Question AOC Q27G2S 165Hz fails to do 10-bit colour and HDR not recognized by Windows 10!

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

Around 3 weeks ago I bought the AOC Q27G2S 165Hz monitor from Amazon UK for £220. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09KRZGHK3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://eu.aoc.com/en/gaming/products/monitors/q27g2s-eu/specification

But 2560x1440 resolution will only do 10 bit @120Hz. 165Hz will revert back to 8-bit colour mode only on any resolution! 10-bit colour only works at 120hz and below. Also HDR is not recognized! Any ideas? Is this a monitor limitation? I also upgraded to SOOMFON 1.4 DisplayPort cable from Amazon as well and still it made no difference. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09CFWBXVG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

DXDiag shows HDR Support: Not Supported Monitor Capabilities: HDR Supported (BT2020RGB BT2020YCC Eotf2084Supported ). What is this meant to be???

DP Capabilities 1.2/1.4 on the monitor control panel when pressing the button on monitor. Can someone confirm is this a monitor limitation that's helding me back or the GTX 960 GPU?

HDR will not show as supported despite using latest Nvidia Graphics Card drivers. It cannot also do 144Hz at 10-bit. Only 8-bit. 120Hz is the only max refresh rate that will do 10-bit colour.

I basically wasted my money buying new 1.4 DisplayPort cable because it really isn't making any difference whatsoever. No 10-bit at 2K or HDR support. I can change HDR mode from the display control panel to Movie, Gaming, etc But the monitor will still display as Standard dynamic range (SDR).

I'm really confused. Can anyone with this monitor confirm if they are experiencing the same issues?

 

[Glenwing]

GTX 960 only support HBR2 speed. Therefore you will be limited to 120 Hz at 1440p if 10 bpc color depth is enabled. Everything sounds as expected.

 

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

GTX 960 only support HBR2 speed. Therefore you will be limited to 120 Hz at 1440p if 10 bpc color depth is enabled. Everything sounds as expected.

Ok fair enough. But why does HDR option not work? I've just made an experiment by plugging in a HDMI cable and the Play HDR games and apps instantly allowed me to turn it on! This time I have HDR enabled with HDMI cable.

This gives me 8 bit + dithering with 144Hz. But of-course I can't get 165Hz due to the HDMI limitation.

But connecting either the DisplayPort cable that came with the monitor or the new 1.4 SOOMFON should've allowed me to at least get HDR support. But it doesn't. Why's that?

If I buy a newer HDMI cable such as 2.1 will it work to give me 165Hz refresh rate? The problem is the DisplayPort will give me 165Hz but the HDR option will show as Not Supported by the display. Only HDMI is allowing me to get HDR option enabled.

I don't know if the cable I have is a genuine 1.4 DisplayPort because HDR will not work.

 

[Glenwing]

Ok fair enough. But why does HDR option not work? I've just made an experiment by plugging in a HDMI cable and the Play HDR games and apps instantly allowed me to turn it on! This time I have HDR enabled with HDMI cable.

This gives me 8 bit + dithering with 144Hz. But of-course I can't get 165Hz due to the HDMI limitation.

But connecting either the DisplayPort cable that came with the monitor or the new 1.4 SOOMFON should've allowed me to at least get HDR support. But it doesn't. Why's that?

If I buy a newer HDMI cable such as 2.1 will it work to give me 165Hz refresh rate? The problem is the DisplayPort will give me 165Hz but the HDR option will show as Not Supported by the display. Only HDMI is allowing me to get HDR option enabled.

I don't know if the cable I have is a genuine 1.4 DisplayPort because HDR will not work.

The GTX 960 has DisplayPort 1.2.

 

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

The GTX 960 has DisplayPort 1.2.

Many thanks. But there's some conflicting information. I found https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gigabyte-gtx-960-windforce-2x-oc.b3168
It says it has DisplayPort 1.4a. Is this wrong information?

Also why would HDMI cable allow me to enable HDR but I cannot with the DisplayPort cable? What's so special about the HDMI that can do HDR for the same GTX 960 graphics card that I cannot with the DP.

So at this stage it seems I can only use DisplayPort for 165Hz 8-bit and use HDMI for HDR instead, which is a bit of a bummer really.

I probably need to return the SOOMFON 1.4 cable as it's of no use to me.

 

[Glenwing]

Many thanks. But there's some conflicting information. I found https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gigabyte-gtx-960-windforce-2x-oc.b3168
It says it has DisplayPort 1.4a. Is this wrong information?

Also why would HDMI cable allow me to enable HDR but I cannot with the DisplayPort cable? What's so special about the HDMI that can do HDR for the same GTX 960 graphics card that I cannot with the DP.

The GTX 960 supports HDMI 2.0 (which supports HDR) and DisplayPort 1.2 (which does not have HDR capabilities).

NVIDIA released a firmware update a few years ago to fix some issues with compatibility with newer displays supporting DisplayPort 1.4 because some of the technical details in the specification were changed, requiring an update to ensure interoperability. People misinterpreted this as "adding support for DisplayPort 1.4" to 900 series cards, and some websites like Techpowerup have edited their old databases to "update them" with this misinformation, believing that the firmware update adds support for new features.

 

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

Many thanks. Indeed, there's no DisplayPort 1.4 Support, so that is the reason HDR cannot be enabled and no 10-bit with 165Hz.
I have found this link https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/what-graphics-card-hdr-pc-games-3

"The good news is that all of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 900, 10-series and new 16-series and RTX 20-series desktop graphics cards are primed and ready for HDR straight out of the box. Hooray! The bad news is that the 900-series can only do it over their HDMI 2.0 connectors, because their DVI and DisplayPort outputs don't support it. Boooo. This is because HDR support for DisplayPort was only introduced in DisplayPort 1.4. Nvidia's GTX 900-series, on the other hand, are stuck with DisplayPort 1.2 outputs."

I wished I had actually read this earlier before buying the cable. But, anyway, I managed to return back the cable to Amazon and got a full refund!

It's quite possible that the existing supplied cable with the AOC monitor already supports 1.4 but due to my GTX 960 limitation it cannot support it.

For now I have a solution. I can switch to HDMI when I want to watch HDR content. And use DisplayPort to play games at 165Hz. 8-bit not a big deal as games are mostly rendered in 8-bit anyway. Desktop res at 120Hz 10-bit will be more than enough until I upgrade my PC in future.