HP doing DisplayPort 2.1 wrong
The upcoming Transcend OLED monitor will only support DP2.1 UHBR10 mode.
DisplayPort 2.1 is only now being used in the first gaming monitors. This connectivity standard would finally allow gaming at high-resolution and high refresh rate without the need for DSC (Display Stream Compression). The release of new OLED monitors featuring such 4K 240Hz specs was a perfect opportunity to present a new wave of DP2.1 monitors. Sadly, that was hardly the case.
Over the past few months, several companies have announced their monitors, some of which are already shipping to customers. The Omen Transcend 32 is among the very few monitors said to support DisplayPort 2.1 standard.
Currently, only one monitors is confirmed to support the maximum bandwidth through UHBR20 specs, and that’s AORUS FO32U2P . There were other monitors such as Samsung’s Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC or Asus ROG Swift PG32UQXR confirmed to support DisplayPort 2.1, but those are not 32 inch OLED panels. According to TFT Central, the Transcend monitor will indeed support DP 2.1, but only in UHBR10 mode, which is the lowest tier of DP 2.1 specs.
| 4K 240Hz QD-OLED Monitors | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz | HP 32″ Omen Transcend | Alienware 32 4K QD-OLED AW3225QF | ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM | Gigabyte Aorus FO32U2P | Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 | MSI MPG 321URX |
| Picture |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Size, Curvature | 31.5″, flat | 31.6″, curved | 31.5″, flat | 31.5″, flat | 32″, flat | 31.5″, flat |
| 4K 240Hz | 4K 240Hz | 4K 240Hz | 4K 240Hz | 4K 240Hz | 4K 240Hz | |
| Connectivity | DP 2.1 UHBR10, HDMI 2.1 | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.1 | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.1 | DP 2.1 UHBR20, HDMI 2.1 | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.1 | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.1 |
| Certification | VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 | VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 | VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black | VESA ClearMR 13000, DisplayHDR True Black 400 | VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 | VESA ClearMR 13000, DisplayHDR True Black 400 |
| Warranty | TBC | 3-year | 3-year | TBC | TBC | 3-year |
| MSRP | TBC | $1,200 | $1,300 | TBC | TBC | $950 |
To put that into perspective, the UHBR10 mode supports a total 40 Gbps (38.69 Gbps actual) bandwidth, which is indeed higher than DP1.4 bandwidth of 32.40 Gbps (25.92 Gbps actual), notes TFT Central. However, DP2.1 specs allow up to 80 Gbps (77.37 Gbps real) bandwidth should HP have stuck to the UHBR20 specs, which they didn’t.
In reality, this means this monitor can’t handle 4K 240Hz specs without DSC (Display Stream Compression). Only the AORUS monitor can theoretically do so, since such an uncompressed stream needs 68.56 Gbps and UHBR20 specs enable up to 77.37 Gbps of data rate.
Essentially, this means that Transcend DP2.1 specs are actually worse than HDMI 2.1 connection, which enables up to 48 Gbps (41.92 Gbps data rate). In this case, it would be better to stick to the HDMI port.
It is also worth noting that AMD Radeon RX 7000 cards already support UHBR13.5 mode, while Radeon Pro cards based on RDNA3 architecture support UHBR20 mode. NVIDIA cards currently do not support DisplayPort 2.1 while Intel Arc GPUs are DP 2.0 ready with support for up to UHBR10 mode, so maybe Intel GPUs should be a good choice for this monitor.
Source: TFTCentral