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DisplayPort 1.2 – The future of displays and what you might be missing out on - April 26th, 2012
- Guest Blogger
By David Tjong, Technical Marketing team at AMD
Since the launch of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 series, AMD introduced support for DisplayPort 1.2, but it hasn’t been until CES 2012 where the technology has been demonstrated with the AMD GPUs.
Let’s take a look at some of the display technologies that were shown at CES this year.
Multi-Display Technology
Notebooks are great on the road: Portable, Wireless, and Convenient; but when you bring it home, why limit yourself to just with just one monitor? When you can have 4?
Don’t worry about messing with multiple cables. We’re talking about a single cable from your notebook. DisplayPort 1.2 enables this with Multi Stream Transport (MST) Hubs and Daisy-Chain monitors. Don’t get these confused with the DisplayPort 1.1 MST Hubs already in the market. DisplayPort 1.2 MST Hubs have support for monitors of different size, resolution, and orientation. (eg. 2 x FHD in portrait & 1 x WQXGA in landscape)
There’s no magic going on here. As you can see we have 3 monitors each individually connected to our DisplayPort 1.2 MST Hub. The only cable that is connected to the notebook is the connector on the DisplayPort 1.2 MST Hub.
Don’t get too excited just yet. This illustrated image of the DisplayPort 1.2 MST Hub is just a mockup of the possible future design. The current prototype is significantly larger and requires an external power adapter. It is expected that this technology would get smaller as the product is finalized, or perhaps even disappear if monitor manufacturers embed this technology directly into the monitor. (ie. Daisy Chaining)
4K2K resolution
Looking to move onto the next generation of display resolution?
At CES, one of the buzzwords floating around was 4K2K. 4K2K loosely refers to 4060×2160 or 3840×2160 (QFHD) resolutions, and various TV manufacturers showed their 4K2K TVs. It’s now the waiting game for them to be released. If you’re eager for a 4k2k monitor today you can pick up the Eizo Radiforce RX840 for a roughly $38,000. Although this model requires 2 DisplayPort 1.1 cable inputs.
With DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth is effectively doubled, so why do 2 cables when we can do 1? At CES, VESA demonstrated a modified version of the monitor that accepted a single DisplayPort 1.2 cable input. That’s 4096×2160@60Hz resolution with a single cable. Needless to say, that’s a lot of pixel going through a single cable.
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HDMI (Yes, we haven’t forgotten about you)
Haven’t jumped on the DisplayPort bandwagon yet? Or do you want to cling onto your HDMI cables a bit longer? The AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 series has your answer for that too. Supporting the optional implementations in the HDMI specification, the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 series supports up to 4096×2160@24Hz. You’ll also need a TV/Monitor that supports the same optional implementation in the HDMI specification. For example, available in the market is the Sony VPL-VW1000ES 4K2K projector that will support 4096×2160@24Hz over HDMI.
Keep in mind, with a maximum refresh rate of 24Hz, it’s recommended only for media consumption such movies or videos. If you’re looking for a smooth gaming experience you’ll want at least a 60Hz refresh rate.
So what Display Technology are you most looking forward to?
David Tjong is on the Technical Marketing team at AMD.
His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.
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