Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED - black screens, connection losses, and more

[ElfVierzehn]

Hello,

I have the G9 OLED for two days and have really lousy problems:

- when I start a game in fullscreen mode with the native resolution of 5120x1440, the monitor sometimes shuts down. There's no way to restore the image until I'm somehow able to either blindly quit the game or restart the PC - sometimes only the reset button helps.

- When starting certain apps or fullscreen applications, I hear a sound like a device is connecting and disconnecting. I also hear this randomly - it stopped, when I disconnected the USB cable from the monitor and ramains happening when I start full screen applications and exit them.

- I randomly have black screens every now and then without doing anything specific. And quite extreme: If I watch a video via any media player, enter fullscreen and move the mouse, the screen goes black for 3 seconds and then returns. If I move the mouse again, the screen goes black again. This goes on and on.

- I am using an RTX 4090 with this monitor. When I set it to 240 Hz, the GPU memory clock rate is not downclocked when the PC is idle. That means the GPU memory clock (not GPU clock) is always running at max clock, which is not ideal for power consumption and temperatures.

I use a Display Port 1.4 cable with 32.4 Gbit/s, but also have an HDMI 2.1 cable with 48 gbit/s. This happens with both cables. As soon as I lower the monitor Hz to 120, the memory MHz goes back to the correct idle value, as it should. Is this a normal behavior?

- when I turn off VRR on the monitor, it is no longer possible to set the native resolution.

The monitor is running on the latest firmware version 1023.

These are honestly such massive problems that I am almost determined to return this monitor to Samsung as soon as possible.

Any input from more experienced Samsung users who have been able to remedy these issues?

Thanks so much!

[Lamali]

It's not a solution.
I've tried all sorts of cables, including the one you recommend.
Even *****!

The problem is not with the original screen cable.

[JohnnyA1]

Hey guys, the ones that are struggling with getting the monitor back on after sleep etc. What solved it for me was to downgrade my windows version from 24H2 to 23H2. I noticed this when I formated my computer and installed windows 10 which had zero issues waking the monitor from sleep. After some reading I learned that the 24H2 has been causing major issues previously. Anyways I downloaded a windows 11 image file containing the 23H2 and installed in controll which only allows windows to give me security updates. 

[ElfVierzehn]

Absolutely do not downgrade to an older Windows version. This is the worst idea ever. The screen not coming back up ist a completely different issue that's been talked about in here. Your issue is simply related to the fast startup setting in Windows. Disable it and the monitor will boot just fine with Windows.

________________

And everything else. Man... So much going on in here it's a mess. And Samsung does not help either. Not even releasing change logs for their firmware is creating even more confusion.

I tried going through the data of bandwidths for this monitor. Let me try to write it down.

HDMI 2.1 supports up to 48 Gbps. Display Port 1.4 supports up to 32.4 Gbps.

The monitor with its native resolution of 5120 x 1440 will use a big variety of bandwidths, depending on your settings. Let's try some stuff:

1. 5120 x 1440 - 8 bit - 60 Hz: 13.27 Gbps
2. 5120 x 1440 - 10 bit - 60 Hz: 15.93 Gbps
3. 5120 x 1440 - 12 bit - 60 Hz: 18.58 Gbps

Now let's pump up the Hz:

1. 5120 x 1440 - 8 bit - 120 Hz: 26.54 Gbps
2. 5120 x 1440 - 10 bit - 120 Hz: 31.85 Gbps
3. 5120 x 1440 - 12 bit - 120 Hz: 37.16 Gbps
   Point 3 is already above what Display Port 1.4 can handle uncompressed. I know, that display stream compression is a thing, and the compressed signal can be reduced by a third of the uncompressed data stream but it's almost impossible to calculate, as there are so many factors that are involved like the used color scheme, the complexity of what's on the screen (textures, fine lines, patterns etc.).

