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I recently bought an HP laptop (dv7-3085dx) which is supposed to have a pretty good video card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M). The card is supposed to output a max resolution of 2560x1600 which is also the max resolution of my monitor.

I've now bought an HDMI to dual link DVI cable - this is after Best Buy's 70 dollar HDMI to DVI (perhaps it was 'single' link?) didn't give me the best resolution.

In Windows 7, when I try to set the max resolution for my 30" monitor, I only get 1280x800, which is absurd. The monitor is great, I love the laptop and the video card supposedly supports such resolutions. I therefore can't figure out why I'm not getting a better resolution.

When I "detect" my monitor in Windows 7, it is shown correctly as a DELL 3007WFP!

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  • Further research points to the fact that windows 7 (or perhaps specifically windows 7 64) has trouble with this monitor. Tried installing the latest monitor driver (which is from 2007!), didn't help.
    – user14660
    Mar 14, 2010 at 4:23

3 Answers 3

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Reading the comments on the cable you linked to - it's probably DVI "single". You won't be able to display anything higher than 1920x1200@60hz on it even if everything worked and you weren't limited to 1280x800. AFAIK, Dell's 30 inchers don't support any higher than 1920x1200 on HDMI - and I think that's you option to use your 3007WFP. Not ideal, but better than 1280x800.

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If you have the ability to run PowerStrip, have an alternative Intel integrated GPU, or any other way of creating a custom resolution, then try tightening all the values you can (reduce porches and sync width, maybe take refresh rate down a few hz) to squeeze the signal down an HDMI cable. If it's possible to get ~108hz 1080p down HDMI (I've done it), 2560x1600 60hz should be a doddle.

This relies on your monitor being very generous on what signals it will accept of course - the more active electronics it has, the better. It's generally the monitor that is the limiting factor when hacking HDMI.

If you don't have the ability to create custom resolutions at the driver level or in PowerStrip, then your only option is to create a custom monitor driver using one of the plethora of tools available and make do with a very low refresh rate like 30hz.

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Did you make sure that the external monitor was set as the default monitor and let the screen 'extend' from the external monitor to the laptop's screen. Not sure how it would look on the laptop's screen, but I have used the same Nvidia GFX card with my 21.5" monitor at 1920 x 1080 but I didn't extend the screen to my laptop (dv7-3080us).

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  • I just tried making the DELL monitor my primary screen, didn't do anything for the resolution.
    – user14660
    Mar 14, 2010 at 3:32

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