

Nothing to lose by trying.

[ToastyX]

It's more complicated than that.

DVI: 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz monitors expect a single-link DVI signal, but the video card will send a dual-link DVI signal at 2560x1440 @ 60 Hz even with the pixel clock patch. You have to rename the patcher to nvlddmkm-patcher-sl.exe to make the DVI ports always send a single-link signal, but single-link DVI monitors usually don't support pixel clocks high enough for 2560x1440 @ 60 Hz. 120 Hz monitors don't have this limitation because they support dual-link DVI.

HDMI: If you're using CRU, you have to add or import HDMI support in the extension block to support pixel clocks greater than 165 MHz. The monitor may handle DVI and HDMI differently, so you'd have to try both.

All versions of DisplayPort can handle 2560x1440 @ 60 Hz if the monitor supports 4 lanes @ 270 MHz, but that doesn't guarantee the monitor will accept higher resolutions.

[wilks007]

I tried the custom resolutions and the side monitors say "out of range" with a black screen. I was thinking of biting the bullet and upgrading the monitors one step to the VG248QE which is also 1ms and 144hz, but still only 1080p. Will I have an issue still with the gpu scaling like you mentioned? I thought if I had different monitors of different resolutions it will downscale the higher resolution to the lower ones?

[ToastyX]

The monitors can have different native resolutions, but they must all support at least one common timing, meaning the resolution, refresh rate, and timing parameters must match. This can work if the higher resolution monitor can display lower resolutions (it would be upscaled), but the ROG Swift can't display lower resolutions. GPU scaling doesn't meet the requirement because it uses the native resolution.

[falkentyne]

(09-29-2015 09:08 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  The monitors can have different native resolutions, but they must all support at least one common timing, meaning the resolution, refresh rate, and timing parameters must match. This can work if the higher resolution monitor can display lower resolutions (it would be upscaled), but the ROG Swift can't display lower resolutions. GPU scaling doesn't meet the requirement because it uses the native resolution.

Yeah that's the drawback of monitors without hardware scalers.

ToastyX, you know more about monitors than anyone besides the great Chief Blur Buster. Do you think the new Gsync "2" monitors will have HW scalers ?