Tuesday, March 5th 2024
Gigabyte's AORUS FO32U2P Sports DisplayPort 2.1 and a 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED Panel
For those of you that have been waiting patiently for the first DisplayPort 2.1 monitors to start arriving, we have good news as Gigabyte has revealed details of its first display equipped with DP 2.1. The monitor in question is the AORUS FO32U2P which also sports a 4K QD-OLED panel with a 240 Hz refresh rate. The 31.5-inch QD-OLED panel does follow the standard feature set with a 10-bit panel, 250 cd/m² brightness, 1.5 million to one contrast ratio, 0.03 ms GTG response time and a DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. Gigabyte has gone for an anti-reflective coating as well, which might not appeal to everyone.
As for the inputs, the DP2.1 ports support the full UHBR20 spec, which is 80 Gbps of total bandwidth over four 20 Gbps DisplayPort lanes, which means Gigabyte hasn't skimped on anything here. Yes, you read that correctly as well, the monitor has two DP 2.1 inputs, one full size and one mini DP input and there's also a USB Type-C input that supports DP-Alt mode, in addition to 65 W USB Power Delivery and USB data, although it's not clear if this port also supports DP 2.1. Furthermore, there are two HDMI 2.1 ports, one upstreams and two downstreams USB 3.2 ports, as well as a headphone and microphone jack. Gigabyte has also equipped the AORUS FO32U2P with a pair of 5 W speakers and a stand that offers tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustments. The maximum power usage is said to be 78 W, but this shouldn't include the USB PD part. Other features include KVM support, daisy-chaining via a DP output, picture in picture and picture by picture support and various gaming features such as crosshairs, night vision, black equalizer etc. Gigabyte has as yet to announce official pricing on a release date.
Update Mar 5th: We've received additional details on the DisplayPorts of the AORUS FO32U2P from Gigabyte and only the DP inputs supports DP 2.1, whereas the USB Type-C input and the DP daisy-chain ports are limited to DP 1.4. The MSRP of the AORUS FO32U2P will be US$1399.99 with the AORUS FO32U2 which is a DP 1.4 version will have an MSRP of US$1199.99.
Sources:
Gigabyte, via Videocardz
As for the inputs, the DP2.1 ports support the full UHBR20 spec, which is 80 Gbps of total bandwidth over four 20 Gbps DisplayPort lanes, which means Gigabyte hasn't skimped on anything here. Yes, you read that correctly as well, the monitor has two DP 2.1 inputs, one full size and one mini DP input and there's also a USB Type-C input that supports DP-Alt mode, in addition to 65 W USB Power Delivery and USB data, although it's not clear if this port also supports DP 2.1. Furthermore, there are two HDMI 2.1 ports, one upstreams and two downstreams USB 3.2 ports, as well as a headphone and microphone jack. Gigabyte has also equipped the AORUS FO32U2P with a pair of 5 W speakers and a stand that offers tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustments. The maximum power usage is said to be 78 W, but this shouldn't include the USB PD part. Other features include KVM support, daisy-chaining via a DP output, picture in picture and picture by picture support and various gaming features such as crosshairs, night vision, black equalizer etc. Gigabyte has as yet to announce official pricing on a release date.
Update Mar 5th: We've received additional details on the DisplayPorts of the AORUS FO32U2P from Gigabyte and only the DP inputs supports DP 2.1, whereas the USB Type-C input and the DP daisy-chain ports are limited to DP 1.4. The MSRP of the AORUS FO32U2P will be US$1399.99 with the AORUS FO32U2 which is a DP 1.4 version will have an MSRP of US$1199.99.
93 Comments on Gigabyte's AORUS FO32U2P Sports DisplayPort 2.1 and a 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED Panel
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FO32U2P costs USD 1200. www.newegg.com/p/N82E16824012082
FO32U2 costs USD 1100. www.newegg.com/p/N82E16824012081
- Release Date: 4/30/2024
Edit less than an hour later:- UHBR10 40 Gbps was enabled for CPUs/APUs
- Result? No single motherboard, mini-PC or laptop vendor has exposed this port so far. It's them to blame for not using what CPU/APU can offer.
- UHBR13.5 54 Gbps was enabled for client GPUs
- Result? Only Samsung made an annoucement in 2022 to bring support for DP 2.1 on Neo G9 57-inch. Others? You can see how sluggish it is...
- UHBR20 80 Gbps was enabled for Pro GPUs
- Result? No professional monitor vendor has made any announcement whatsoever to support this speed, not even Asus with ProArt monitor line
The immediate question is why should AMD be wasting their time and money supporting new, modern video standard at any bandwidth if others are so lazy to follow through on this, enable it on their devices and bring benefit to us consumers?
Still, AMD enabled DP 2.1 on all new silicon despite few monitor vendors making any commitments. Nvidia will not have any DP 2.1 until Blackwell and Intel has only enabled it recently on Meteor Lake CPUs and via Barlow Ridge TB5 chip. There is one single laptop announced with TB5 - Blade 18.
The real problem here is not bandwidth segmentation, but other companies lacking ambition to move the industry towards DP 2.1 where necessary. AMD has done their job. Others have not. 54 Gbps port on RDNA3 is fine in vast majority of cases, as it supports uncompressed signal up to:
- 4K/230Hz 8-bit or 4K/240Hz RGB with custom timings
- 4K/187Hz 10-bit RGB
- 5K/136Hz 8-bit RGB
- 5K/110Hz 10-bit RGB
HDMI 2.1 FRL cannot do any of the above without DSC compression.
DSC is fine but it got such a bad rep that they should release a new version that is truly lossless and make it the default transmission mode.
DSC should only be used when necessary. For example, 5K/2K 180-240Hz 10-bit monitor will need more than 80 Gbps of data. DSC is fine here.
DSC should never be used as a cheap way to offer low bandwidth port when higher bandwidth port is clearly available. For example, new Asus ROG Swift PG32UQXR offers only DP40 port for 4K/160Hz 10-bit image, forcing the monitor to use DSC to deliver this image. This is not necessary and Asus contributes here to bad reputation of DSC. It is vendors being cheap on ports and still selling for premium prices. Nonsense. I'd never buy such monitor.
It's a miniDP to DP cable since both Radeon Pro W7800 and W7900 happen to support DP 2.1 UHB20 only through miniDP ports.
It's pretty funny, we have the tech but not the cables.