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 )
VPNFilter malware targets ASUS and DLINK routers now also and injects code into WWW - 06/07/2018 08:13 AM
A week or two ago we reported about VPNFilter malware. A command and control server was recently caught by the FBI, however now it malware appears to target new router types and does so with new feat...
AM4 Motherboards ASUS and Gigabyte Go Online - 02/21/2017 01:48 AM
On the web new photos appeared on several socket AM4 motherboards, this round it is ASUS and Gigabyte (Aorus). There are four models based on the B350 chipset and one with X370....
ASUS and MSI tease Custom Radeon RX 480 cards - 06/29/2016 08:47 PM
Both ASUS and MSI are teasing with a custom design Radeon RX 480. Asus announced that the manufacturer will soon release a Radeon RX 480 Strix. The video card is equipped with the DirectCU III cooler...
ASUS and MSI place focus on own-brand desktop PCs - 08/06/2014 08:43 AM
Following Asustek Computer's increased investments in the branded desktop industry, Micro-Star International (MSI) also has started developing new own-brand traditional desktops, all-in-one PCs and g...
ASUS And Acer Merger Rumor - 09/20/2013 11:03 AM
Here's something to discuss. Apparently, there are whispers going around that Acer and ASUS could potentially merge. Both of these companies hail from Taiwan, and ASUS Chairman Johnny Shih did respo...
Junior Member
Posts: 11
Joined: 2017-10-21
I can't believe that the interconnect is the STILL the limiting factor. People are paying tons of money for GPUs and monitors and they are bottlenecked by a cheap cable. I would love to get a 4K, HDR high refresh rate monitor but I will wait.
Senior Member
Posts: 12156
Joined: 2014-07-21
Early adopter syndrome... this happens when display tech is ahead of other factors (here, connections).
Couldn't USB-C work for this? I don't know the numbers tbh
Senior Member
Posts: 11400
Joined: 2010-12-27
Didn't they say "visually lossless compression" was supported by 1.4?
Anyways, it's a good idea to skip this generation and wait for DP 1.5 or Gsync with HDMI 2.1 support.
Senior Member
Posts: 1433
Joined: 2013-06-04
I'll wait for a 16:9, 23/24''; Freesync 2 monitor, below 200€. Thank you.
Senior Member
Posts: 11708
Joined: 2012-07-20
Did not study HDR yet, but I considered it as simple as another 8bits per pixel which can work as kind of exponent to RGB bits of pixel.
Or HSL expansion where one would need even less additional bits. There are many methods which can easily achieve Very wide HDR range.
I guess they used something more bandwidth hungry.