HDMI to Displayport / DVI oddity

[gtsaq]

I built a mini itx AM4 / Athlon 200GE system with an ASUS ROG Strix B450-I MB. This mb only has HDMI 2.0b for video. I have Samsung A850D which only has DVI and Display Port which can do 2560x1440 resolution. I have not found a way to achieve this resolution using current cables with this system - tried an active HDMI-Display Port cable from amazon which advertises it can to 4K - didn't work. A regular HDMI to DVI single link does 1920x1080. I've read that HDMI to dual link DVI cables don't actually support higher than 1920x1080 - extra pins were just added. I'm prepared to settle for the lower resolution though I started eyeing a new monitor with an HDMI input.

Now here's the weird thing - as part of just playing around with connections, I hooked up my Surface Go via USB-C to a powered 3rd party docking station with HDMI out. I'm using an HDMI to SINGLE link DVI cable. I'm getting the max monitor resolution 2560x1440 at 59hz 8 bit from the Surface Go.

How is this possible given what I thought I knew about these connections? If I can get this resolution with an HDMI to single link DVI cable via a docking station on the Surface Go, why can't I get it on my desktop computer? Should I try a passive HDMI to dual link DVI cable? After what I'm seeing with Surface go and docking station, the cable doesn't appear to be the resolution limiting issue. I'm confused now.

 

[Glenwing]

Some monitors accept high speed Single-Link signals through their DVI port. This is technically out of spec, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You might try a custom resolution to get it working on the PC, maybe will work maybe not.