Samsung Electronics is pushing the industry another step forward with an expansion of QLED 8K SMART displays, new applications of The Wall and showcasing the new-and-improved Samsung Flip 2 digital flipchart.

"Samsung is making tomorrow's technology a reality with complete display solutions that are more immersive, collaborative and interactive than ever before. ISE is one of the best opportunities for Samsung to showcase advanced commercial applications of our industry-leading displays," said Hyesung Ha, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. "We're excited to unveil new features and expanded lineups of our digital signage with next-generation technology such as 8K, the new model of The Wall, collaborative displays and more that will provide businesses with opportunities they've never had before."

Rockstar Games has dropped a launch trailer for their upcoming PC release of the critically-acclaimed Red Dead Redemption 2. Fret not if you're worried about spoilers (though the game has indeed released quite a while ago): the trailer is only one minute long. There are some specific PC improvements to the title, such as support for up to 8K resolutions (good luck on that), support for higher framerates than on consoles, HDR, and support for non-standard monitor ratios.

The PC version of the game will also introduce a new photo mode for all you photography enthusiasts out there - even though it's in-game, it should still count. One of the things the PC version of the game won't ship with - sadly - is support for raytracing. There were some rumors running around the web regarding support for raytracing on the Rockstar Release due to some screenshots outed by NVIDIA that sported an RTX logo on the bottom right corner, but those served only as marketing for their latest 20-series graphics cards. No raytracing will be available in this game - and there is no reason to think it might.

Angelbird Technologies, the premier developer of camera-specific media for professional creatives, announces the addition of CFexpress Type B memory cards to their high-performance lineup of AV PRO media solutions.The call for quick adoption of advanced digital video production standards to 6K, 8K and beyond, is being driven by high-profile international broadcasting as well as an increased need for industrial data processing and performance requirements. CFexpress memory media meets the high-speed demands of new technology (media that can write data at a minimum of 400 MB/sec).

It also mirrors the XQD form factor-- allowing select cameras that currently utilize XQD to now also accept CFexpress with a firmware update. But different from XQD, is that the CFexpress adopts the PCIe Gen 3 interface standards promoted by the CompactFlash Association. Angelbird's AV PRO CFX and AV PRO CFX XT offer read/write speeds up to 1700 MB/s and 1400 MB/s. CFexpress memory cards perform at speeds 3.5x faster than CFast technology- the current memory card leader for high-bitrate video production.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is opening up to the idea of porting PlayStation-exclusive games to the PC, which is growing in popularity on the backs of titles that play best on this platform, such as Fortnite and Minecraft. At the moment, Shawn Layden, who heads SIE, is interested in putting some its first-party titles (developed and published entirely by SIE) on the PC platform. Compared to arch-rival Microsoft, Sony's garden has had taller walls. Microsoft has interests in both its Xbox console, and the Windows PC ecosystem, particularly the Microsoft Store, and has shepherded many of its ecosystem partners to co-develop for both platforms. Its latest move is the Xbox for PC GamePass, that brings about some coherence between the PC and Xbox.

Sony is gearing up for the next round of the Console Wars against Microsoft, in which its PlayStation 5 console will compete with Microsoft's codenamed "Project Scarlett" console. Both consoles will be designed for 4K Ultra HD televisions, with preparation for higher resolutions, such as 8K. Speaking on the development, Layden said "We must support the PlayStation platform — that is nonnegotiable. That said, you will see in the future some titles coming out of my collection of studios which may need to lean into a wider installed base."

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced that it has released version 2.0 of the DisplayPort (DP) audio/video standard. DP 2.0 is the first major update to the DisplayPort standard since March 2016, and provides up to a 3X increase in data bandwidth performance compared to the previous version of DisplayPort (DP 1.4a), as well as new capabilities to address the future performance requirements of traditional displays. These include beyond 8K resolutions, higher refresh rates and high dynamic range (HDR) support at higher resolutions, improved support for multiple display configurations, as well as improved user experience with augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) displays, including support for 4K-and-beyond VR resolutions.