But let's go on, because that's not at all, what the monitor is capable of. Let's double the Hz here:

1. 5120 x 1440 - 8 bit - 240 Hz: 53.08 Gbps
2. 5120 x 1440 - 10 bit - 240 Hz: 63.70 Gbps
3. 5120 x 1440 - 12 bit - 240 Hz: 74,32 Gbps

Now let's add HDR bandwidth, too. Again, there is no way to really calculate this, but you can roughly add 25% to 30% due to the additional information that's being sent compared to regular SDR content.

If I enable HDR with the last 3 points I wrote down, I will roughly get:

1. ~ 69 Gbps
2. ~ 82 Gbps
3. ~ 97 Gbps

Now let's try to use display stream compression. Earlier I wrote that compression rate can be up to a third - 3:1. Now that's the theoretical ultimate best case scenario, and you will almost never reach that compression rate unless you are only looking at still images. With moving images - gaming - no chance, at all. There is no real data about this. My experience tells me you can maybe achieve 1.5:1 there.

Now take all that Gbps up there and divide that by 1.5. With HDR active and 240 Hz, you will get values that are above what DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 can deliver.

Even with 120 Hz you can have a hard time because here comes the next thing:

Display Port has a bandwidth of 32.4 Gbps. BUT: That's with overheads. The bandwidth that's purely used for the image data is only around 25.9 Gbps. Same with HDMI 2.1 and its 48 Gbps, which are in reality 42.6 Gbps excluding overheads. The rest is reserved for synchronization between monitor and GPU, meta data, audio channels, color profiles - all that stuff that controls additional functions like HDR and adaptive sync e. g.

Now I don't know how the data is exactly separated there, and I also found no real solution somewhere online. However, it's clear, that there are even more factors there playing a role.

• cable quality. There were so many cables thrown in here and some sellers tell us it's the best cable out there, and you can get it for a steal. Yet there are very special cables out there for 70 or 80 Euros + depending on their length.
• electromagnetic interference from other devices
• Not every Display Port 1.4 device uses the max bandwidth. A limited processing capacity of a GPU can reduce the bandwidth, too.

The values we read everywhere are the theoretical maximum. Probably nobody in this forum does reach the maximum possible, at all!

I know, this text is a bit display port heavy and kind of ignores HDMI. I use Display Port rather than HDMI. I always had some kind of issue with HDMI somewhen in my life. I always had the impression. Display Port can handle higher resolutions better than HDMI. The fact that G-Sync has issues - or at least had issues, when I wanted to use it a few years ago on HDMI, also lets me use Display Port cables. So excuse that pro DP text here.

I can only conclude, that there is lots of stuff limiting, reducing or interfering the bandwidth we need to run this monitor and this simply results in the black screens. Sure, there can also be some faulty hardware, but generelly I would speak about bandwidth issues. The monitor does have a lot of features, but I am almost certain, these are not meant to be run all at the same time.

Also, it was a somewhat strange decision to solder the old connections for DP and HDMI into the monitor, although there were already options with a higher bandwidth. But it's as questionable for this monitor as it is for the 40 series RTX gpus, as they are powerhouses capable of an amazing output needing loads of bandwidth but only using the same slow DP and HDMI sockets.

In the end... Still no real idea, as Samsung remains silent, as they do with all of their products, when something fails.

[JohnnyA1]

Downgrading Windows from 24H2 to 23H2 isn’t a bad decision—it doesn’t impact anything other than the utilities Microsoft forces on you, and you’ll still receive the same security updates. So before making assumptions, take the time to research. The original topic of the post covers more than just bandwidth issues.

I have the 93SC OLED and currently have had zero problems, aside from faint coil whine and the monitor not waking from sleep—an issue that was resolved by installing 23H2. I’m using the supplied mini HDMI cable connected to a 4090, running at 240Hz with no issues.

If you want to discuss a specific topic, start a new thread. I’m posting this because others have reported the "no wake from sleep" issue, and this might help them. Not everything revolves around you. I know it's frustrating due to the lack of support from Samsung...

[ElfVierzehn]

My friend, I created this topic. And this topic has initially never been about a monitor not starting up when it was sleeping. Seems like you are the one who needs to start a new topic and provide your solution to people with the same issue. However, the issue you have has been discussed somewhere before and the solution is indeed deactivating fast startup in Windows. I had that, too, and this absolutely solved it. But then again, this is not what this topic is about.

