AOC Q27G2S 165Hz fails to do 10-bit colour and HDR not recognized by Windows 10!

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

Around 3 weeks ago I bought the AOC Q27G2S 165Hz monitor from Amazon UK for £220. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09KRZGHK3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

| AOC Monitors

eu.aoc.com

But 2560x1440 resolution will only do 10 bit @120Hz. 165Hz will revert back to 8-bit colour mode only. Also HDR is not recognized! Any ideas? Is this a monitor limitation? I also upgraded to SOOMFON 1.4 DisplayPort cable https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09CFWBXVG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 from Amazon as well and still it made no difference.

DXDiag shows HDR Support: Not Supported Monitor Capabilities: HDR Supported (BT2020RGB BT2020YCC Eotf2084Supported ). What is this meant to be???

DP Capabilities 1.2/1.4 on the monitor control panel when pressing the button on monitor. Can someone confirm is this a monitor limitation that's helding me back or the GTX 960 GPU?

HDR will not show as supported despite using latest Nvidia Graphics Card drivers. It cannot also do 144Hz at 10-bit. Only 8-bit. 120Hz is the only max refresh rate that will do 10-bit colour.

I basically wasted my money buying new 1.4 DisplayPort cable because it really isn't making any difference whatsoever. No 10-bit at 2K or HDR support. I can change HDR mode from the display control panel to Movie, Gaming, etc But the monitor will still display as Standard dynamic range (SDR).

I'm really confused. Can anyone with this monitor confirm if they are experiencing the same issues?

 

[BLaZiNgSPEED]

After further research I have identified the reason why I cannot enable HDR with DisplayPort.
My GTX 960 graphics card doesn't support DisplayPort 1.4, so that is the reason HDR cannot be enabled and no 10-bit with 165Hz.
I have found this link https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/what-graphics-card-hdr-pc-games-3

"The good news is that all of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 900, 10-series and new 16-series and RTX 20-series desktop graphics cards are primed and ready for HDR straight out of the box. Hooray! The bad news is that the 900-series can only do it over their HDMI 2.0 connectors, because their DVI and DisplayPort outputs don't support it. Boooo. This is because HDR support for DisplayPort was only introduced in DisplayPort 1.4. Nvidia's GTX 900-series, on the other hand, are stuck with DisplayPort 1.2 outputs."

I wished I had actually read this earlier before buying the new cable. But, anyway, I managed to return back the cable to Amazon and got a full refund!

It's quite possible that the existing supplied cable with the AOC monitor already supports 1.4 but due to my GTX 960 limitation it cannot support it.

For now I have a solution. I can switch to HDMI when I want to watch HDR content. And use DisplayPort to play games at 165Hz. 8-bit not a big deal as games are mostly rendered in 8-bit anyway. Desktop res at 120Hz 10-bit will be more than enough until I upgrade my PC in future.