The advantages of DP 2.0 are enjoyed across both the native DP connector as well as the USB Type-C connector, which carries the DP audio/video signal through DisplayPort Alt Mode. DP 2.0 is backward compatible with previous versions of DisplayPort and incorporates all of the key features of DP 1.4a, including support for visually lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC) with Forward Error Correction (FEC), HDR metadata transport, and other advanced features. The increased video bandwidth performance of DP 2.0 carried over the USB-C connector enables simultaneous higher-speed USB data transfer without compromising display performance. DP 2.0 leverages the Thunderbolt 3 physical interface (PHY) layer while maintaining the flexibility of DP protocol in order to boost the data bandwidth and promote convergence across industry-leading IO standards.

Two of the often overlooked components of a new graphics architecture are the I/O and multimedia capabilities. With its Radeon RX 5700-series "Navi 10" graphics processor, AMD gave the two their first major update in over two years, with the new Radeon Display Engine, and Radeon Multimedia Engine. The Display Engine is a hardware component that handles the graphics card's physical display I/O. The Radeon Multimedia Engine is a set of fixed-function hardware that provides CODEC-specific acceleration to offload your CPU.

The Navi Radeon Display Engine features an updated DisplayPort 1.4 HDR implementation that's capable of handling 8K displays at 60 Hz with a single cable. It can also handle 4K UHD at 240 Hz with a single cable. These also include HDR and 10-bit color. It achieves this by implementing DSC 1.2a (Display Stream Compression). The display controller also supports 30 bpp internal color-depth. The HDMI implementation remains HDMI 2.0. The multi-plane overlay protocol (MPO) implementation now supports a low-power mode. This should, in theory, reduce the GPU's power draw when idling or playing back video.

Intel processor integrated graphics will get its first major hardware update in 4 years since Gen 9.5 "Skylake," with the introduction of the Gen11 architecture that debuts with the company's "Ice lake" processors. The company confirmed in an XDC 2018 conference presentation that the iGPU will support DisplayPort 1.4a along with VESA DSC (display stream compression), enabling it to support display resolutions as high as 5K (5120 x 2880 pixels) with 120 Hz refresh-rate.

Without DSC, 5K-120 Hz requires 42.4 Gbps of bandwidth (not counting interconnect and protocol overheads), which even DisplayPort with HBR3 cannot provide, as it caps out at 32.4 Gbps. DSC offers "visually lossless" compression of the 5K-120 display stream down to roughly 14 Gbps, which can be comfortably handled by DisplayPort 1.4a. 8K (8192 x 4320 pixels) at 60 Hz also becomes possible. Merely supporting these new high resolutions doesn't imply Gen11 iGPUs can game at those resolutions. Support for them is necessitated by rapid increases in resolutions (pixel densities) and refresh-rates of high-end notebooks and ultra-portable devices.The complete slide-deck follows.

NVIDIA today announced new GeForce experience features to be integrated and expanded in wake of its RTX platform push. The new features include increased number of Ansel-supporting titles (including already released Prey and Vampyr, as well as the upcoming Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider), as well as RTX-exclusive features that are being implemented into the company's gaming system companion.

There are also some features being implemented that gamers will be able to take advantage of without explicit Ansel SDK integration done by the games developer - which NVIDIA says will bring Ansel support (in any shape or form) to over 200 titles (150 more than the over 50 titles already supported via SDK). And capitalizing on Battlefield V's relevance to the gaming crowd, NVIDIA also announced support for Ansel and its Highlights feature for the upcoming title.

Here are some of the first pictures of the bare printed circuit board (PCB) of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 1180 graphics card (dubbed PG180), referred to by the person who originally posted them as "GTX 2080" (it seems the jury is still out on the nomenclature). The PCB looks hot from the press, with its SMT points and vias still exposed. The GT104 GPU traces hint at a package that's about the size of a GP104 or its precessors. It's wired to eight memory chips on three sides, confirming a 256-bit wide memory bus. Display outputs appear flexible, for either 2x DisplayPort + 2x HDMI, or 3x DisplayPort + 1x HDMI configurations.

The VRM setup is surprisingly powerful for a card that's supposed to succeed the ~180W GeForce GTX 1080, which can make do with a single 8-pin PCIe power input. The card draws power from a combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors. There is a purportedly 10-phase VCore side, which in all likelihood is a 5-phase setup with "dumb" phase-doubling; and similarly, a 2-phase memory power (which could again be doubled single-phase). The SLI-HB fingers also make way. There's a new connector that looks like a single SLI finger and an NVLink finger arranged side-by-side. NVIDIA still hasn't given up on multi-GPU. NVLink is a very broad interconnect, in terms of bandwidth. NVIDIA probably needs that for multi-GPU setups to work with not just high resolutions (4K, 5K, or even 8K), but also higher bit-depth, higher refresh-rates, HDR, and other exotic data. The reverse side doesn't have much action other than traces for the VRM controllers, phase doublers, and an unusually large bank of SMT capacitors (the kind seen on AMD PCBs with MCM GPUs).

