Before we dive into the material it should be noted that the AMD logo was missing from most all of the presentation material at the event, which was a bit strange as usually the AMD logo is plastered all over the place! Among these changes is a new display controller block, upgrading the display I/O functionality we’ve seen as the cornerstone of AMD’s GPU designs since GCN 1.1 was first launched in 2013. Higher refresh rates and High Dynamic Range content will also require far more bandwidth than today’s DisplayPort can drive. HDR support is coming to the high-end HDTV market now and the PC panel markers are also starting to get in on the action.
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For comparison, a fluorescent light has a luminance of 10,000 nits while sunlight is around 1.6 billion which means the now available displays are delivering a pretty sub-par experience in terms of luminance. Such displays will offer unrivaled color accuracy, saturation, brightness, and black depth-in short, they will come very close to simulating the real world. The sRGB color space that Blu-ray and Windows is using just isn’t going to cut it in the years ahead. This is where the ITU-R BT.2020 Color Gamut (BT.2020) is going to save the day on displays by offering up to 12 bits per sample.
What I can discuss today is a pair of features that are being updated and improved for current generation graphics cards and for Radeon GPUs coming in 2016: FreeSync and HDR displays. Like Nvidia’s G-Sync, FreeSync is an effort to keep the framerate of a computer and monitor in sync. HDR won’t be limited to just DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.3 and will also include the HDMI 1.4b and 2.0a specifications, with DisplayPort 1.3 and HDMI 2.0a being added for next year’s cards. Now AMD is trying to do something different by making sure that its technology will work via HDMI, which is a big step forward.
Score one for AMD’s take on variable refresh technology: its FreeSync standard, now only available via DisplayPort, will begin supporting HDMI in early 2016. AMD expects this technology to hit the retail market in Q1 2016 and hopes that it will greatly increase the numbers of monitors that support AMD FreeSync for their user base as well as lower the price point for what one can purchase an AMD FreeSync monitor. We’ve covered the announcement of DisplayPort 1.3 separately in the past, where in 2014 the VESA announced the release of the 1.3 standard.
FreeSync over HDMI was shown as a concept during this June’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, and its formal introduction makes sense because HDMI-enabled monitors typically start at lower prices than those equipped with DisplayPort, which is, until now, the only connection available to drive either FreeSync or rival G-Sync.
HDMI does allow for additional extensions to be introduced to the specification and this is the method by which FreeSync is introduced. As for supported graphics card, any GPU that is Freesync capable over DisplayPort should also be capable of it over HDMI as well, so there won’t be any weird compatibility issues to split the market up. HDMI is not only the outright standard for TVs, but it’s the de facto standard for PC monitors as well; while you can find DisplayPort in many monitors, you would be hard pressed not to find HDMI.
While we are on the topic of AMD FreeSync it should be noted that AMD has introduced their first notebook with a validated AMD FreeSync panel. “The notebook features an AMD FX-8800P “Carrizo” APU, Radeon R9 M380 graphics, and a 15:6″ IPS-panel with a 1080p resolution.
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Finally, to round things out, AMD touted the pending advantages of DisplayPort 1.3 for new resolutions and new FreeSync configurations. According to AMD, DisplayPort 1.3 can nearly match this, carrying up to 32.4Gbps of bandwidth. HBR was 2.7 Gbps, HBR2 is 5.4 Gbps and HBR3 has 8.1 Gbps per channel, so we have been progressing nicely on the bandwidth front.
