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Ever Wanted a 20480 X 3200 Resolution Display? Matrox Has You Covered.

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:45:28 -0600

Edit: Whoops, our previous resolution figure was wrong, and has been corrected.

Matrox isn’t a name you hear a lot anymore. The graphics spotlight has been effectively taken over by Nvidia and AMD. Matrox isn’t letting that get them down and have announced a new GPU, the Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 multi-display Octal.

The M9188 comes equipped with eight DisplayPort outputs and 2GB of RAM. Each of the DisplayPorts is capable of driving a monitor with a resolution of 2560x1600. They also throw in eight DisplayPort to DVI adapters in case you have eight DVI monitors lying around.

Further, the driver supports multiple cards on a system. So with two of these monsters, you’d be capable of running 16 monitors with a total resolution of 20,480 X 3,200, in a 2 X 8 configuration. Good luck finding wallpaper for that.

2010 Technology Preview

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0500

We've seen the future and it's full of new and exciting hardware for power users

So much in life is unknowable. Will the economy rebound? Hard to say. Will oil prices skyrocket? Maybe, maybe not. Will Brangelina add to their brood? Frankly, we don’t care. But one thing’s for sure: Technology is ever-changing and each year guarantees new advances for the PC user.

As we do every year around this time, we got on the horn with our industry contacts—experts in their respective fields—and pressed them for details about what new and exciting hardware power users can look forward to in 2010. Some of what we learned was expected (SATA speeds will double), some came from out of left field (six 30-inch panels on a single videocard?!), and some just plain make sense (like a Nehalem chip for the masses).

Read on to find out how your personal computing landscape stands to be altered in the year ahead.

Core i7 Goes Mainstream

Intel's latest troika of new CPUs brings Nehalem goodness to the masses

Nehalem for everyone! That simple sentence best explains Intel’s brand-new series of CPUs, which is sure to please budget users everywhere while confounding power users.

Why would a new CPU that gives you the best bang for the buck in town be greeted nervously? Because Intel’s new CPU brings with it a new socket as well as a new infrastructure. This new infrastructure is essentially a fork in the road that forces users to make a difficult choice: Save money today but get locked out of the high-end, or splurge today knowing that the budget CPU is damn near as good as the top-end part.

For the details on Intel’s new budget monster, savor our full report, consume the specs, and then digest the benchmarks to see just which path your next PC should take.

AMD Pins Hope on 32nm Parts

New Orochi core, based on Bulldozer, will see the light in 2011

Even before Intel released its first Core i7 last year, AMD didn’t really have a part that could compete in the high end. Now the company says it will get back in the ball game—but not before 2011.

That’s when its enthusiast Orochi chip is expected to begin shipping. Based on the new “Bulldozer” modular microarchitecture, Orochi will have four or more cores and 8MB of cache, and dump support for DDR2 in favor of DDR3. The company originally hoped to have Bulldozer out much sooner using its existing 45nm process, but has had to postpone the chip so it can be built on a 32nm process. AMD’s fab partner, Global Foundries, won’t actually have that up and running until next year.

For mainstream users, AMD plans to release a version dubbed Llano. Llano will have 4MB of cache and DDR3 support, and some versions will feature integrated graphics cores.

Until Orochi and Llano arrive, however, AMD will have to rely on its existing Deneb and Propos cores. The big question that’s up in the air is whether Orochi will introduce a new socket design or not. AMD isn’t saying and observers seem split on whether AMD can continue to use the AM3 socket for the redesigned chip. Reusing AM3 would make the loyalists happy, and AMD has been far more careful not to force its users to buy new motherboards, so AM3-compatibility wouldn’t surprise us.

Still, with a new budget Core i5 part already faster at far lower clocks, 2011 is a long time away for the AMD faithful.

PCI Express 3.0

New spec removes bottlenecks and improves throughput, but when will we see it?

PCI Express 3.0 will offer a substantial increase in both bandwidth and efficiency over the existing PCI-E 2.0. A good thing, as bandwidth requirements are being pushed ever higher by the increasing capability of graphics cards, with frame buffers now at two gigabytes on high-end cards; increasing graphics features in DirectX 11; and demands made by multiple GPUs on a single card.

PCI Express 3.0 pushes the peak bandwidth from five to eight gigatransfers per second. The new standard will also use 128- and 130-bit encoding, rather than the current 8/10-bit encoding, which should improve efficiency. Additional features include optimizations for improved signaling and better data integrity, while maintaining backward compatibility with PCI Express 1.0 and 2.0 hardware.

