ASUS and Acer UHD G-Sync HDR Monitors Forced to Use Color Compression at 120/144 Hz
We've mentioned the new Ultra HD G-Sync HDR ACER and ASUS monitors a couple of times already. Over the weekend some reported the ACER one got in the news due to a loud ventilator, today more news reaches the web, in high-refresh-rate modes, the displays fall back to color compression.
A few early adopters of these HDR, local dimming monster monitors noticed and reported on Reddit that when using a high refresh rate, the image quality dropped significantly. The story now is that the ASUS and Acer screens make use of color compression at 120 and 144 Hz, not because the panel couldn't handle it, but the main limitation is signal bandwidth over DisplayPort 1.4. This also means you pretty much need to run your Windows desktop at 60 Hz for a bit of a quality readable view.
DisplayPort 1.4 has too little bandwidth available to drive 4k, 144 Hz without compression. To bypass that, the screen monitor signal reverts to 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. basically your brightness information will remain intact, however, the color information will be based on half the resolution, 1920 x 2160 pixels. All is good up to 98 Hz, after that, it's 4:2:2 chroma subsampling ... on your 2500 Euro / 2000 USD Screen. Lovely. There's no real solution for this, other than new display connectors and graphics cards that do support such high bandwidth connections - HDMI 2.1.
chroma subsampling. (Picture: Wikimedia )
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Junior Member
Posts: 13
Joined: 2018-06-18
As is mentioned above - isn't the panel actually an 8-bit panel with processing (8-bit+frc)? Doesn't that mean that you actually cannot see the difference between an 8-bit and a 10-bit image on this monitor? If that is the case, DP 1.4 supports up to 4K 120Hz@8-bit. Whereas 10-bit is limited to 98hz, as the article says. But if you cannot see the difference on this panel, due to it being 8-bit+frc, and not true 10-bit, then I was thinking I'd just run it at 120hz, and then leave it at that.
Senior Member
Posts: 7690
Joined: 2005-08-10

It was just a matter of time, I'd be surprised if there won't be more issues.
Member
Posts: 72
Joined: 2006-07-20
4K blurays are 4:2:0, never seen someone being upset about it.
Now 4:2:2 is not enough ?
Senior Member
Posts: 390
Joined: 2007-03-28
Am I naïve in thinking that... well, just use 2 cables from GPU to monitor?
I get that surround/multimonitor enthousiasts will be left cold in the water, but It'd be a good temporary solution, I think?
I remember that Dell 8K monitor used 2 or even 4 DP cables.
Senior Member
Posts: 123
Joined: 2016-11-08
Most movies at 4k HDR stream no more than 60Hz, so there is a reason to their madness. I don't agree with what they did, but still - early tech is doing what it said it would.
I am sure the specs mention it as well (although I haven't checked).
Everything is always in the details, but if the specs say 4K HDR @ 144Hz then people will have a case against them.