Club 3D DisplayPort to HDMI active adapter and UHD 60Hz

English Hardware
1

I recently bought a UHD television for use as a computer monitor. I also bought a high quality 18Gbps capable HDMI cable and a Club 3D DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 Active Adapter (CAC-1070).
My computer has Intel Core i7-4790k processor with integrated HD 4600 display adapter.
I recently had a chance to test my system with a UHD monitor and 2160p 60Hz worked flawlessly through DisplayPort. HD 4600 can only show 2160p 24Hz picture through HDMI so using it is not an option (videos are unwatchable because of judder, tearing and choppiness).

After unsuccessfull attempts to get 2160p 60Hz signal to work with said DP to HDMI adapter, I contacted Club 3D support and got a new firmware. After installing Windows 10 and updating the adapter, I created a custom display mode with CVT-RB timing as arupman advices in this thread: https://communities.intel.com/thread/99226. Now the adapter works perfectly: I get 2160p 60Hz image (59Hz actually) and all videos play silky smooth. On Windows.

Not so on Leap 42.2. For UHD resolution nothing above 47.35Hz works and gives only garbled or blank (black or pale green) image.
Videos seem to judder and/or tear if refreshrate is less than 60Hz for UHD desktop (or possibly 50Hz, I haven’t been able to test that).
1920x1080 @ 120.00 Hz works without problems.

Club 3D support informed me that Intel Windows drivers default to 32bit color mode and that demands too high bandwith from HDMI. Color mode should be 8bpp. Apparently newer Intel drivers fix the issue with the color mode being too high. After playing with UHD bandwith calculators it really seems to be a bandwidth issue. However Windows display properties shows 32bit mode even after creating a custom mode. I don’t know and don’t understand. Couldn’t find any further information. I tried to find out how to instruct Linux Intel drivers to use 8bpp. Perhaps modifying /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-screen.conf?


:~> xwininfo -root | grep Depth:
Depth: 24

But isn’t that already 8bpp? This whole situation is way beyond my expertise.

I couldn’t find any information about HD 4600 maximum pixel clock if that even matters, nor do I understand (or have any energy left to learn) what are front and back porches and do I even have to care.

Frankly, even the thought of installing beta drivers or anything similar turns my stomach because if something goes wrong I have absolutely no knowledge how to fix that. However beta drivers are still an option if that is the only solution to get 2160p 60Hz to work.
Other option is to to buy a new display adapter but that brings a whole lot of new potential problems. (I have very bad experiences with Linux display adapter drivers and rather spend my time with productive work, not endlessly tweaking something I don’t understand.)

Here is the procedure I used to try different refreshrates:


:~> cvt -v 3840 2160 60

# 3840x2160 59.98 Hz (CVT 8.29M9) hsync: 134.18 kHz; pclk: 712.75 MHz
Modeline "3840x2160_60.00"  712.75  3840 4160 4576 5312  2160 2163 2168 2237 -hsync +vsync

:~> xrandr --newmode "3840x2160_60.00"  712.75  3840 4160 4576 5312  2160 2163 2168 2237 -hsync +vsync
:~> xrandr --addmode DP1 3840x2160_60.00
:~> xrandr --output DP1 --mode 3840x2160_60.00

I also tried reverse blanking:


:~> cvt -v -r 3840 2160 60

With that my television reports 60Hz signal but the screen goes black or pale green.

And gtf


:~> gtf 3840 2160 60

with the same results.

I tried numerous different refresh rates with both cvt and gtf modelines but nothing worked above 47.35Hz (with gtf giving pixel clock of 553.09MHz and pixel clock of 553.50MHz given by cvt not working).

Does anybody have any idea how to fix 2160p 60Hz mode on Opensuse? What further information should I provide?
Or alternatively: does anybody know if Radeon RX 460 will work out-of-the-box, without proprietary drivers?

2

Gave up. Returned the adapter and bought GeForce GTX 1050 instead. Got a bunch of new problems with that, as expected (KDE+proprietary driver). But at least 60Hz output finally works (and HDMI audio) and videos play smooth.