However, it’s an open question as to when we’ll actually see PCI Express 3.0–capable hardware. The PCI-SIG, the standards body responsible for PCI Express 3.0, has pushed back the final definition for the new version until mid-2010, with hardware availability pushed to mid-2011. The strong need to ensure backward compatibility as well as a high degree of reliability have been cited as the reasons for the delay.

Even the new generation of DirectX 11 graphics cards, due to hit the streets this fall, will only be PCI-E 2.0 cards. The recently announced Intel P55 motherboards are also built with PCI-E 2.0 slots. The good news is that bandwidth limits aren’t likely to hit a wall with the new generation of GPUs. So, while it’s disappointing to see PCI Express 3.0 pushed back, we won’t suffer performance bottlenecks in the near term.

Graphics

Hang onto your wallets—a new generation of videocards is about to arrive

The speculation about AMD's Direct3D 11 graphics card offering has come to an end. AMD's Radeon 5870 is the fastest single-GPU videocard we've ever tested, packing 2.15 billion transistors and 1600 shader units into an RV870 chip built on the 40nm process.

What about Nvidia? The company has been uncharacteristically quiet about consumer graphics, instead touting design wins with its Tegra and Ion mobile platforms. It's next-generation Fermi chip has a focus on compute functionality (given Nvidia's heavy bet on CUDA), and we've yet to see performance numbers in consumer products like PC games, let alone any definitive release timeframe for Fermi graphics cards outside of the workstation market. This means that AMD has a substantial lead in the push to the next GPU generation.

Trailing behind AMD has got to hurt Nvidia’s pride, and allows AMD to play the pricing game—charging a little more for cards early on, before the competition can ship an equivalent GPU.

Nvidia should be racing to get its new GPUs out because the 900-pound gorilla that is Intel is readying its own GPU, code-named Larrabee. Based on a modified, multicore version of the venerable x86 architecture, with significant vector extensions, Larrabee is unlikely to ship until late Q1 or Q2 of 2010.

In some respects, these new GPUs will actually bring PC graphics hardware just a little closer to game consoles, as DirectX 11 builds on and enhances the tessellation features built into the Xbox 360 GPU. Hardware tessellation is a substantial departure from previous generations of DirectX, which used triangles and vertices as key graphics primitives. Instead, patches are passed to the tessellation pipeline, which contain control points that define areas within which triangles can be automatically generated by the hardware. This is different than previous approaches, which required the application to generate the triangles passed to the GPU.

What this means is that geometry can be automatically generated where it’s needed, allowing smoother curved surfaces. Using hardware tessellation also reduces the number of steps required by game artists to create the artwork, since they only have to create one representation of an object, instead of multiple versions for different levels of detail.

DirectX 11’s other major feature is compute shaders. Using graphics processors for general computing tasks has become a hot topic in the graphics world. Applications like video transcoding, certain Photoshop filters, and scientific applications lend themselves well to the massively parallel floating-point engines built onto graphics chips.

While the main target for DirectX 11 will be Redmond’s newly minted Windows 7 operating system, the new API will run on Windows Vista, as well (but not on Windows XP). Full DirectX 11 support will require new hardware, but a few of the features—particularly multithreading—will run on existing DX10-, DX10.1-, and DX9-capable hardware. So, even owners of older GPUs may see some performance improvements once DirectX 11 actually ships, late in 2009.

USB 3.0

Like USB 2.0, but 10 times as fast

The maximum data transfer speed of USB 2.0 is 480Mb/s, which was fine when it was invented. Now that you have to fill dozens of gigabytes of apps, music, and movies on your cell phone or iPod, it seems kind of pokey. Enter USB 3.0, dubbed SuperSpeed USB (2.0 is officially Hi-Speed USB). The new spec boosts transfer speeds 10x to 4.8Gb/s, which means in the real world you might see transfer speeds up to around 400 megabytes per second. It also operates in full-duplex mode, meaning the USB host can send and receive data simultaneously. All previous USB specs are half-duplex.

SuperSpeed USB ports will be backward compatible with Hi-Speed USB—of course, you won’t get the additional speed. You’ll notice that the ports and cables used for SuperSpeed mode are a little different, though. The heads are a little longer, with the additional pins for the SuperSpeed mode data extending beyond the usual USB plug.

