overclock Could a 1440p 165hz display be overclocked by lowering it's resolution?

[WheissRS]

Hi everyone, my first post but a long channel follower!

 So i have this MSI G273QF display that i bought last year mostly for playing (and coping my skill issues) rhythm games and i'm quite happy with it, the jump from my old 60hz was astounding. But then i had this question bugging me and started to look if it was feasible to maybe overclock it into higher refresh rates, the reson would be for having a more competitive gameplay (and more coping) since in Osu! you can extract some value by having the fluidest response time possible, and also by not straining the eyes so much with the blurs of the notes on the higher AR (Approaching Rate) gameplays.
 Soon enough my hopes were crushed when i discovered that 1440p165hz was the bandwith limit of the DisplayPort 1.2 the monitor is running into.

Not quite satisfied i tried to search if i could perhaps downgrade the resolution (maybe to 1080p even) and try to crank up the Hertzes, but due to the specific nature of it and also since i'm not quite versed on this subject i couldn't find any complete answer, and i'm also afraid of YOLO trying it without more info first what i could expect and/or if it's safe to do it haha
 Perhaps someone here already tried it, or maybe someone more knowledgeable on the topic could reply, so i could finally (try to accept my lack of skills) get an answer.
 

Thanks in advance for any piece of info!

[Shimejii]

No. Lowering resolution would not help increase it. Its mostly just what the panel is rated at regardless of resolution. You would have to get a different panel that is rated to run higher. Also DP 1.2 is quite limiting as well, what is your GPU?

[Glenwing]

15 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

No. Lowering resolution would not help increase it. Its mostly just what the panel is rated at regardless of resolution. You would have to get a different panel that is rated to run higher. Also DP 1.2 is quite limiting as well, what is your GPU?

Panel limitations in general won't limit the refresh frequency, as the driving circuit really doesn't care how fast the panel is reacting. Existing monitors already drive panels faster than they can actually respond, and we just live with the fact that some pixels may not make a full transition when the color is only on the screen for 1 frame. VA panels are a perfect example of this, as darker shades may be even longer than 2 or 3 frames to make a full transition, but it doesn't stop the system as a whole from running at a higher refresh frequency. Just some transitions may get interrupted with a new direction if they're too slow, but it will still run.

 

How far you can overclock will generally be limited by either the bit rate of the transmission interface (DisplayPort HBR2 in this case) or a controller limitation (line rate for example, which doesn't improve even if you lower the resolution if it's being scaled up, or even just hard-coded limits on how high it will accept for various image parameters).

 

28 minutes ago, WheissRS said:

Hi everyone, my first post but a long channel follower!

 So i have this MSI G273QF display that i bought last year mostly for playing (and coping my skill issues) rhythm games and i'm quite happy with it, the jump from my old 60hz was astounding. But then i had this question bugging me and started to look if it was feasible to maybe overclock it into higher refresh rates, the reson would be for having a more competitive gameplay (and more coping) since in Osu! you can extract some value by having the fluidest response time possible, and also by not straining the eyes so much with the blurs of the notes on the higher AR (Approaching Rate) gameplays.
 Soon enough my hopes were crushed when i discovered that 1440p165hz was the bandwith limit of the DisplayPort 1.2 the monitor is running into.

Not quite satisfied i tried to search if i could perhaps downgrade the resolution (maybe to 1080p even) and try to crank up the Hertzes, but due to the specific nature of it and also since i'm not quite versed on this subject i couldn't find any complete answer, and i'm also afraid of YOLO trying it without more info first what i could expect and/or if it's safe to do it haha
 Perhaps someone here already tried it, or maybe someone more knowledgeable on the topic could reply, so i could finally (try to accept my lack of skills) get an answer.
 

Thanks in advance for any piece of info!

Basically, there's no way to know really. 1440p 165 Hz is near the limit of HBR2, so if that's the only thing limiting the frequency then yes, lowering the resolution may open additional room for refresh frequency to be increased, but the controller may not allow higher anyway for other reasons. You'll have to find that out yourself. GPU scaling would need to be disabled, as lowering resolution doesn't lower the transmission bit rate if GPU scaling is active.

[WheissRS]

On 12/2/2023 at 7:46 PM, Glenwing said:

Panel limitations in general won't limit the refresh frequency, as the driving circuit really doesn't care how fast the panel is reacting. Existing monitors already drive panels faster than they can actually respond, and we just live with the fact that some pixels may not make a full transition when the color is only on the screen for 1 frame. VA panels are a perfect example of this, as darker shades may be even longer than 2 or 3 frames to make a full transition, but it doesn't stop the system as a whole from running at a higher refresh frequency. Just some transitions may get interrupted with a new direction if they're too slow, but it will still run.

 

How far you can overclock will generally be limited by either the bit rate of the transmission interface (DisplayPort HBR2 in this case) or a controller limitation (line rate for example, which doesn't improve even if you lower the resolution if it's being scaled up, or even just hard-coded limits on how high it will accept for various image parameters).

 

Basically, there's no way to know really. 1440p 165 Hz is near the limit of HBR2, so if that's the only thing limiting the frequency then yes, lowering the resolution may open additional room for refresh frequency to be increased, but the controller may not allow higher anyway for other reasons. You'll have to find that out yourself. GPU scaling would need to be disabled, as lowering resolution doesn't lower the transmission bit rate if GPU scaling is active.

Hi! it's been a while since i posted it and i admit i forgot about it (haha), but thank you for the fast reply anyway.
Since then i didn't try to overclock it, but i found some info on a youtube comment of a guy who allegedly overclocked his Omen X27, in his words: "from 1440p 240Hz to 1080p 400Hz with cvt-reduced blank timing setting and 8bit color depth" (i don't know about even half of this stuff), he also mentioned that got even to 420Hz but the monitor would crash while playing games, quite wild actually and hard to take in face value, but it seems you can do it then by downscaling the resolution, so maybe i would try it out! or i would sell this monitor somehow and buy a 240hz already, let's see which come first haha