I just picked up the AW2721D monitor. Happy with it so far, but just ran into a major issue.
At first I thought the monitor was just slow to wake up as every time I booted up my system, it would only wake up once the Windows 10 logon screen was showing.
But when I used the SHIFT-RESTART shortcut to boot directly into UEFI BIOS, I realized that instead the monitor simply will not display the POST or BIOS screens at all. It just goes into standby mode and won't wake up.
I'm using a known good DisplayPort cable that was previous working on another Dell 1440p 144Hz monitor without issues.
Is this just a bad monitor that I need to send back? Or any other thoughts on this?
It's connected to an EVGA 3080 TI FTW3 GPU with fully updated firmware. Motherboard is also running the latest BIOS. Although at this point, I can't get to the BIOS to check anything now because the monitor simply goes to sleep.
Not interested in using HDMI considering that the specs for the AW2721D do not support 240Hz over HDMI.
Native Resolution - Taken from the Dell AW2721D tech specs page
QHD 2560 x 1440 (DisplayPort: 240 Hz, HDMI: 144 Hz)
If DisplayPort isn't functioning properly, then this monitor must be defective.
People have been experiencing this due to firmware updates to current gen GPUs to support reBAR, which is impacting DSC. The workaround is to use hdmi to enter BIOs, or downflash the vBIOs if the issue is the display stream compression issue that a lot of other people are experiencing, or deal with it until it gets patched. If that is the issue (not saying it is, there could be other issues) but if so, it's not the monitor, it's the GPU firmware. You could find out if that is likely the issue by checking to see if hdmi works for BIOS POST screens. Other than that, dp should work fine, hdmi would only be to access BIOS settings which seemed like what you wanted to do.
Not interested in using HDMI considering that the specs for the AW2721D do not support 240Hz over HDMI.
Native Resolution - Taken from the Dell AW2721D tech specs page
QHD 2560 x 1440 (DisplayPort: 240 Hz, HDMI: 144 Hz)
If DisplayPort isn't functioning properly, then this monitor must be defective.
My computer is a custom build.
AMD Ryzen 5900X CPU
Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro motherboard - Latest BIOS
32GB of 3600Mhz RAM
2x 1TB NVME SSDs
EVGA RTX 3080 TI FTW3 - Latest Firmware
SeaSonic 850W Platinum PSU
And I just bought this monitor to replace a Dell S2716DG (1440p 144Hz) monitor which had zero problems over DP. The only thing that has changed is the monitor.
You can use both at the same time, and switch between them as needed. There is a DSC bug with the latest REBAR firmware, that is causing these exact same issues over display port as you are describing.
You could switch to HDMI for bios access, and to DP for anything else. That would also confirm if's a DCS issue as opposed to some other issue.
So I went ahead and tested the monitor with HDMI and the BIOS and POST screens did appear fine with HDMI. I went ahead and disabled REBAR in the BIOS, and this did not resolve the DP issues though.
I'm just perplexed though that I had zero issues using DisplayPort with a Dell S2716DG 1440p 144hz monitor which is much older (5 year old G-Sync monitor) yet this newer Alienware monitor cannot display POST/BIOS screens over DP. It would seem that if the GPU were the issue, I would have experienced similar issues on the Dell S2716DG as well.
Unfortunately, I can't just leave an HDMI cable plugged into the GPU for BIOS purposes as I use the HDMI port for my VR setup and there is only one single HDMI port on the GPU.
I'll likely need to issue a return on this monitor unfortunately.
Yeah, I'd prefer not to lose reBAR support due to a monitor upgrade. I'm going to initiate a return and get a replacement and see if that changes anything. If not, then I'll unfortunately look into another display that doesn't have this issue.
I think that the issue is related to the VBIOS update that enabled reBAR, not the reBAR setting itself. I think if you roll back to the VBIOS update that was prior, I think 1.0.0.1, it will enable you to see the POST screen again, but you would lose reBAR functionality. I am just waiting for an update since there are limited times I go into the BIOS and need access to the POST screen.
r72019
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Posted July 26th, 2021 23:00
People have been experiencing this due to firmware updates to current gen GPUs to support reBAR, which is impacting DSC. The workaround is to use hdmi to enter BIOs, or downflash the vBIOs if the issue is the display stream compression issue that a lot of other people are experiencing, or deal with it until it gets patched. If that is the issue (not saying it is, there could be other issues) but if so, it's not the monitor, it's the GPU firmware. You could find out if that is likely the issue by checking to see if hdmi works for BIOS POST screens. Other than that, dp should work fine, hdmi would only be to access BIOS settings which seemed like what you wanted to do.