Other nice additions to the spec include new power management modes and an increase in the base power load, so charging your USB 3.0–compatible devices may be 50–80 percent faster than with USB 2.0. The best part? Motherboards with USB 3.0 ports should start rolling out by the end of this year—if we’re lucky.

DisplayPort

Smaller, simpler, faster

DisplayPort is not so much an “upcoming” technology as an “already here” one. AMD, Dell, and Apple already ship a few products with DisplayPort support, for instance. This new VESA digital display connection standard is essentially a replacement for DVI for external monitors and LVDS for internal connections to notebook displays.

What’s so special about it? Well, the connector is smaller, simpler, and doesn’t have those annoying thumb screws that catch onto every cable like a grappling hook, for starters. The cables are slimmer, and a DisplayPort-only monitor could itself be slimmer—and cheaper.

Primarily, DisplayPort provides more data per wire than DVI. You know how you need a dual-link DVI cable to use a monitor with a resolution over 1920x1200? A “single-link” DisplayPort cable should provide enough bandwidth for 2560x1600, or deeper color modes. There’s also an auxiliary 1Mb/s bidirectional data channel that could be used to carry touch-screen data, data for a built-in microphone, etc. The spec supports HDCP content protection, but don’t expect it to replace HDMI on consumer electronics. Each will serve its own market. DisplayPort might pick up traction fastest in notebooks to replace LVDS to drive the display with fewer wires. Hinge space is already at a premium and crammed with wires, so less is more.

Touch

It's not just for your cell phone anymore

It seems like touch-screen technology is everywhere these days. The resistive touch screens seen on old Windows Mobile devices and the Nintendo DS are quickly being replaced by more finger-friendly capacitive multitouch technology (iPhone, Zune HD). It seems like every smartphone in the world and half the portable media players these days are built around the idea that you’ll operate them entirely by smearing your grubby fingers all over the screen.

Touch might be poised to enter the main computing world, too. Sure, you can get an HP TouchSmart all-in-one or a Tablet PC today, but those aren’t exactly the norm. Microsoft is desperately interested in touch technology these days, and where Microsoft goes, the PC industry often follows. Witness the Surface computer and Windows 7. The latest OS out of Redmond incorporates native touch controls throughout and a multitouch API for developers. Windows 7 is clearly designed primarily for a mouse, but the seeds have been planted.

All we need now is a proliferation of touch-screen PC hardware. We need desktop monitors that are touch-enabled, and notebooks with touch screens (that aren’t necessarily Tablet PCs). Building this kind of support into devices is getting cheaper all the time, but the push these days is to lower-cost PCs, not premium features. Will touch for mainstream PCs and notebooks take off? It’s hard to say, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Storage

Bigger, faster, solid-state-ier drives await in 2010

To say that in 2010, hard drives will get more capacious, faster, and cheaper is to state the obvious. Shelves have been stocked with 5,900rpm 2TB 3.5-inch drives for months, and Hitachi’s 7,200rpm 2TB drive comes out in September. But how will 2010 improve on that? Henry Fabian, executive director of marketing for Seagate, says, “We’ll see 3TB drives, probably even higher, as everyone’s vying in the areal density race.” But the more data you have, the harder it is to back up.

Three terabytes is way more storage than we estimate most desktop users will need—but then again, Maximum PC readers aren’t most users. Video editing takes up a lot of space, and those of us who back up our movies to hard drive will quickly find that 3TB holds only about 120 Blu-ray movies.

In the solid state market, expect capacity to go up quickly as prices come down—but maybe not as quickly. Troy Winslow, director of marketing at Intel’s NAND Solutions Group, says he expects solid state drives to double in capacity—at least. Already, we’re seeing lots of gaming PC vendors ship rigs with speedy SSDs for the OS and games, and terabyte-plus drives for storage; expect this to become even more mainstream as 2.5-inch SSDs approach 320GB—or even 500GB. But don’t expect them to match magnetic-drive prices any time soon.

We’ll also see widespread adoption of the TRIM command, which helps keep solid state drives performing at their fastest by informing the controller of empty blocks before a write cycle, so writing files to blocks containing deleted data goes faster. The command is implemented in Windows 7 and in the Linux kernel, and will be available in new drives as well as old drives (with a firmware update).

Is 2010 the year that solid state drives overtake standard hard drives in any sector?

