ASUS and Acer UHD G-Sync HDR Monitors Forced to Use Color Compression at 120/144 Hz

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 06/18/2018 03:46 PM | source: | 43 comment(s)

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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Fox2232
Senior Member

Posts: 11809
Joined: 2012-07-20

#5558290 Posted on: 06/18/2018 03:57 PM

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.

Timothy D Smith
Junior Member

Posts: 12
Joined: 2017-10-21

#5558296 Posted on: 06/18/2018 04:16 PM

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.

fantaskarsef
Senior Member

Posts: 12469
Joined: 2014-07-21

#5558298 Posted on: 06/18/2018 04:20 PM

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

Agent-A01
Senior Member

Posts: 11412
Joined: 2010-12-27

#5558300 Posted on: 06/18/2018 04:21 PM

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.

Silva
Senior Member

Posts: 1627
Joined: 2013-06-04

#5558302 Posted on: 06/18/2018 04:24 PM

I'll wait for a 16:9, 23/24''; Freesync 2 monitor, below 200€. Thank you.

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