Cant set custom resolution on laptop, "exceeds the maximum bandwidth capacity"

[ThatAngryMan]

I just purchased an Asus Transformer Book TP500LB and is loving everything so far, the native resolution is 720p and when I try to set a custom resolution to 1080p via Intel Graphics Properties I get the error, "The custom resolution exceeds the maximum bandwidth capacity"

The built-in display is run by Intel HD 5500 graphics and the dedicated gpu is GT940m, as far as I know Nvidia cant do much about the custom resolution because there is no such option in the Control Panel, please help, thank you.

Specifications:
i5 5200u
Intel HD 5500/GT 940m 2GB
8gb ram
250gb ssd
Native 720p display

 

[basroil]

If the display is 720p YOU CANNOT USE ANYTHING HIGHER!

If you want a higher display resolution get a different computer or an external (hdmi) monitor.

 

[ThatAngryMan]

If the display is 720p YOU CANNOT USE ANYTHING HIGHER!

If you want a higher display resolution get a different computer or an external (hdmi) monitor.

May I ask why is that? Shouldn't modern GPU(intergrated or not) be able to support 1080p? Or was this hard locked in the manufacturing process, if so why do they even bother including the settings

 

[basroil]

May I ask why is that? Shouldn't modern GPU(intergrated or not) be able to support 1080p? Or was this hard locked in the manufacturing process, if so why do they even bother including the settings

The GPU supports it just fine, it's your display that doesn't. Connect it to a 1080P TV or monitor and you'll see it works. The reason you have those options is specifically because it's a display issue and not a GPU one.

 

[ThatAngryMan]

May I ask why is that? Shouldn't modern GPU(intergrated or not) be able to support 1080p? Or was this hard locked in the manufacturing process, if so why do they even bother including the settings

The GPU supports it just fine, it's your display that doesn't. Connect it to a 1080P TV or monitor and you'll see it works. The reason you have those options is specifically because it's a display issue and not a GPU one.

sorry for asking so many questions, but cant the monitor downsample so it display higher res than its native's? if all external monitors can why can't it

 

[basroil]

sorry for asking so many questions, but cant the monitor downsample so it display higher res than its native's? if all external monitors can why can't it

1) No
2) No monitors do
3) TVs only do it for HDMI etc. because their decode is separate from the display (in order to support TV formats without lower quality). Internally they support ONLY their native resolution

 

[ThatAngryMan]

sorry for asking so many questions, but cant the monitor downsample so it display higher res than its native's? if all external monitors can why can't it

1) No
2) No monitors do
3) TVs only do it for HDMI etc. because their decode is separate from the display (in order to support TV formats without lower quality). Internally they support ONLY their native resolution

they actually do, for example my 1080p monitor hooked up to a gtx 970 can display 1440p desktop mode via custom resolution, i just dont see a reason why my laptop cant

 

[basroil]

they actually do, for example my 1080p monitor hooked up to a gtx 970 can display 1440p desktop mode via custom resolution, i just dont see a reason why my laptop cant

You probably used HDMI and likely only via DSR.

The internal connection does not support it because it's using a different communication method, likely eDP. Hell, even if you could, it'll actually look WORSE

 

[torrewaffer]

If the display is 720p YOU CANNOT USE ANYTHING HIGHER!

If you want a higher display resolution get a different computer or an external (hdmi) monitor.

I'm sorry, but that's not true. I have a monitor at work and I was able to set various higher resolutions than it actually has. I don't know why we can't do it on laptops, but the answer is not that.

 

[jsmithepa]

I'm sorry, but that's not true. I have a monitor at work and I was able to set various higher resolutions than it actually has. I don't know why we can't do it on laptops, but the answer is not that.

Dude this is like arguing with my children. Why? why? why? 🙁

If u can't display it, why bother trying to send it more pixels? what's the point?

 

[rhysiam]

While I agree with @jsmithepa - I don't know why anyone would try to do this - I think it's helpful to understand the technology, so I'll have a crack at explaining it...

All LCD and OLED displays have a fixed number of pixels. That means without additional processing hardware, the displays themselves can only produce an image at their fixed resolution. If you fed a 1080p BluRay movie into a dumb 4K display, the best the display could do is present the movie with one pixel in the source mapping to one pixel on the display, meaning your movie would take just a quarter of the screen. Try booting a PC on that display, and your basic 480p boot screen and BIOS would be relegated to a tiny fraction of the screen and you'd need a magnifying glass to see what was going on.

To work around this, almost all displays include an inbuilt "scalar". It is responsible for scaling the incoming signal up or down to fit the display resolution. So when I send a 1080P movie to my 4K TV, the signal is first passed to the scalar which remaps the 1080P source frames up to 4K so that I can enjoy the movie at the 55 inches I paid for.

While scalars are pretty mature these days, they still need to crunch lots of numbers. Take the 1080P to 4K example: the scalar has to "move" the ~2 million pixels from the source frame to their appropriate location on a 4K frame, and then calculate what colour the ~6 million missing pixels should be. Then it has to do all that for each frame; we're talking 24, 30 or even 60 times a second. That's a lot of math! Because of that, scalars have limits. At some resolution and frame rate, they simply won't have enough processing power to scale the image and you'll get an "out of range" or similar error. That is why some scalars have limited headroom and will be able to downscale a slightly higher source onto their lower pixel count displays. Some 1080P monitors as in the example above will accept and scale down a 1440p source. Try sending it 4K though? Or 8K? At some point there's too much asked of the scalar and it will stop working.

TL: DR -> it seems the scalar in your laptop display can't handle anything higher than a 720p signal. That's not surprising.


... just to briefly add to this (already too long!) post: Why do you want to do this? I suspect in most cases you'll get a worse image. It's worth pointing out that display scalars are often very basic - they tend to use the simplest scaling algorithms. The scalar in your graphics card is likely to produce a better final image. Let's say you're trying to play a 1440p Youtube clip on your laptop, for example. If you leave everything at default, your graphics card will use its scalar hardware to downscale the video and send it on to your display at the native 720p. That way, the display scalar isn't needed and you'll likely get a slightly better result. In either case though, you are limited by physics to 1280 x 720 pixels on the display.

 

[BFG-9000]

For more than a decade ATI defaulted to a pan-and-scan virtual desktop in their XP drivers, when you set the resolution higher than the native resoultion. That's where the whole screen scrolls whenever the cursor gets close to the edge, so you are essentially always looking at a magnified section of the virtual desktop. There's still software add-ons that can do this today, and it would look perfectly sharp.

But no, on a fixed-pixel digital display scaling the entire screen can look horrendous, particularly text. If your work monitor is an analog CRT then it will look perfectly fine but a little softer, because those technically have no native resolution (as those are not fixed-pixel).

 

[USAFRet]

This thread is 3 years old, and already solved.
Closing.