It all depends who you ask. Troy Winslow says that in 2010 SSDs will “continue to displace high-rpm hard drives in enterprise applications, and standard HDDs in corporate and consumer laptops and enthusiast desktops.” But Henry Fabian doesn’t think so. “We don’t see flash today overtaking hard drives, in enterprise or anywhere else, until costs come down. Early adopters will have them, but they’re not ready for prime time,” says Fabian. He cites other concerns besides costs, saying solid state drives won’t replace magnetic enterprise drives until they can match the durability and reliability of enterprise drives. Intel and Hitachi, however, are betting that that happens in 2010, when they jointly release a line of SAS and fiber-channel SSDs.

What about magnetic hard drives with a large solid state cache? Several manufacturers released hybrid drives in 2007 and 2008, but the lines have been allowed to languish, leading many to wonder if the market segment is dead. We’d love to see terabyte-plus hard drives married to a few gigabytes of NAND for speed. Seagate’s Fabian wouldn’t tell us whether Seagate has any hybrid drives in the works, saying merely, “It’s a capacity game, so hybrids could definitely have a role. You get your capacity, with a little boost of speed. It makes perfect sense.”

6Gb/s SATA Will Give SSDs Some Growing Room

Expect 2010 to be the year of SATA 3.0, the 6Gb/s follow-up to the current 3Gb/s SATA spec. High-speed SSDs are already starting to bump up against the 3Gb/s ceiling with their read speeds, so SATA 3.0’s doubled speed gives SSDs some much-needed breathing room. SATA 3.0 also adds greater support for Native Command Queuing and better power management. Drives, motherboards, and adapters utilizing the new spec will appear before the end of 2009—expect announcements at the Intel Developer Forum in late September. We expect widespread adoption by the end of 2010.

Mobile Broadband

LMDS is dead, LTE and WiMax are coming

LMDS

Not too many years ago, it looked like LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution Service) was going to solve the "last mile" problem and bring broadband to rural areas, while enabling urbanites to roam around with their laptops at broadband speeds anywhere they go. It never really caught on. There are a few providers, but in practice the technology never really sees the 8-mile range or 1.5Gb downstream, 200 Mb upstream connection rates it promised. In reality, this relatively expensive and high-power technology is limited to less than 2 miles and rarely achieves high bandwidth rates. It's going to be all but killed by WiMAX and LTE.

WiMAX

Intel spearheaded the development of WiMAX, now ratified by IEEE in the 802.16d and 802.16e specifications. With speeds of over 100 Mbit/s downlink and 30 Mbit/s uplink, WiMAX has been poised as both a "last mile" solution for bringing broadband to rural areas and a 4G solution for mobile phones and notebooks. Sprint has fallen way behind on their promised WiMAX rollout, and other carriers are opting for LTE as their 4G technology of choice. It's far from a dead technology, though, especially since it's so technically similar to LTE. Clearwire, which is mostly owned by Sprint, plans to roll out WiMAX service to quite a few major metropolitan areas over the next year.

LTE

The 3GPP Long Term Evolution or "LTE" technology looks very hot...on paper. As with WiMAX, this "4G" technology is an all-IP based, low latency network that could truly be called mobile broadband. With enough antennas, bandwidth should be 2-3x what WiMAX offers. Early devices won't show off the full speed, but you could still see notebooks and smartphones getting 10+ Mbit/s with low latencies. Best of all, it seems as if every cell company (save Sprint) has jumped on the LTE bandwagon for their 4G rollout. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Rogers Wireless and Telus in Canada, and many others around the world are all adopting LTE and rolling out service over the next year or two. Fortunately, the fundamental radio technology and communications protocols between LTE and WiMAX are so similar that some chipmakers are simply building one chip that can be configured to work with either standard.

Multiscreen Madness

If you think a 30-inch monitor insufficient, how about gaming on six?

Today’s graphics cards can barely handle one 30-inch monitor in gaming. Pushing around 2560x1600 pixels is a challenge for current-generation GPUs. While it’s true that each new generation of graphics cards can push performance, we weren’t quite prepared for the preview AMD gave us of its upcoming DirectX 11–capable graphics hardware.

AMD ushered us into its Sunnyvale, CA, test lab, where it had a high-end system set up with a single graphics card. AMD would only disclose that the card had a single GPU, and was one of the company’s upcoming DirectX 11–capable chips—nothing about the amount of video RAM, clock speeds, or anything else. This particular graphics card also sported six DisplayPort connectors. Attached to each DisplayPort connector was a 30-inch Dell display. The whole affair was configured as a single, 7680x3200 monitor. That's 24.6 megapixels!