[Morgan_PG]

Your analysis regarding bandwidth is interesting, but this raises a question for me. There are some people in this same thread who have returned their Samsung monitor, purchased a Philips Evnia (I understand the 49M2C8900 model), and haven't had any problems since.

In the specifications, I can see that this Philips Evnia monitor also has HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and practically the same panel specifications. So, shouldn't they be experiencing the same problems if they were caused by bandwidth?

In my case, I have the 2023 smart model, and my problems were resolved after updating the firmware to version 2044 and switching to a GeForce RTX 5080. I can't say which of the two solved the problem because I did it practically at the same time, and I no longer have the RTX 3080 to test. If I remember correctly, my problems started happening after firmware 1402.

[ItzTheDay]

Bandwidth is not the issue here (assuming you have a supported cable). Like I said before, I'm coming from the NEO G9 which gave me no issues at all. 5120x1440 10-Bit 4:4:4 240Hz HDR with G-Sync. Only difference between the Neo G9 and OLED G9 (besides panel type) is the Neo used an actual G-Sync module. Although I think that is irrelevant because I get the same black screen issues on the OLED G9 with or without G-Sync enabled. 

Post update 2044, everything seems to be fine for me. I'm even able to display my motheboards splash screen and BIOS without having to force "stretch" logo in the BIOS settings. I made a post a while ago about that issue, the monitors EDID didn't support the splash screen or BIOS resolution. 

I haven't tried it yet, I'll do it tonight but I can 100% duplicate a black screen scenario by turning on a device connected to another input. For an example; If I'm on my PC (DisplayPort) and I turn on my Xbox (HDMI) a black screen will occur, same vice versa. If I'm on my Xbox and move my mouse while my PC is in standby. black screen. I noticed this a while ago while jumping right on Xbox after using my PC. I have my PC set to turn the screen off after 10 minutes, when they would happen I would get a black screen.  

Samsung stop putting out update/patch notes with their CHG70, which I believe was their first monitor that updatable via USB. I remember when they stopped with the notes but you could reach out to tech support and they would email you a PDF of the notes. Then they stopped that with the G7.  

[Lamali]

It would be interesting to list here those who have solved the problem with firmware 2044, in particular which exact model you have and in which country, as the new firmware is not available anywhere on the various Samsung sites, whatever the country!

[zurie]

Not everyone is running the same settings on their monitor and in NVIDIA control panel.

If you run adaptive sync on the monitor you can still turn off g-sync in NVIDIA control Panel...
if you run G-SYNC you can STILL run fullscreen only vs window and fullscreen.
HDR is also optional.  the refresh is also configurable.

My display seems ok at 240hz with HDR OFF and G-SYNC set to fullscreen only when I run windows apps, like blender / unity / substance painter, etc...  these are all not fullscreen apps so they aren't getting HDR or GSYNC and so I am not seeing blackouts at all.

I put HDR on, (and was in a fullscreen game) and I got a black screen playing EA Skate.  

So bandwidth, cables, etc,  like another user said, there is so much conflicting information that its difficult if not impossible to weed through all the dynamic variables of peoples tests.

And I am currently testing with my settings - ON VERSION 2044

on a 3080 RTX, Windows 11 (latest),  5120x1440 at 240hz,  (Variable Refresh rate not supported), Bit Depth 8 bit, Color format RGB, Color Space (SDR).

To truly see if this error / issue is gone, I would tell everyone to run HDR (on) Adaptive sync (on) G-Sync on windows and full screen apps, 240hz, etc..   because that is where the blackouts occurred the most for people.

[juanete]

Hey! I’ve been testing version 2044 for several hours, including gaming, and it seems to be fixed.

My exact model is LS49CG954SNXZA, from the USA. I'm using the DisplayPort 1.4 cable that came with the monitor, running Windows 11 with the latest updates, and connected to an RTX 4090 with the latest drivers.