Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I've just had the opportunity of buying a new desktop PC. It involved smoke, mirrors, mis-direction and a little bit of pleading with the family Chief Financial Officer but I now have an i7, 16GB Ram, RTX2070, 500GB SSD based system to setup for Elite (and homework of course).

I needed a new monitor as well as the old machine is going to a daughter's room. The one I now have is an ASUS that does 144Hz. I couldn't justify the Gsync (at least not yet).

My question is, what is the best connection method from the RTX2070 to the monitor for performance? HDMI, Display Port, DVI? Or is there no real difference?

Display port.

Simple as that? What no "it depends on what you are doing"? That was easy then

Thanks Tor!

Souds like a very sweet setup.

Have a good one

You actually don't have the choice with a 144hz display. HDMI and DVI can't go that fast, so it's DP only.

LeDoyen wrote:You actually don't have the choice with a 144hz display. HDMI and DVI can't go that fast, so it's DP only.

You learn something new every day. Thanks.

i have recently built a similar PC with an i7 8700k and RTX 2070, looks and runs so much better than my old GTX 780 machine. what settings are you using?

highest on everything I think. I’ve not been in game for a couple of weeks. When I next do I'll check.

de Carabas wrote:

LeDoyen wrote:You actually don't have the choice with a 144hz display. HDMI and DVI can't go that fast, so it's DP only.

You learn something new every day. Thanks.

This isn't quite true ...

HDMI 1.3+, provides up to 340 MHz of bandwidth, way, way up from the original 165 MHz. That's easily enough to do 120Hz at 1080p. There is also HDMI-DL (Dual Link) which effectively provides an equivalent rate of 640 MHz (basically 340 MHz with twice the info). HDMI-DL is how the early 4K panels were able to do 60Hz, before HDMI 2.0. So 120, 144, 160 and even 240Hz vertical refresh rates were possible at 1080p.

The problem?

Virtually no monitors or TVs provided 144Hz+ vertical refresh rates. Now a few TVs and even less, select few monitors, offered 120 Hz vertical refresh rates with varying ghosting, depending on the panel -- even in the HDMI 1.4 days, much more the few HDMI-DL ports out there.

Why weren't there more options? Several reasons ...

1) Media-TV Attitude: The biggest problem with TV and media companies is that they have little interest in producing such. Movies are 24Hz, TV is 25-30Hz or 50-60Hz, depending on the formats, the former for many shows, the latter for live broadcasts and newer shows.

2) Media Control-Copyright: Then there's also the 'control' aspect, where HDMI is actually a proprietary format, forced on content protection built-in. HDCP designed for other formats, including DVI-D and, eventually, DisplayPort.

The combinations of #1 and #2 are why we still don't see TV and other, large-format systems with DisplayPort, not even 1.2a, much less 1.3+. Plus ...

3) Intel's Legacy Supply: Intel is notorious for having over-supply of legacy (at higher feature sizes) chipset logic out there, and they really didn't push DisplayPort (DP) well ... at all. In fact, even when Intel finally added DisplayPort 1.2 support, it was non-1.2a and only did 3K@60Hz, 4K@30Hz, for years.

AMD pushed DisplayPort early, just like they did XHCI (USB 3.0) and other things, especially with their integrated GPUs. But AMD doesn't drive the market. It's really sad to see how bad the Media-TV + Intel really holds back adoption.

The ultimate irony here is that DisplayPort is cheaper to support, because it doesn't require a RAMDAC.

AMD and nVidia ... even Mali, PowerVR, Adreno and others in ARM ... adopted this for cost reasons, including for Embedded Display Port (eDP) in notebooks, tablets, etc... Intel still had old, legacy solutions with more costly designs for notebooks -- which explains why tablets quickly overtook notebooks in resolution, capabilities, etc... too at the same price-point.

So, I'm going to answer the OP more directly, and hopefully this will be a 'nice reference' for everyone ...

de Carabas wrote:I needed a new monitor as well as the old machine is going to a daughter's room. The one I now have is an ASUS that does 144Hz. I couldn't justify the Gsync (at least not yet).

Again, here in the US, LG offers a G-sync 32" 16:9 1440p for sub-US$450, if not sub-$400, regularly ... viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9635#p105523

That said ...

de Carabas wrote:My question is, what is the best connection method from the RTX2070 to the monitor for performance? HDMI, Display Port, DVI? Or is there no real difference?

The RTX2070 supports ...