Sure, you say, you can hook up six monitors and run Windows… but can it do 3D?

The short answer: yes, in spades. We witnessed the flight sim XPlane 9 running at full resolution, as well as Far Cry 2. Also shown was the flying ship scene from 3DMark 2006, running at a full 7680x3200, at between 12 and 20 frames per second. Dubbed Eyefinity, the tech demo was an amazing tour de force, and we can’t wait to get our hands on one of those cards.

Dell Ultrasharp 3008WFP

David Murphy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:24 -0500

Dell’s jumbo entry in its Ultrasharp line of monitors, the 3008WFP, performs exactly as the company’s marketing materials promise. This monitor truly “produces darker blacks.” In fact, we think Dell’s underselling the device, because the 3008WFP takes the dark spectrum and covers it with the digital equivalent of a dark sheet. We cranked the device to its maximum brightness and still found ourselves unable to see distinctions at the low end of Display Mate’s grayscales.

The situation doesn’t get much better on the light end: As a whole, the 3008WFP suffers from a compressed range. While the 3008WFP’s white is bright and dramatic, it spills over into the light grays, blowing out image detail in both our artificial and real-world test scenarios. If we lower the brightness at all, the dark end of the grayscale worsens. And that’s when we’re using the monitor’s sRGB preset. Other modes, such as the Desktop preset, distort the monitor’s clarity and add uncomfortable shades of color to grayscale gradients. The display also fares horribly on our backlighting test, presenting one of the most spotlight-style, splotchy representations we've seen.

That said, the monitor’s Multimedia preset did seem to accomplish wonders on our HD DVD test, making the detail in the dark bits of the movie match that of our current favorite 30-inch monitor, Gateway’s XHD3000. But while this made us happy, the setting also made colors appear overly saturated.

Our other real-world tests, including high-quality picture viewing and romps through BioShock, produced similar results. But there was one instance when the 3008WFP’s grayscale issues couldn’t be resolved by any presets. A high-res digital image with shadows producing a sweeping black-to-white gradient was clearly marred by banding and other artifacts. A very specific example, yes, but something serious photogs or designers should note.

For gaming, the 3008WFP is as good as any other high-performance LCD. We also like the 3008WFP’s adjustable stand, its five built-in USB ports, and its built-in media reader. This is also the first DisplayPort monitor we’ve ever seen in the Lab. Too bad our high-end videocards don’t yet support the Dual-Link DVI-destroying technology.

Editor's Note: Dell has pulled the 3008WFP line of displays from its online store at the time of this review's posting. According to the company, a technical issue with the monitors has extended the production times for the displays, and Dell is currently working to fulfill orders on a prioritized basis.

The Myth of an HDMI / DisplayPort Standoff

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:16:26 -0500

You hear a lot of speculation about whether HDMI or DisplayPort will be the prevailing spec that computer users should care about. I myself pondered that question a few months back. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that DVI and VGA are on the way out. The former, which has remained unchanged since its adoption in 1998, lacks a standards body to help it evolve with the times. And the latter, an analog interface, is incapable of carrying the digital copyright protection that content producers insist upon.

But according to Bruce Montage, a technology strategist for Dell and Chair of the DisplayPort Task Group, despite the two interfaces’ many similarities—greater bandwidth, A/V signal capacity, digital copy protection capability, smaller connector size—DisplayPort and HDMI aren’t actually at odds in the march of progress, but rather serve very distinct purposes.

In a recent conversation I had with Montag, he explained to me that DisplayPort was specifically designed to replace VGA, DVI, and the internal LVDS (low voltage differential signal) interfaces found on computer hardware, while HDMI was created to address the limitations of the S-Video and Component interfaces. And we can see that HDMI has proceeded in that vein, now occupying space on a growing number of consumer electronics products. Still, HDMI is now being found on graphics cards and a growing number of desktop monitors, so what gives?

The lines get blurry with so many people now integrating PCs into their home entertainment systems, or pressing their ever-larger desktop monitors into the service of console gaming and movie viewing.

Still, Montag contends that DisplayPort will prevail on the PC side, and here’s why: The interface standard addresses some issues that affect all areas of IT, and which virtually guarantee its widespread adoption. Right now the LCD on your desk uses an external interface (VGA or DVI) that receives a signal from your GPU, as well as an internal interface (LVDS) that communicates that signal to the display’s panel. By presenting a unified interface, DisplayPort does away with a layer of complexity and enables much physically sleeker (about the width of a laptop lid) and less-expensive monitors. HDMI was designed as an external digital A/V connection to HDTVs.

Another distinction is that DP features a uniquely scalable bi-directional auxiliary channel. Thus, future implementations of the spec can be scaled upwards to support the signals of a monitor’s embedded microphone, USB hub, webcam, etc.—over the same, single cable that carries your video signal. With HDMI, you would need additional cables to be connected to your PC for those devices. Finally, DP is being tuned to take advantage of fiber optic cables, which will allow for even longer cable runs (currently DP using copper is capable of transmitting full bandwidth over an already generous 10 feet of cable) and a cleaner signal.

The fact that a number of large, influential computer parts makers—Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Dell, to name just a few—back the interface add further support to Montag’s argument.

So maybe there is no war, per se, between the two interfaces, and each does provide distinct benefits to the markets they primarily serve, but I’m still not convinced there won’t be casualties. The blurring between computing and entertainment that I spoke of will most definitely affect how parts manufacturers interpret the market’s needs. From the numerous vendors I spoke with this week in preparation for our 2008 Tech Preview, I heard as many different plans for implementing the two next-gen interfaces. So expect to be faced with choices, and be grateful for adapters.

Buh-Bye, DVI

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:47:59 -0500

DVI’s days are numbered, on that we can agree. The digital video interface now featured so prominently on all modern videocards and nearly every modern LCD has reached its performance ceiling. With a maximum bandwidth of 1920x1200, DVI is ill-suited to meet the ever-greater demands of high-def content and it’s incapable of driving ultra-high res screens, like the latest 30-inch LCDs. Granted, Dual Link DVI, which essentially doubles DVI’s bandwidth capacity accommodates a 30-inch screen, but as we’ve learned, even that has issues. (See my 30-inch LCD review in the May issue.)

The fact is, it's time for a new digital interface and three of them are vying for the job. One possible replacement for DVI is HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface), which has been gaining traction over the last couple years as the prevailing video interface in consumer electronics devices—TVs, digital video players, camcorders, game consoles, etc. The relatively small connector is capable of delivering both video and audio signals simultaneously—although the latter is optional; the latest version (1.3) of the spec has a 10.2Gb/s bandwidth capacity, plus support for 10-bit color and lossless uncompressed audio such as Dolby Digital TrueHD. Yet, the interface hasn’t really taken off in PC components—we have yet to see a videocard or LCD that includes an HDMI port.

The backers of HDMI (lead by Silicon Image) hope PC parts manufacturers will adopt the compatible UDI (unified digital interface) standard. Designed specifically for use with a PC, UDI supports 2560x1600 but cuts out some of HDMI’s multimedia features which drive up licensing costs, such as the ability to carry an audio signal or a bi-directional stream. Both HDMI and UDI of course support high-definition content protection (HDCP), although it’s an optional feature. But if PC parts makers are partial to UDI they certainly haven’t indicated as much in their recent products or development roadmaps.

Perhaps the reason why is DisplayPort. We’ve known about this DVI-replacement standard for a couple of years, but wondered whether it would ever come to fruition, especially given HDMI’s growing footprint. Now that the 1.1 version of the DisplayPort spec was just recently ratified, it seems a more realistic option, and it has some key features to recommend it. For one, the spec was created by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association)—a very influential force in video-interface matters. DisplayPort is also backed by the likes of AMD/ATI, Nvidia, Dell, and Intel—no doubt due in part to DisplayPort’s royalty-free nature, which sets it apart from HDMI, UDI, and even DVI. Like HDMI, DisplayPort is capable of carrying both video and audio over a single, small connector, and it’s capable of 10.8Gb/s bandwidth. Plus, it offers the requisite HDCP support.

The most intriguing aspect of DisplayPort, and the thing that might push it ahead of all others, is its possible use of fiber optics. A company called Luxtera is working with VESA to incorporate its CMOS Photonics technology into DisplayPort, thereby establishing a replacement for today’s copper cable interconnects. While copper cables have been adequate for video demands thus far, the impedance inherent to copper can cause signal loss when tasked with higher-speed, higher-bandwidth data.

At this point, it’s anyone’s guess which standard will eventually make its way into PCs. While it would be super annoying, it could end up being all three—at least they’re all intended to be adaptor-compatible with each other as well as with DVI.