AMD may debut support for the latest HDMI 2.2 video interface with its upcoming Radeon GPUs. As a successor to HDMI 2.1, this new standard doubles the maximum available bandwidth, which enables support for uncompressed 4K at 240Hz and up to 12K resolution via DSC (Display Stream Compression).
Hardware leaker @Kepler_L2 on X has shared some new insight on AMD’s next-gen graphics hardware, indicating that RDNA 5 or UDNA (whatever name it ends up with) will feature 80Gb/s HDMI 2.2 ports. While this isn’t the maximum 96Gb/s bandwidth supported by HDMI 2.2, it is still much higher than the current 48Gb/s of HDMI 2.1. It is also faster than the 54Gb/s DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR13.5 found on consumer Radeon 7000 and 9000 graphics cards, since the full speed 80Gb/s DisplayPort 2.1 is exclusive to the Radeon Pro series.
While the leaker didn’t share the reason behind this limitation, it doesn’t really matter for most users. Unless you own a fancy 4K 240Hz or 8K display and want to run it without DSC, even HDMI 2.1 is fast enough. To give an idea, DisplayPort 2.1 offers the same 80Gb/s and can handle up to 4K 240Hz, 8K 60Hz HDR, 10K 30Hz, or even 16K 60Hz using DSC. By comparison, the full speed HDMI 2.2 can push up to 4K 480Hz or 12K 120Hz thanks to new Fixed Rate Link (FRL) technology.
Now the question is, since the faster interfaces seem to be exclusive to AMD’s professional segment, will HDMI 2.2 be available on consumer Radeon GPUs? Seeing how Nvidia already uses 80Gb/s DisplayPort 2.1 on its RTX 50 Series cards, AMD may want to catch up by including both the latest DisplayPort and HDMI interfaces.
With that in mind, there is still a second part to this equation, i.e. displays. If no monitor or TV supports HDMI 2.2, its presence on Radeon will be useless. At some point there will be displays supporting this standard, but for my part, I don’t like buying products based on promises. I’m happy to see faster interfaces that allow higher resolutions and refreshes, but compatible monitors can’t come quick enough.