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.6.1 beta. The drivers come with performance optimization for "Warhammer: Vermitide 2," with up to 9 percent performance improvements over 18.5.2, seen on Radeon RX Vega 56, at 1440p resolution; and up to 10 percent improvements seen using the RX 580 8 GB. In addition, the update fixes a number of bugs.

Blank screen issues with "Subnautica" have been fixed. System hangs or crashes experienced in "Sea of Thieves" in the "Cannon Cove" area have been fixed. Ground texture corruption in "World of Tanks" on certain multi-GPU systems, has been fixed. Flickering noticed in certain menus of "Middle Earth: Shadow of War" has been fixed. Desktop being out of the visible area at the 8K resolution on Radeon Pro Duo has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.6.1

The change-log follows.

It's true, it seems: as time passes, technology becomes cheaper, the entry point becomes lower, more people can acquire more products, demand balloons, and supply tries to keep up. The fundamentals sine right through AU Optronics' choice to increase output on panels that are apparently flying from their inventory: high-end LTPS notebook panels, for one, are selling like hot cakes. The reason is simple: LTPS (low-temperature polycrystalline silicon) can better sustain higher resolution panels with higher vibrancy and accurate color reproduction, but deteriorates faster than IPS LCD panels. So, it serves two purposes (though they'll never tell you about the second): better specs and increased, built-in obsolescence: a traditional feature in the world of capitalism.

Besides LTPS, 4K panels have increased their momentum (planned adoption rates for 2018 are being set at 40%, 10% over 2017's 30% attachment rate), 75-85" panel sales have more than tripled since the beginning of 2018, and 8K panels will start being shipped (in relatively small volumes) in the first quarter of this year. AU Optronics has also increased fabrication of 240 Hz screens for manufacturers that then use their panels on premium products, such as Acer, Asustek Computer, BenQ, ViewSonic, AOC and Philips.

Even as most users are still transitioning from their Full HD panels to 4K ones (less than 40% of users have a 4K-capable panel), the 8K panel onslaught should begin as early as the first half the current year. AU Optronics, one of the world's foremost panel makers, is expected to start shipping 8K-enabled panels between the 65-85 inch range in the first half of this year, thus moving the goalpost once again on what the top of the line in the display market is.

Liao Wei-lun, president of AUO's video products business group, said that global sales of 65- and 70-inch TVs and display products are expected to grow 40% and 50% on year, respectively, in 2018. As yields have improved, so has pricing come down, which means users will be looking to upgrade their panels to higher diagonal sizes. But the bigger the size, the higher the resolution of the panel has to be, and that's where AUO wants to do business. AUO expects the penetration rate of 65-inch and above sizes of 8K TVs will start gaining momentum in 2018 and reach 10% in 2020. Naturally, AUO plans to start 8K panel production on the higher margin products - high diagonal TVs - and will scale down from there, eventually hitting PC monitor's screens. Maybe by that time we'll have graphics card options that can actually push that gargantuan number of pixels.

At HTC VIVE Spring Product Show event in Shenzhen, China, virtual reality (VR) technology company Visbit launched Visbit 8K VR Player, the industry's first foveated rendering-based 8K 360° 3D video player, on the Viveport content store of the Vive Focus, the ready-to-ship premium standalone VR headset made by Vive. With this launch, for the first time the pipeline to deliver high-end VR video experience is completed. VR users can now enjoy premium quality 8K 360° 3D VR videos without being tethered. This is an important user experience upgade for the VR industry.

Applying Visbit's View-Optimized Viewing (VVOS) technology, Visbit 8K VR Player is capable of playing up to 8K stereoscopic 360° VR videos at both stream-to-play and download-to-play modes. It also features spatial audio support and video encryption to protect IPs. Starting today, Visbit's 8K VR Player is now one of the top featured apps in Viveport store, and available for free to download for a limited period. In the coming months, Visbit 8K VR Player will also gradually support other standalone and mobile VR headsets.

