Question About Refresh Rates

jitter77

I have an old monitor that only does 60hz.  Im looking into getting a 144hz monitor, but I seem to be finding conflicting information.  I have a sapphire RX570 that only has one DVI-D output.  I am only worried about playing at 1080, but I wanted to make sure the DVI-D could output 1080 at 144hz. 

Vrika

Afaik DVI-D in RX 570 can't, but unless you've found some really bizarre RX 570 model, it has a displayport and HDMI port and both of those do support it. Also your new monitor should have those ports

It's best to use displayport.

EDIT: HDMI does support 1080p at 144hz, but not all 144hz monitors with HDMI port actually support 144hz when used with HDMI. Displayport doesn't have that uncertainty /EDIT

Quizzical

DVI is a legacy monitor port standard with much less bandwidth than the modern DisplayPort.  From theoretical bandwidth numbers, it might theoretically be possible to do 1920x1080 at 144 Hz over dual link DVI.  But there's a considerable chance that it won't actually work at 144 Hz.  I could nearly guarantee that it will handle 60 Hz just fine, and possibly something significantly above that even if it doesn't offer 144 Hz.

If you're looking at getting a FreeSync monitor, then that's not likely to work over DVI.  I mean that the monitor would work, but with FreeSync disabled.  Officially, the Adaptive Sync standard only works with DisplayPort, though AMD has made it work with HDMI, too.  I doubt that they'd put in a bunch of effort to make it work with a monitor port standard that was replaced more than a decade ago.

If you're going to get a new monitor anyway, you're probably better off getting a DisplayPort monitor.  Otherwise, you might spend a bunch of money on a monitor that your next video card won't support, or at least would greatly restrict your choices of future video cards.

Unless you bought one of those mining cards after the Ethereum price crash made the miners not want them, your video card almost certainly has at least one DisplayPort port and likely two or three.  If you have one of those mining cards, then now you see why it was so cheap.

Vrika

Quizzical said:

DVI is a legacy monitor port standard with much less bandwidth than the modern DisplayPort.  From theoretical bandwidth numbers, it might theoretically be possible to do 1920x1080 at 144 Hz over dual link DVI.  But there's a considerable chance that it won't actually work at 144 Hz.  I could nearly guarantee that it will handle 60 Hz just fine, and possibly something significantly above that even if it doesn't offer 144 Hz.

AMD's specs for RX 570 do not include dual link DVI support
   https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-570

I don't know if Sapphire is different and added it.

Quizzical

Vrika said:

Quizzical said:

DVI is a legacy monitor port standard with much less bandwidth than the modern DisplayPort.  From theoretical bandwidth numbers, it might theoretically be possible to do 1920x1080 at 144 Hz over dual link DVI.  But there's a considerable chance that it won't actually work at 144 Hz.  I could nearly guarantee that it will handle 60 Hz just fine, and possibly something significantly above that even if it doesn't offer 144 Hz.

AMD's specs for RX 570 do not include dual link DVI support
   https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-570

I don't know if Sapphire is different and added it.

If the original poster has one of the cards that was built specifically for mining, then Sapphire did whatever was the cheapest thing possible because miners don't care about fancy monitor setups.  And if that's not what he has, then it surely offers a DisplayPort port, and probably HDMI, too.

Ridelynn

I've often found it frustrating that TVs and Monitors tend to skew different directions for supported ports.

HDMI is nice, because you get an audio channel over the same cable (and sometimes even ethernet) - which is why TVs tend to support this.

But Displayport has almost always supported better refresh rates and resolutions (more bandwidth) - which is why computer monitors tend to support this.

Unfortunately, there is no great method of cross-compatibility.

DVI was a very nice upgrade over Analog back in the day, but yeah, it's been long since outclassed and is considered a legacy port. 

Max refresh rate is all about bandwidth - how much data the cable/interface can support per second. Roughly: Resolution x refresh rate x color depth x # color channels -- so if you can drop the number of colors or resolution, you can crank up the refresh rate some.

A single DVI output can handle around 5GB/sec ... 1080 144Hz 10-bit color requires about 9GB/sec. At 1080, the max refresh rate you could get would be to set a custom resolution at 80Hz. You could comfortably support 720 at 144Hz though.

Just for reference, current HDMI 2.0 is 18 GB/sec, the upcoming HDMI 2.1 is 48 GB/sec. Current Displayport 1.4 is 32 GB/sec, and the upcoming 2.0 is supposed to support around 80 GB/sec

13lake

144Hz @ 1920x1080p works like a charm over DVI-D, using it since 2013.

Also i don't think I've seen an AMD 570 that doesn't support DVI-D.

Honestly even if there's a problem, just drop it to 120Hz it's not that big of a difference, 120 is gonna work 100% of the time, on 100% of the cards that support DVI-D.

There is support for DVI-D in:

2070, 2060 Super, 2060, 1660 Ti, 1660 Super, 1660, 1080 Ti (only 2), 1080 (only 4), 1070 Ti, 1070, 1060 and lower/older

Vega 64, Vega 56, 590, 580, 570, 5500 XT (only 3), and lower/older

the first 2 Nvidia I linked have ~15ish models, rest 35+, and there's not as many vegas (8 models or so in total).

And thankfully so, I don't plan to replace my benq monitor for another 5-10 years, so I pray for some DVI-D availability everytime new cards launch, cause there is no downside to having DVI-D on a properly designed card, just people whining for the sake of whining/progress/aesthetics

Also i don't wanna get misunderstood, I do not condone buying DVI-D monitors and cards (only do this if you have parts already, or you have money problems and are getting used stuff).

Save yourself trouble down the road, and get DisplayPort and HDMI cards and monitors capable of running at least 2560 x 1440p @ 144Hz.

Vrika

13lake said:

144Hz @ 1920x1080p works like a charm over DVI-D, using it since 2013.

Also i don't think I've seen an AMD 570 that doesn't support DVI-D.

Honestly even if there's a problem, just drop it to 120Hz it's not that big of a difference, 120 is gonna work 100% of the time, on 100% of the cards that support DVI-D.

There is support for DVI-D in:

2070, 2060 Super, 2060, 1660 Ti, 1660 Super, 1660, 1080 Ti (only 2), 1080 (only 4), 1070 Ti, 1070, 1060 and lower/older

Vega 64, Vega 56, 590, 580, 570, 5500 XT (only 3), and lower/older

the first 2 Nvidia I linked have ~15ish models, rest 35+, and there's not as many vegas (8 models or so in total).

And thankfully so, I don't plan to replace my benq monitor for another 5-10 years, so I pray for some DVI-D availability everytime new cards launch, cause there is no downside to having DVI-D on a properly designed card, just people whining for the sake of whining/progress/aesthetics

There are two types of DVI-D connectors, single-link DVI-D and dual-link DVI-D.

144Hz @ 1920x1080p works only with dual-link DVI-D.

AMD's own specs for RX 570 connectivity are:
  

"DisplayPort: 1.4 HDR

Dual Link DVI: No

HDMI™: 4K60 Support

VGA: No"

I think most manufacturers add dual-link DVI-D as an extra, but it's better to be extra careful when giving advice on what work when both the displayport and HDMI cable should work anyway.

Also OP said that he's looking into getting a new monitor. Most of them come with either Displayport cable or HDMI cable so he should be getting a cable that way.


EDIT: Looking at a couple of RX 570 models, I managed to find more than 10 that had dual-link DVI and only a single odd piece that was specced only for DVI. Most likely OP's card has dual-link DVI and it'll support 1080p at 144 Hz.