Steam link forcing 640x360 resolution

[Dragwag]

Hope someone can help with this.

I'm having some real trouble trying to work the Steam link out. It was great when I first got it, but now I'm having some real issues.

My main monitor runs on 1920x1080. I use the link primarily for a 19" smart tv also running at 1920x1080 at 60fps.

I have an Intel i5 cpu and a RX480 and hardware and software encoding has been ticked for both since I first set it up. The steam link is also set to hardware decoding.

I hadn't had any problems with it until the last week or so and the whole thing worked as smooth as butter. I haven't changed any settings but the link is now running at 640x360 and capped at 30fps. The image fills the screen but is obviously really blurry. I have also started to get image flicker, where for a second, a tiny scaled down version of desktop is visible over BP.

This affects both BP mode and any games I try to run (Which default to 640x480 and won't let me change the resolution in game). While the flicker doesn't happen at all when playing games, due to the terrible resolution, this makes most games totally unplayable.

For some reason, steam only recognizes the monitor resolution on the link as being 640x360.

When using the link just on it's own (not streaming), everything is fine at 1920 and 60fps.

I've tried playing with settings, updating drivers and using the beta version of the link software but this hasn't fixed the problem.

The most frustrating thing is that sometimes, for no discernable reason, if I restart the whole setup it will work properly in full 1920 resolution but this is really inconsistent.

Please help, what am I doing wrong? It's driving me insane!

[GrazGamer]

Is your monitor on when it's at that res?

[Dragwag]

My monitor is usually off when I have been streaming, but your comment got me thinking.

Turns out that if the monitor downstairs is powered on (but not necessarily on the same HDMI input that my pc is using) the link streams at 1920 with no problems.

Conversely, if the monitor is off (Which is kind of the point of streaming) then I am right back to 640 and 30fps.

I also tried starting the link with the downstairs monitor off and then turning it on when the link is running. If you do that then the link refreshes itself and jumps from 640 to 1920. Very odd and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Is it possible it's the graphics card and not the link at all?

[GrazGamer]

The link doesn't display in full res if your monitor is off, it has to be on. You can buy specific devices that fool the PC into thinking the monitor is on but it is not your graphics card or the link it is a windows issue. Google Steam link headless hdmi.

[Dragwag]

Thanks for that information. I had no idea!

Ordered a dummy HDMI which hopefully will fix the issue.