The ultimate version of the fifteenth Final Fantasy (how many fantasies can really be final, eh?) has been outed, and now PC gamers now when they can expect to go around the most perfect iteration of the Final Fantasy XV game world. The latest, greatest, and heavily graphically-revised Final Fantasy will finally hit the PC platform on March 6.

The PC version of Final Fantasy XV, will include all previously released DLCs (Episodes Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis as well as multiplayer), extra bosses, a new dungeon, an in-game vehicle and a first-person mode (this is the one I really have to see). As previously covered, the new PC version has been developed with heavy input from NVIDIA, offers up to 8K resolution in HDR, and includes many NVIDIA GameWorks technologies, such as NVIDIA Flow, NVIDIA HairWorks, NVIDIA Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows, NVIDIA Turf Effects, NVIDIA Voxel Ambient Occlusion, and more. With all of that NVIDIA technology being built-in, it's somewhat expected that the game will only run the way the developers envisioned on a green team graphics card. Read on after the break for the latest system specs and the Royal Edition release trailer (a special version that's equivalent to the Game of the Year versions of other video-games, with all the released DLC for console players.)

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced that DP8K Certified DisplayPort cables-native DisplayPort cables that are guaranteed to support DisplayPort High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3)-are now available in the marketplace. HBR3 is the highest bit rate (8.1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) per lane) supported by DisplayPort standard version 1.4, and provides the speed required to drive 8K video resolution at 60 frames per second (fps) using a single cable, as well as multiple 4K displays. Key applications supported by HBR3 include high-performance gaming, augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) and television broadcasting. With HBR3 already available in a wide array of consumer products, including GPUs and monitors, the availability of cables that have been certified by VESA to support HBR3 provides a crucial final link to the ecosystem.

HDMI Forum, Inc. today announced the release of Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification which is now available to all HDMI 2.0 adopters. This latest HDMI Specification supports a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates including 8K60 and 4K120, and resolutions up to 10K. Dynamic HDR formats are also supported, and bandwidth capability is increased up to 48Gbps. Supporting the 48Gbps bandwidth is the new Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable. The cable ensures high- bandwidth dependent features are delivered including uncompressed 8K video with HDR. It features exceptionally low EMI (electro-magnetic interference) which reduces interference with nearby wireless devices. The cable is backwards compatible and can be used with the existing installed base of HDMI devices.

Version 2.1 of the HDMI Specification is backward compatible with earlier versions of the specification, and was developed by the HDMI Forum's Technical Working Group whose members represent some of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics, personal computers, mobile devices, cables and components.

Philips is now the second company to announce a mass-market 8K monitor with the 328P8K. It boasts of a 31.5" IPS panel with a mind-boggling 7680 x 4320 resolution, and delivers on the professional space with 100% AdobeRGB/SRGB color space support. Since availability of these panels is still scarce, this is likely the same panel that Dell is using on their own 8K UltraSharp UP3218K monitor.

Philips is boasting of something they are calling HDR 400 support in this monitor, due to its brightness being set at 400 nits. This would be enough for AMD's baseline luminance requirements for FreeSync 2 HDR, but stands a far cry behind the HDR10 standard with its 1,000 nit peak brightness target (not to speak about Dolby Vision's 4,000 peak brightness target). Contrast ratio should stand at 1300:1, with a 60 Hz refresh ratio. Connectors-wise, the new Philips 328P8K 8K UHD Monitor boasts of 2x DisplayPort 1.3 (needed for display of the resolution, and in a bid to avoid using DP 1.4 with Display Stream Compression 1.2 and ensure a flawless and accurate image quality) and features a USB hub with USB type-A and type-C ports. Expect this panel to come in at a pretty penny, most likely in the same ballpark as Dell's offering, which now costs less than $4,000. Expect Philips' take on 8K to be available for purchase around Q1 2018.

AMD today is announcing the latest update to their Radeon Pro Hardware and Software, which brings with it enhanced features designed to fully take advantage of the company's new high-performance Vega graphics micro-architecture. Namely, AMD has announced the Radeon Pro WX 9100, the Radeon Pro SSG, and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (already launched) along with new Radeon Pro Software for the same.

