I’m helping my dad switch from Mint to Cachyos, and I’ve had some help from AI. I’d appreciate your help.
System Specs:
OS: CachyOS (Latest)
Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma (Wayland)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Driver Version: 580.xx
Monitor: 4K Display (TV)
Connection: HDMI 2.0
Problem Description: I am unable to select 60Hz at 4K resolution; the system only offers 30Hz in the Display Settings. I am committed to using Wayland and do not want to switch to X11.
What I’ve Checked/Tried:
Verified I am on the 580 series driver branch.
Verified nvidia-drm.modeset=1 is enabled.
Tested the 580 drivers, but the UI still caps the refresh rate at 30Hz.
Check whether that resolution is available at that refresh rate. If not, then it’s likely an unsuitable HDMI cable or a TV setting (or the cable is plugged into an older HDMI port, e.g., 1.4).
Lots of people with Nvidia cards have this exact issue with HDMI and their TV. The solution was to go into the TV’s settings and try to change the HDMI port from “auto” to “standard” or something similar. For whatever reason, the Nvidia driver + kwin will try to use too low of link rate and is forced to use 30 Hz due to bandwidth constraints. But this is more or less the TV trying to advertise support for older HDMI versions for old equipment than anything else. Why this exact combo (Nvidia + kwin + wayland) fails to select the right link rate is beyond me. But the solution is out there: 1) use an x11 session, or 2) continue to use a Wayland session and change the TV’s HDMI port setting from “auto” (to avoid this weird backwards compatibility shit for old HDMI 1.4 devices).
Edit: make sure you are using an HDMI 2.0 cable and an HDMI 2.0 capable port on the TV itself and make sure the GPU also supports HDMI 2.0. All three links in the chain are required for 60 Hz with HDMI.