3

Hi, sorry you couldn’t find a solution - as is usually the case, it will work in 12 or 18 months, but not now. Sigh.

If you don’t mind, I have a GTX 1050 waiting for my oS 13.2 KDE4 -> 42.3 Plasma 5 desktop upgrade (or new install, probably), and I’m greatly interested in what problems you had.

TIA,

Bruno

4

Sorry it took so long to respond. I have been away.

In case this is still relevant to anyone, my issues with GTX 1050, KDE and proprietary drivers aren’t necessarily show stoppers but still annoying.

  1. I made a mistake when installing the new display adapter. I should have installed NVIDIA graphics drivers before installing the graphics adapter. Since I did it the other way around, screen resolution was so low I barely managed to install the drivers. All UI elements didn’t fit on the screen so selecting OK and such was hit and miss.
    I used YaST2 to install the drivers since I am more comfortable with it than with a terminal. It probably would have been a lot easier to use terminal.

  2. Grub2 menu and boot splash screen resolutions were very low after installing the new graphics adapter.

Grub2 resolution was easily fixed:

  • Open YaST2 ‘Boot Loader’ settings
  • Go to ‘Kernel Parameters’
  • Select a desired resolution from ‘Console resolution’ and save

After that splash screen resolution was the same as with Grub2 menu.

I haven’t tried to get splash screen to show up in UHD resolution yet.
Instructions in this thread:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/464577-Low-boot-resolution-with-proprietary-Nvidia-drivers

  1. In order to get UHD 60Hz to work, I had to do this:
  • Open ‘NVIDIA X Server Settings’ application
  • Go to ‘X Server Display Configuration’
  • Select ‘Save to X Configuration’

From this file I had to copy relevant parts and manually edit three files located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d directory:

  • ’ Selection “Device” ’ added to 50-device.conf
  • ’ Selection “Monitor” ’ added to 50-monitor.conf
  • ’ Selection “Screen” ’ added to 50-screen.conf

After reboot:

  • Open ‘NVIDIA X Server Settings’
  • Go to ‘X Server Display Configuration’
  • Select 60Hz option in ‘Resolution’ drop down menu
  1. Next to deal with were video tearing and power consumption. In order not get tearing when scrolling web pages or watching videos, I had to:
  • Open ‘NVIDIA X Server Settings’
  • Go to ‘X Server Display Configuration’
  • Select ‘Advanced…’
  • Enable ‘Force Composition Pipeline’ (not sure yet whether checking ‘Force Full Composition Pipeline’ is necessary in any situation)

However, ‘PowerMizer’ in ‘NVIDIA X Server Settings’ shows that most of the time the display adapter runs at a Performance Level 2 and at high clock rates (both GPU and memory). Especially if Chromium is open, even with a static web page without any moving elements. However, minimizing Chromium seems to allow performance level to go back to Level 0 after a while. I haven’t tested effects of other programs yet.
Energy consumption seems to jump to high any time there is any activity on the screen, like moving a mouse cursor or editing a text file, unless ‘Force Composition Pipeline’ option is disabled.
Note that I do have Desktop Effects enabled.

Luckily the power consumption raises only(?) 20 watts or so (I have a power consumption meter plugged between my computer equipment and a wall socket). That is about 10% raise in total consumption, monitor and all other equipment included. GPU temperature seems to stay in check and GPU fan stays quiet.

I haven’t tried any games yet.

  1. The next problem is the pain in the behind called KDE Plasma Shell. Since KDE 4.0, Plasma Desktop settings have gotten somehow corrupted all on its own, without any user mistakes or input. Simply using KDE seems to be enough. Plasma works for a while and suddenly problems appear from nowhere.

Before installing GTX 1050 I had several plasmoids sitting in two Plasma Panels: Network Monitor, CPU Load Monitor and such. Every time I logger in KDE, any plasmoid drawing a graph drew everything on top of each other. I had to manually reconfigure them in order to get them to show up correctly.
After installing GTX 1050 only one panel showed any graphs. After removing all the panels and reconfiguring the panels and plasmoids, no graph shows up correctly, on any panel. It took a lot of trial and error to even get them to show on a desktop (can’t remember the procedure). Originally I put everything in panels so that windows would not cover the graphs.
Plasmoids have gotten even worse after KDE 5.0: there is less functionality and they are as buggy as before. Now graphs are unnecessarily wide and take a lot of space. Even on UHD resolution it was hard to get everything to fit on a screen. But now putting graphs to panels seems impossible. I created a completely new user profile but that did not help.