As per AMD, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 workstation graphics card is designed to excel in the most demanding media and entertainment, and design and manufacturing workloads. Delivering up to 12.3 TFLOPS of peak single precision compute performance, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 graphics card represents a new era of professional graphics capabilities fueled by powerful Next-Gen Compute Units3 with Rapid Packed Math and an Enhanced Geometry Pipeline which improves processing efficiencies. Compared to the AMD FirePro W9100, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 runs models more than twice as fast, delivering over 2.6X the peak throughput-per-clock.

(Re)member that dazzling-looking Superposition benchmark from Unigine - the one that was supposed to have arrived late 2016? The one that apparently wasn't good enough for Steam? Well it has been released, and you can now gobble up all of those realistic graphics for yourself and your GPU of choice. Some standout features include the ability to scale rendering resolution all the way up to 8K, so... Go on ahead, click that link below, make your graphics cards scream, and elbow one another for the top result. I will be with you in a little while. Go on after the break for some more features and a little teaser on what the benchmark is all about.Download Link: Unigine Superposition Benchmark 1.0Can I just say I love me some Nicola Tesla on the walls?

Dell today started selling its flagship 32-inch (31.5-inch viewable) 8K monitor on its website. The Dell UltraSharp UP3218K boasts of "visuals that rival life," thanks to its gargantuan 7680 x 4320 pixels resolution, which is four times that of 4K Ultra HD, and sixteen times that of Full HD. At its size, the display offers a stellar pixel density of 279 ppi. Under the hood is an IPS panel with 178°/178° viewing angles, 60 Hz refresh rate, 6 ms response time (GTG), 1,300:1 static contrast ratio with dynamic mega-contrast, and 400 cd/m² maximum brightness. The display takes input from two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors. Backed by a 3-year warranty, the UltraSharp UP3218K is priced at USD $5,000.

At CES 2017, Dell has unveiled yet another addition to their monitor product line, and this one is drool worthy: an 8K, 32" UltraSharp monitor, with an insanely high resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 at 60Hz. Labeled as the world's first 32-inch 8K resolution display with Dell PremierColor, the UP3218K offers 1.07 billion colors and packs in more than 33 million pixels - four times as many as a 4K display and 16 times more than Full HD. That means it offers a PPI rating of 280 - which translates into "very high" settings for a desktop screen.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today published the Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) Standard version 1.4a. Replacing eDP v1.4, published in February 2013, eDP 1.4a enables a higher video data transfer rate for increased panel resolution, greater color depth and higher refresh rates. It also incorporates the VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC) Standard v1.1, and includes a new segmented panel architecture that enables higher panel integration. These and other refinements were made to the eDP 1.4a standard to take advantage of higher GPU video performance and newer display technologies, while also enabling reduced system power and form factor.

The eDP v1.4a standard leverages the VESA DisplayPort (DP) Standard v1.3, published in September 2014, as a base specification. That standard's new higher HBR3 link rate, which operates at 8.1 Gbps per lane, is now also part of eDP v1.4a. With both HBR3 and the DSC v1.1 standard included, the latest eDP standard can support embedded panels with up to 8K resolution. For embedded display applications, DSC is most often used to decrease video interface data rate or wire count, as well as reduce display frame buffer size, thereby reducing system power usage to extend battery life. It also enables reductions in system complexity and form factor.

Even as 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) is beginning to enter the consumer mainstream, with 28-inch displays being priced around $600, and Apple toying with 5K (5120 x 2880), with its next-generation iMac Retina desktops, Japanese display maker Sharp threw a spanner in the works, by unveiling a working prototype of its 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) display, at the CETAC trade-show, held in Japan.

Two of the industry's biggest graphics processor makers, NVIDIA and AMD, reacted similarly to the development, calling 8K "a great challenge." Currently, neither company has a GPU that can handle the resolution. 8K is four times as many pixels as 4K. Driving an Ultra HD display over DVI needs two TMDS links, and DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 have just enough bandwidth to drive Ultra HD at 60 Hz. To drive 8K, both NVIDIA and AMD believe you would need more than one current-generation GPU, the display should connect to both cards over independent connectors, and somehow treat the single display as four Ultra HD displays. We imagine Sharp demoed its display at a very low refresh rate, to compensate for the bandwidth limitation. After 10 years of Full-HD tyranny, display resolutions are finally beginning to see their normal rate of development. It's time now for GPU developers and display interconnects to keep up.