It would appear that NVIDIA was paying attention to our recent live stream where we unboxed and setup our new ASUS PQ321Q 4K 3840×2160 monitor. During our setup on the AMD and NVIDIA based test beds I noticed (and the viewers saw) some less than desirable results during initial configuration. The driver support was pretty clunky, we had issues with reliability of booting and switching between SST and MST (single and multi stream transport) modes caused the card some issue as well.
Today NVIDIA released a new R326 driver, 326.19 beta, that improves performance in a couple of games but more importantly, adds support for "tiled 4K displays." If you don't know what that means, you aren't alone. A tiled display is one that is powered by multiple heads and essentially acts as multiple screens in a single housing. The ASUS PQ321Q monitor that we have in house, and the Sharp PN-K321, are tiled displays that use DisplayPort 1.2 MST technology to run at 3840×2160 @ 60 Hz.
It is great to see NVIDIA reacting quickly to new technologies and to our issues from just under a week gone by. If you have either of these displays, be sure to give the new driver a shot and let me know your results!
Ryan can you confirm that
Ryan can you confirm that 3840×2160 @ 60 Hz via dual HDMI is not working with this driver?
326.19 Confirmed:
Works – 3840×2160@60z on ASUS PQ321Q via DisplayPort 1.2 MST
DOES NOT WORK – 3840×2160@60 on PN-K321 via DP or Dual HDMI
DOES NOT WORK – Generic 2×1 NVIDIA Surround
DOES NOT WORK – Generic 2×2 NVIDIA Surround
326.19 Unconfirmed but highly likely:
DOES NOT WORK – 3840×2160@60 on ASUS PQ321Q via dual HDMI
There are way too many things that do not work for NVIDIA to be going around claiming that they have “support for 4K tiled displays”.
The sad thing is that NVIDIA Engineering already has done great work in enabling this feature in GeForce hardware. It has been available on Linux for years. It’s the NVIDIA Suits that are forcing the Windows drivers to be crippled like this.
Dual HDMI work will be coming
Dual HDMI work will be coming in another driver release I am testing now.
Well that is good news. Is
Well that is good news. Is the Dual HDMI fix in the drivers you have specific to the ASUS monitor or does it come in the form of generic 2×1 Surround support that works with any pair of monitors?
Not sure. It is SUPPOSED to
Not sure. It is SUPPOSED to work with both monitors but initial reports is that the Sharp still has issues.
Hey Ryan,
Having more money
Hey Ryan,
Having more money than sense I went out and picked up a PQ321.
I’m able to get to 3840×2160 @ 60fps with the 326.19s, but I still can’t get my computer to post from a cold boot with the PQ321 plugged in while it is in MST mode.
To boot up I have to unplug the PQ321, let the computer post, then plug it back in. I think I remember you having a similar issue in the live-stream. Is NVidia aware of this and are you still having this problem on your NVidia based builds?
The cold boot bug is still a
The cold boot bug is still a thing – drivers won't fix that. An upcoming firmware update for the display MAY address it this month.
I am able to get it to boot by hitting power on a cold boot, waiting a minute, then hitting the reset button. I get to Windows then without issue.
Glad to hear it isn’t just
Glad to hear it isn’t just me, and thanks for posting so quickly.
If you hear of ASUS releasing updated firmware and wouldn’t mind posting it on PCPer it’d be much appreciated.
Thanks, and good luck writing/proofing your review on this bad boy. It really does look amazing.
sadly this driver doesn’t
sadly this driver doesn’t work on the Sharp (ie, same monitor.. ugh)
Is there any reason for why
Is there any reason for why DP MST is needed for 4k 60Hz, or is it just the Sharp panel implementation that is like that?
As far as I have understood, it’s still only one cable, so I can’t see any reason for why 4k 60Hz SST isn’t done.
Also, has there been any word of any 4k that can do 60Hz without tiling? Maybe the upcoming LG 4k 23.8″ panel that should show up in Dell UP2414Q?
Currently there are no timing
Currently there are no timing controllers that support 4K@60p. In order to drive the asus/sharp at 4K@60p, two separate TCONs are used. This is why this monitor has the unique capability of supporting dual HDMI. Each HDMI port feeds into its own TCON.
There is no 4K display that can do 60Hz without tiling. 4K@60p TCONs are supposed to start shipping in small amounts this year and in mass quantities in 2014.
See above. 🙂
See above. 🙂
Thank you both for the
Thank you both for the answer.
I guess that means the LG panel will be tiled as well.
Not in any particular hurry to get a 4K yet so I’ll wait and see what shows up.
Hey Ryan,
Does 3840 X
Hey Ryan,
Does 3840 X 2160@60Hz support in PN-K321 of Sharp?
In addition, when is it at the time?
Please reply it.
I’m able to get the Sharp
I’m able to get the Sharp PM-K321 at full spec with GeForce GTX Titan with 326.19 drivers, but it’s a bit tricky.
With default settings, it works beautifully at 3840×2160 @ 30Hz, but doesn’t recognize 60Hz as an option.
To resolve this, you have to set the monitor’s DisplayPort option from single-stream to multi-stream (via its on-screen menus), as shown in this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T7pdrOipuI. Quick summary: go to Setup / DisplayPort Stream and change from SST to MST. Then the graphics card sees it as two 1920×2160 monitors and you can span them at 60Hz. Works perfectly, no tearing.
I have an IBM T221 running at
I have an IBM T221 running at 3800×2400. I’m running it off 2x GTX 570’s in SLI. I’ve installed the 326.19 Beta Driver hoping to get this tiling thing happening but I am still stuck with two displays side by side. (can’t maximise an application over the whole resolution. Where is the new 4K tile setup setting in the Nvidia control panel?
Hy Ryan, I’m having troubles
Hy Ryan, I’m having troubles with the monitor you’ve reviewed, the asus pq321q. My pc has windows 8 64GB, 4 SLI GTX TITAN and an intel i7 3970 extreme edition (oc at 4.5). Before downloading the driver I’ve been trying to set 4k at 60hz via displayport of course without luck. After the latest beta driver, what appens is that the monitor is at 4k 60hz like automatically, but I can not enter the nvidia control panel because of an error, and if I try to launch a game, after a while it crashes, and in general I feel the entire system unstable. have you guys experienced something like that? thanks , and apologies for my english (I’m italian)
Is your crash the white boxes
Is your crash the white boxes and flashing colors crash I’ve been getting? Using nvidia-drivers 319.49(latest stable) and 325.15(latest beta) in linux on kernel 3.10.10 this is what happens. The system crashes after a while with the display getting corrupted. No overheat and even tried underclock. This is on a GTX 660.
It seems nvidia has some severe firmware bugginess with respect to this monitor as according to the logs, the driver seems to be stuck waiting on the GPU and also returning to a terminal does not work in any case crash or not. So yeah, many many bugs that I doubt are fixable with just a monitor firmware update; nvidia may need to distribute graphics card firmware updates.
Hi Ryan,
So I have a Sony
Hi Ryan,
So I have a Sony VPL-500ES. Supports V2.0 HDMI has no DP ports. Out putting from a 780Ti. I believe I have V2.0 cables in my possession but it will still only output at 4K @ 24hz. Just to be 100% sure we have another set of V2.0 cables on route. I fear however its the GFX card based on everything I have read.
Do you know if there are plans to update drivers or firmaware for above card to support HDMI v2.0 output. Noting the physical connectors have not changed for 1.4 to 2.0. As long as the cable supports 18Gbps and is v2.0 or above you can support single cable 4K @ 60hz.
Any input would be good as this is driving me potty 🙂
Thanks
Al