Configuring Dell U2711 on Windows
November 2, 2024

Guide on how to make the Dell U2711 Monitor work with full resolution on any (hopefuly?) Windows installation.

  1. Download Custom Resolution Utility. Unzip it and run CRU.exe.

  2. In th dropdown at the top choose the montior DELL U2711. The monitor must be connected to your PC.

  3. Under the "Detailed resolutions" panel click on "Add...", set the properties as follows:

    Timing mode: CVT-RB (RB stands for reduced blank)
Horizontal Size: 2560
Vertical Size: 1440
Refresh Rate: 50 (60 doesn't work, haven't tried 59.96)

  4. Export the configuration as .exe.

  5. Run the generated executable, choose "Install EDID".

  6. Reboot the computer.

  7. Go to Window's graphics configuration, the custom resolution should now be available, choose it.

If something goes wrong you can re-run the generated .exe file then click on "Reset Configuration".

Discussion

Getting to these steps was a huge pain, I had done it before in Windows 10 using Intel's graphics control panel, also with a lot of problems, but on Windows 11 this simply didn't work at all.

In Windows 11 there's a new graphics control panel that doesn't have an option to set a custom resolution. There is a Beta version of it Intel® Graphics Command Center (Beta), which does have custom resolution support. But, even when using it, all attempts to create a custom resolution of 2560x1440 threw an error Unable to add settings - Bad parameters. I had a similar issue in Windows 10 which I fixed by lowering the refresh rate to 30Hz, that didn't work here, for who knows what reason.

This all happened after I tried updating Intel's drivers several times, I was warned about removing the OEM's version of the driver, also warned that custom resolutions may break things and so on. I spent a little bit less than last time, probably because I already knew what I was getting myself into. Still, it's a huge disappointment how much time is wasted on stuff like this, when on all other operating systems it "just works".