The latest DisplayPort specification was released last week by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA).
VESA has been working with various partner companies to ensure that products supporting DisplayPort 2.0 would comply with the newer, stricter DisplayPort 2.1 spec, ensuring backwards compatibility. As such, all previously certified DisplayPort 2.0 products, including UHBR (Ultra-high Bit Rate) capable products, have already been certified to the stricter DisplayPort 2.1 spec.
The new specification is compatible with both the new USB4 platform and the existing USB Type-C. This will make it possible for a single PHY repeater to support both the DisplayPort and the USB4 links.
To allow DisplayPort tunnelling to coexist with other I/O data traffic over the USB4 link, DP 2.1 has also added a new DisplayPort bandwidth management feature.
The DisplayPort cable specification has also been updated as part of DisplayPort 2.1 in order to improve full-size and Mini DisplayPort cable configurations’ robustness and allow for longer cable lengths (beyond two meters for DP40 cables and beyond one meter for DP80 cables) without sacrificing UHBR performance.
James Choate, compliance program manager for VESA said in the statement, “For all of our standards including DisplayPort, VESA has invested significant resources in testing and auditing procedures, including interoperability testing of products incorporating VESA specifications. This is to ensure that products that are introduced to the market that claim support of VESA’s standards meet the high-quality benchmarks that we have established.”
Kyle Benett, a seasoned industry professional and former HardOCP journalist claims that AMD’s upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs, also known as Navi 31 (RDNA 3), will be among the first products to support the DisplayPort 2.1 standard.
Verification from multiple sources that @Radeon Navi 31 will support upcoming DisplayPort 2.1 specification. I am tremendously surprised that @NVIDIAGeForce 4090 only supports DP 1.4a. Props to @LinusTech for calling out the DP1.4/4090 shortcomings! https://t.co/eW84VicAZr pic.twitter.com/4fmOtcnlth
— Kyle Bennett (@KyleBennett) October 12, 2022
Unfortunately, Nvidia’s recently released top-tier graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090, will miss this new update due to its support for the out-of-date DP 1.4a.
You can read the official statement here.