The only reason I have been suffering KDE all this time is a lack of time and energy to learn to configure and use a completely different desktop environment. UHD resolution seems to complicate things even more, so it seems I’m stuck with KDE for a while more. I tried Cinnamon briefly since it apparently can handle UHD resolution fine, but nothing worked correctly. I’ll have to get back on that if I manage to find some spare time in the future.

Any time that the graphs on the desktop show even a little elevated activity, power consumption jumps to high.

I hope this helps.

5

On my 1070 + 2x4k TVs via DP (yes, they’re televisions, not monitors) I had to do none of this - simply switch the resolution up using the nVidia proprietary drivers from the 42.3 repo.

6

I had a chance to briefly test a UHD monitor before I bought a TV. Intel integrated graphics adapter via DP didn’t need any special tricks or tweaking. I only had to select correct refresh rate from KDE System Settings and hit OK. Not so with DP to HDMI adapter, as I wrote in my original post. I wonder if that is because of HDMI or drivers.

7

New problem:
System won’t fully wake up from suspend. After waking up, screen stays black and there doesn’t seem to be any activity other than spinning hard drives and fans. My backlit keyboard stays dark. Normally the back light would turn on after a while and immediately after that there would be image on a screen. Now everything stays black.
I am too tired of all this to even consider to try fixing yet another problem. I’ll just stop using suspend.

8

Aaaand a new problem:

Left my computer locked for a bit more than an hour. Came back, saw my computer was still on as expected, but a keyboard back light was off. Monitor said ‘no signal’. Computer did not respond to key presses. I do have disabled all power saving features.
I had to reset my computer. After reset, just before Grub2 menu, there was strange error messages saying something about machine errors. Did not bother to write those down. Just don’t care any more.
I switched my computer completely off for a few seconds. I mean no power. Then booting up normally. journalctl revealed absolutely nothing useful.

I would suspect a hardware failure if I haven’t had used OpenSUSE for several years on a multitude of different hardware. Frankly this is nothing unusual.
I would have ditched Linux for good ages ago if there were any viable alternatives. But there are none that I know of. I am really, really, really, REALLY frustrated and tired of the constantly breaking programs, seemingly endless tweaking, fixing and solution finding marathons. All I want from my computer is reliability for the few very simple tasks I expect from it. Alas, that is too much to ask.
:(:disapointed:

9

Hi Injou,

I’m very sorry for your troubles, I hope it improves in time.

Also, thank you for the detailed report, it was very informative.

As far as I have seen, many of the issues you describe are usually associated to the video driver. I was finally able to install nvidiaG04 375.29 on my dual-panel non-UHD desktop (two 1920 x 1200 displays) after some toil and trouble (see https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/526246-NVIDIA-kernel-module-not-initialized-with-latest-kernel-on-leap-42-3?p=2835617#post2835617 if you’re interested).

I haven’t seen these problems, but those are DVI monitors using a DVI and a DVI<->HDMI cable and I’m staying with oS 13.2 KDE4 for now, where steam works an the system is quite stable. So, quite a different system from yours.

I did have a glitch yesterday: smplayer (using mpv) went a bit bonkers, freezing the window (and once both screens) for a few seconds when trying to use some button or menu on it’s interface (this appear to have stopped after ALT+SHIFT+F12 to disable special effects). It also would initially display subtitles with a huge size (scale 5.0+). The scale hotkeys change the size back to normal, and this returned to normal (for now) after disabling/enabling ass/ssa rendering). Weird, and I think these issues may have to do with the new vdpau decoder on the new driver.

I’m not trying to solve this in this thread, but it did occur to me that your issues may be solved with a different G04 driver version, if that makes any sense - just wild speculation, mind you.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck!