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HarryAnkers / 4k120-hdr-virtual-display-june2026.md
Created June 7, 2026 19:17
Headless 4K120 HDR virtual display on NVIDIA + Wayland (CachyOS) — June 2026 status: HDR/4K60/native-res work, 4K120 blocked by FRL bring-up on sink-less connector

Headless 4K120 HDR virtual display on NVIDIA + Wayland — June 2026 status

Goal: a completely headless Linux box that presents a virtual display and streams 4K 120Hz HDR to a Mac/iPad over Sunshine → Moonlight, with nothing physically plugged into the GPU. This is a running log of how far that gets on current NVIDIA + KDE Wayland, what works, and exactly where it hits a wall.

TL;DR: HDR works. 4K60 works. Arbitrary native resolutions work. 120Hz does not — the NVIDIA driver refuses to bring up HDMI 2.1 FRL (or DP DSC) on a force-enabled connector that has no real sink doing the link handshake, so anything needing more than ~600 MHz TMDS

@HarryAnkers
HarryAnkers / GUIDE.md
Last active June 3, 2026 13:54
NVIDIA Virtual Display for Sunshine/Moonlight on Linux — No Dummy Plug Required (4K@120Hz, HDR, Custom Resolutions)

NVIDIA Virtual Display for Sunshine/Moonlight on Linux — No Dummy Plug Required

A guide for creating a virtual display on an NVIDIA GPU (tested on RTX 5080, driver 595.58) with HDR, custom resolutions, and 4K@120Hz support for headless Sunshine/Moonlight streaming on Linux.

Works on both HDMI and DisplayPort connectors with no physical display or dummy plug connected.

The Problem

Running Sunshine headless on Linux with NVIDIA is painful: