What just happened? A recent AMD display engine drivers patch added support for Displayport 2.0's Ultra High Bit Rate (UHBR) transmission modes. The feature will allow a maximum bandwidth of 80 Gbit/s, which, coupled with DSC, should be enough for most displays launched in the next few years.

Even though we are still a few months away from the launch of AMD's next-gen GPUs , the company is hard at work developing the software that will make those cards work properly.

A recent patch confirms that GPUs based on the RDNA3 architecture will support DisplayPort 2.0 and might be capable of the highest UHBR20 transmission mode. If used with a capable cable and monitor, that would allow for a maximum bandwidth of 80 Gbit/s.

Looks like RDNA3 supports the full DisplayPort 2.0 spec (UHBR20) '

— Kepler (@Kepler_L2) May 26, 2022

In March, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) started its DP 2.0 certification program. There are already a couple of cables that are UHBR20 certified, although they're limited to 0.8m. As DP 2.0 leverages the Thunderbolt 3 physical interface layer, passive cables share the same length limitations when using the highest transfer speeds. This problem can be solved with more expensive active cabling .

If AMD's upcoming GPUs support UHBR20, they should be able to output HDR video with a resolution of 4K at 240 Hz or 8K at 60Hz without even using DSC. With DSC, which VESA claims is visually lossless and can compress a data stream by a 3:1 ratio, you could drive an 8K 144Hz HDR screen through a single cable.

Of course, there's also the issue of not having any DP 2.0-capable monitors. These got delayed several times, but they're hopefully going to launch soon, considering we almost have host devices supporting the standard on the market.