Are there any issues with driver support for 8k that will affect purchase choice?
I recently bought an 8k TV (which is not brutally expensive when refurbished) and want to connect my workstation to it. I went through the list of video cards from my local store and the cheapest that claims 8k support is the Gigabyte RX 6400.
Is a Gigabyte RX 6400 Eagle 4G a good video card for mostly text output at 8k resolution? I might do things like play Netflix in 1/4 of the screen and have text in the other 3/4. Definitely nothing at all challenging in terms of video. AMD drivers have a history of being reliable, but will I face some issues like lack of HDMI support for 8k?
I’ve watched a YouTube video about trying this on Windows and they got frame rates as low as 4 FPS for games which is not a concern for me. It definitely works OK with Windows driving the card. Will I be likely to have issues running the same hardware on Linux?
You will need either an Intel discrete GPU or NVidia GPU if you want to use HDMI 2.1 to render at 8k@60. The Intel discrete GPUs have physical hardware that convert to HDMI and Nvidia uses proprietary drivers. If you can use displayport, any GPU (AMD, Intel, Nvidia) supporting displayport 1.4 is suitable for up to 8k@31 (limited to 8bpc). A displayport 2.0-capable card with a cable suitable for UHBR 13.5 should be able to handle 60 hz (8bpc) or a UHBR 20-rated cable capable of 60 hz at 10bpc.
MAXSUN Intel Arc B580 Milestone 12G Graphics Card (MS-ARC-B580-MILESTONE-12G
The above is the cheapest card from my local store that has DisplayPort 2.1 (the rest have 1.4). It’s $469 compared to $199 for a RX 6400 or RX 6500. I can probably find somewhere cheaper to buy these things but I’m working on the assumption that the ratios of prices are going to be about the same.
From the Wikipedia page it looks like DSC is needed to do 8K@60Hz on DisplayPort 1.4. I think that is bad for text though.
DSC is lossless compression.
That card has DisplayPort 1.4 which means that if HDMI doesn’t work then it’s limited to HBR3 which gives 24bpp@31Hz, which is barely adequate.
Also how do you set the bpp rates? The DisplayPort wikipedia page says that 24bpp and 30bpp are supported, but how do I even know which is in use?
Ah yes, did mess up looking at the specs table for bitrate modes. Correcting root comment for anyone else who views this thread.
Based on your comment, I understand that AMD GPUs aren’t capable of 8k@60 over HDMI. Is that the case? If so, why?
Only on Linux, because the HDMI forum didn’t allow AMD to write an open source driver with HDMI 2.1 features
AMD made an open source driver for HDMI 2.1 but HDMI forum won’t approve. They locked down the specification for 2.1 and say the driver would reveal it.
https://www.howtogeek.com/hdmi-forum-open-source-drivers-hdmi-2-1/
I don’t know if an earlier version can do 8k@60HD.
This is the correct answer. Using my 6900XT, I can’t run a 4k120hz display over HDMI without subsampling.
This hopefully will change with the new AMD GPUs, but that’s wishful thinking.
As a 6700XT owner, I use 4k@60Hz (my screens can’t do better anyway). Does that mean I would need to use DisplayPort for better output in the future?
You can go higher that 4k@60 but youll be using chroma subsampling. Which can make text look really bad.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling