No 4k output from a laptop with a dedicated graphics card?

[dimkovski_filip]

I have an Asus laptop - model number X552M with:
- Intel Pentium N3540 @ 2.16GHz
Bay Trail-M 22nm Technology
-4.00GB DDR3 RAM
-1 terabyte HDD and
- NVIDIA GeForce 920M 1 GB.
When I connect this laptop with my 4k TV, the highest available resolution is 1920 x 1080.
What holds back the laptop from outputting a 4K image to the TV?
Thank you in advance,
Filip.

 

[julienruc]

That's because that laptop does not support a 4K resolution.

Plus a 920M 1Gb is not strong enough to output in 4k anyways.

 

[jaslion]

I have an Asus laptop - model number X552M with:
- Intel Pentium N3540 @ 2.16GHz
Bay Trail-M 22nm Technology
-4.00GB DDR3 RAM
-1 terabyte HDD and
- NVIDIA GeForce 920M 1 GB.
When I connect this laptop with my 4k TV, the highest available resolution is 1920 x 1080.
What holds back the laptop from outputting a 4K image to the TV?
Thank you in advance,
Filip.

What connector are you using to connect to your tv?

 

[dimkovski_filip]

I have an Asus laptop - model number X552M with:
- Intel Pentium N3540 @ 2.16GHz
Bay Trail-M 22nm Technology
-4.00GB DDR3 RAM
-1 terabyte HDD and
- NVIDIA GeForce 920M 1 GB.
When I connect this laptop with my 4k TV, the highest available resolution is 1920 x 1080.
What holds back the laptop from outputting a 4K image to the TV?
Thank you in advance,
Filip.

What connector are you using to connect to your tv?

I am using the HDMI port.

 

[photonboy]

Yep.
There are also much better laptops including 4K models that don't actually output 4K via HDMI anyway.

I doubt you're losing much visual quality even if the source was higher quality than 1080p as I believe you need to sit closer than 1.5x the HDTV's diagonal for 4K content (of higher quality than the best 1080p) to be noticeably better.

*so again to be clear even if you got a 4K laptop it might not output 4K. It would need to say it supports 4K via HDMI or say it's HDMI v2.0 (or higher).

 

[photonboy]

BTW, the 920M GPU is theoretically capable of 4K HDMI in terms of memory and processing for basic desktop but it's the HDMI v2.0 outputs on cards and laptops that would need to also be attached for it to work.

They wouldn't likely even consider supporting 4K/60Hz until a GPU also includes hardware video decoders that can do 4K/60Hz as well which is more recent.

So to be absolutely clear you need to check the HDMI output spec of the card or laptop to see what it supports (see graph "HDMI version/Maximum Data Rate"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI