It’s always nice to get an insight into what we can expect over the next year when it comes to hardware, and AMD were happy to open the lid recently and share some information about what you will get from their Radeon GPUs over the next 12 months.
R9 Fury pictured above
In a briefing to press at a technology summit for Radeon Technologies Group, a division formed this year for all AMD’s GPU assets, the company revealed that the latest DisplayPort and HDMI standards would be supported by AMD’s cards in 2016.
But what’s the benefit of that, you ask?
The first is higher bandwidth. DisplayPort 1.2 currently only supports 3840×2160 at 60Hz, meaning that those of you who want to get all fancy with your high refresh rates will be stuck to 1080/1440p resolutions. And that’s the maximum resolution too.
The maximum resolution for DisplayPort 1.3: 60Hz, 7680×4320. And if you want those fancy gaming refresh rates at 2K and beyond, DisplayPort 1.3 supports that too. See the following frame from the presentation, as posted by Anandtech:
Image courtesy of AMD, as posted by Anandtech
That’s not the only thing to look forward to, though. AMD will also be rolling out FreeSync over HDMI from the first quarter of next year, although it’s worth noting that it won’t be available everywhere.
For one, FreeSync over HDMI is still proprietary technology at this stage since HDMI hasn’t gone with a common standard for variable refresh rates yet. So for FreeSync to be supported over HDMI, the monitors themselves will need to work with AMD’s special extensions, which in turns means the vendors have to work more closely alongside AMD to get everything going.
It might be the case that FreeSync over DisplayPort becomes more commonplace, and given that DisplayPort can support far more bandwidth at this stage. But HDMI is still vastly more supported than DisplayPort; Radeon told press at the summit that only 30% monitors sold can support DisplayPort, with the remaining 70% only carrying ports for either HDMI or HDMI and DVI.
AMD’s techs are also working to include support for high dynamic range (HDR) on their cards next year, and the company believes HDR capable monitors should become available over the next 12 months as well. They probably won’t fall into the realm of affordability until 2017-18, but you won’t find a PC hardcore fan out there who isn’t enthused about the general improvement and evolution of GPUs and displays.
Comments
10 responses to “AMD Cards Will Support HDMI 2.0a And DisplayPort 1.3 Next Year”
Yay finally some display port 1.3 cards!
I wonder if we’ll now see monitors that don’t (ab)use DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport then? Having a display present itself as two monitors and then requiring software changes on top of that to merge them back together again is a bad hack.
240Hz monitor? I bet that looks better than real life
Yeah but it wont be very cinematic.
1080@60FPS is more than enough for a big TV sitting at a distance. It’s like any other technical spec, where you see a large benefit at lower thresholds (480 to 720) but see less and less at high thresholds (4K to 8K).
Higher visual fidelity doesn’t directly correlate with resolution or frame rate. You can see 720p movies that are more realistic than 1080p games. We just don’t understand and have not simulated some parts of the behavior of light and animation, which is what causes the difference and takes it to the uncanny valley.
While we will surely need more processing power to simulate reality, chasing resolution and frame rates alone is a fools errand, unless you are talking VR (where both those numbers still make a larger difference due to how close the display is to your face and the need for precise tracking).
The resolution you require is basically dependent on how much of your FOV the screen is taking up. Stand further away from your TV and you have more pixels per retina cell.
But will it support surround audio?
Prediction: AMD Cards will still have horrible Linux support next year which will make AMD powered steam boxes crippled.
I don’t use an an AMD card on Linux. But it seems ridiculous if that’s the case.
Because PS4 runs on UNIX. I thought they would have better support?
I’ve heard some crazy stories about HBM2 (1TB/s).
Wonder if any of the upcoming VR displays are capable of HDR with all that chromatic aberration and correction? Probably not.