DisplayPort 1.4b

HDMI 2.0b (no DL)

DVI-D Dual-Link (DL)

Which brings me to this 'super-list' of standards ...
SIDE NOTE: I'm purposely leaving out the 64/66b or 8/10b 'encoding' discussions on Gbps/MHz, as well as TDMS and other 'signaling' limitations (long story, affects 'usable' throughput). What is listed is close to 'effective' (not actual -- although I might have a few rates wrong).

2K Class ...

DVI-D: 3.96 Gbit/s -- 1920x1200@60Hz

HDMI 1.0-1.2 (A-type) 3.96 Gbps, 165 MHz -- 1920x1200@60Hz, 2560x1200@30Hz, possibly higher at 24Hz

2.5K Class (and 2K@144Hz) ...

DVI-D DL (dual-link): 7.92 Gbps -- 1920x1080@144Hz, 1920x1200@120Hz, 2560x1200@60Hz

DVI-D DL was used for the early 120-150Hz 3D (60-75Hz each eye) lenticular filtered panels for 3D Shutter Glasses, often which could do 120 and 144Hz without glasses as well (I know, I have one -- 27" Acer)

3K@50Hz Class (and 2.5K@75Hz) ...

HDMI 1.3-1.4 (A-type) 10.2Gbps, 340 MHz -- 1920x1200@144Hz (@165Hz 8-bit color), 2560x1600@75Hz, 2880x1800@50Hz, 4096x2160@30Hz, 4096x2560@24Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit color (with reduced resolutions)

DisplayPort 1.0-1.1 10.8 Gbps -- 1920x1200@144Hz (@165Hz 8-bit color), 2560x1600@60Hz, 2880x1800@50Hz, 4096x2160@30Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of variable 6 to 16-bit color (with both increased and reduced resolutions)

HDMI 1.3 and DisplayPort 1.1 were used by initial 1080@144Hz G-Sync and VESA Adaptive (later marketed by AMD as FreeSync)

4K@60Hz Class (and 3K@100-120Hz, 2.5K@120-144Hz) ...

HDMI 2.0 (A-type) 18.0Gbps -- 1920x1200@240Hz+, 2560x1600@120Hz (@144Hz 8-bit color), 2880x1800@100Hz, 3840x2160@60Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

HDMI 1.3b-1.4b DL (dual-link, B-type) 21.60Gbps, 680MHz -- 1920x1200@240Hz+, 2560x1600@144Hz (@165Hz 8-bit color), 2880x1800@120Hz, 4096x2160@60Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

HDMI 1.3b DL was used on early 4K@60Hz TVs, usually only 1-2 ports, requiring the 'wider' B type connector that was not compatible with A type

DisplayPort 1.2 21.6Gbps, 680MHz -- 1920x1200@240Hz+, 2560x1600@144Hz (@165Hz 8-bit color), 2880x1800@120Hz, 4096x2160@60Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

DisplayPort 1.2 is still used by a mainstay of 1440@144Hz G-Sync and FreeSync monitors, with a handful of HDMI 2.0s just becoming available. Usually their ports are still HDMI 1.4, and won't support high refresh rates via HDMI (only 1.4 spec) so DisplayPort must be used.

5K@60-90Hz Class (and 4K@120-150Hz, 3K@180-240Hz) ...

DisplayPort 1.3-1.4 32.4 Gbps -- 2880x1800@180Hz, 4096x2160@120Hz, 5120x2800@60Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

HDMI 2.1 (A-type Ultra High Speed) 48.0Gbps -- 2880x1800@240Hz+, 4096x2160@150Hz, 5120x2800@90Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

8K@60Hz Class (and 5K@144Hz, 4K@240Hz) ...

DisplayPort 2.0 80.0 Gbps -- 4096x2160@240Hz+, 5120x2800@144Hz, 8192x4320@60Hz -- at 10-bit color, also capable of 12-bit and 16-bit (with reduced resolutions)

You must have:

Graphics card with capable port

Monitor with capable port and standard-support

Spec cable required to push bandwidth

SIDE NOTE: On notebooks that have an integrated Intel GPU, the discrete GPU still uses the RAMDAC or eDP of the integrated Intel GPU, and is as the mercy of its limitations. E.g., 500 series Intel GPUs are limited to 2.5K@60Hz, and it requires a 600 series to use 4K@60Hz, even if the discrete nVidia GPU is more than capable.

de Carabas wrote:I've just had the opportunity of buying a new desktop PC. It involved smoke, mirrors, mis-direction and a little bit of pleading with the family Chief Financial Officer but I now have an i7, 16GB Ram, RTX2070, 500GB SSD based system to setup for Elite (and homework of course).

The OP message was from 2019 March, but now that the RTX 2070 Super is here, that's probably the best buy out there -- price-performance, unless one can tolerate a RTX 2060 series or lower, of course.