Video Card/HDR/4K Questions  

At some point I'm probably going to want to get a 2K or 4K monitor, preferably with some version of HDR. I talked on the phone today with 2 EVGA people about HDR and got somewhat-different answers.

The question is: Does HDR have to be designed and built into a video card or is it enough to have an HDR monitor? And if HDR has to be built into the card, how do the different HDR versions figure into that?

Looking at the specs for EVGA's most expensive card, 3090, there's a vague reference to supporting 4K and 8K HDR. One of the EVGA people also said that the HDR comes from the video card driver, which would come from NVIDIA.

Also, I guess I should ask about my MOBO. It's an Intel DH87RL. It has
•One PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot
•Three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots
•HDMI v1.4a
•DVI-i
•Display Port v1.2

I'm no expert on this stuff, but I think those specs are probably too old to support at least 4K, if not HDR. What about 2K? If the MOBO has to go, that probably would mean a whole new computer. I appreciate any knowledge/advice I can get. Thanks.

HDMI 1.4a won't support 4k at 60 Hz. It may at 30Hz, but I can't recommend that.

DisplayPort 1.2 can do 4k/60Hz.

Both of those are mostly irrelevant if you use an add-on graphics card.

HDR is another matter.

Here's a list of graphics cards that supposedly support HDR: What graphics card do I need for HDR and what PC games support it? | Rock Paper Shotgun

I presume that the current generation of cards (nVidia RTX 30X0, AMD Radeon RX 6X00) also have it.

One of my desktop PCs uses an nVidia Titan X (Maxwell) card, basically a GTX 980ti with more VRAM. With recent drivers, it supports HDR at 4k/60Hz via DisplayPort. (I think that irt would not via HDMI.)

Whether your old PC (2013) is powerful enough to make 4k/HDR usable, I have no idea. May be OK for other things than games.

If you wish to watch UHD BluRay movie disks on the PC, that opens another can of worms. The only normally supported configuration that I know of requires a CPU and motherboard that support the Intel SGX instructions. Cannot Enable Intel(R) Software Guard Extensions (Intel(R) SGX) Using... An alternative would be to use an optical drive with a hacked firmware and player software like DVDFab Player. (From China.) It's practically a whole hobby in itself.

bobkn, thanks for the quick response. FWIW, my processor is i5-4570 3.2 GHz.

As usual, I'm confused. Are you saying that as long as the video card has the right-version connectors, the MOBO itself doesn't matter? Also, is it accurate to say that my setup would at least support 2K?

Also, I don't do gaming or BluRay stuff, just web browsing and video watching, wanting everything to look as clear, crisp, and colorful as possible.

Thanks.

For your uses you do not require 4K or HDR, it is that simple.

You would only need 4K on a very large monitor.

You have to resist commercial pressures to an extent, otherwise you will get involved in unnecessary expense for products you don't actually need.

"Also, is it accurate to say that my setup would at least support 2K?"

The specs of your Graphics card says max digital resolution of 2560 x 1600 (Dual Link DVI only)That implies any HDMI or DisplayPort output may be less but presumably it does 1920 x 1080 which is roughly 2K(2048 x 1080).
DVI is now a legacy port. Current ones are HDMI and DisplayPort.

Helmut, I know there are issues concerning 4K with monitor size and distance from the viewer. My understanding of HDR is that it could improve visual quality (for HDR content) regardless of any other consideration. Is this not correct?

Concerning my current card (GTX 650 Ti BOOST), EVGA has told me: "As long as you are using either a Dual Link DVI cable or a displayport cable you will get full resolution.", meaning for 2K purposes 2560 x 1440. Any disagreement here?

Also, what about my MOBO question?

Thanks.

The motherboard is irrelevant, as long as it supports the add-on graphics card. PCI-E X16 4.0 graphics cards are nominally backwards compatible with older PCI-E standards, but there can be BIOS issues. The slot on the Intel DH87RL is PCI-E 3.0, which means that you would be OK with any recent PCI-E X16 graphics card. (Most motherboards don't support PCI-E 4.0 yet. It's not a compatibility issue.)

I'd call a 1080p (1920 X 1080), also known as "full HD", as 2k. (That's basically a TV definition, but I've seen it listed for computer monitors as well.) 2560 X 1600 is also known as WQXGA Graphics display resolution - Wikipedia.

I've seen some virtual ink spent on arguments over whether UHD (3840 X 2160) TVs should be called 4k.

As for a "very large monitor", I run 3840 X 2160 on a 28" monitor and a 27" one. My viewing distance is roughly the diagonal length of the monitor. Works OK for me. Some software (e. g., Photoshop CS6) doesn't scale its menus for the resolution, so the icons are uncomfortably small. Newer applications don't have that issue.

I can't swear that 3840 X 2160 offers practical advantages over 1920 X 1080. I use it mainly because I'm a nerd.

Your main issue at this time is the graphics card shortage. If you wanted an nVidia 3000 series graphics card, you migth have to buy one from a reseller (aka scalper), at 3X the original MSRP. AMD RX 6000 series cards aren't much better. Even a fairly low-end card like an nVidia GT 1030 may be hard to find, and overpriced.

Later: I admit to some confusion. The graphics built in to the i5-4570 processor are spec'd to support 3840 X 2160 at 60Hz on both HDMI and DisplayPort. Intel(R) Core™ i5-4570 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz) Product Specifications The DH87RL motherboard is spec'd at HDMI 1.4a, which does not support 3840 X 2160 at 60 Hz. (30Hz, yes.)

Thanks again, bobkn. Looks like the safest thing to do is nuthin' until I absolutely have to. At least I'll have more knowledge and understanding to deal with any eventuality.

vanp said:

Thanks again, bobkn. Looks like the safest thing to do is nuthin' until I absolutely have to. At least I'll have more knowledge and understanding to deal with any eventuality.

You can always get a UHD monitor. If your current graphics don't support 3840 X 2160, you can always run at a lower resolution for a while.

If, by some miracle, the motherboard's HDMI port actually supports UHD, make sure to use a certfied premium HDMI cable. https://www.hdmi.org/spec/premiumcable (Look for the logo.) It need not be expensive, although you may have to go to an online seller (Amazon) to find an inexpensive one. (Monoprice, for example. Their QC may be imperfect, but the odds are good you'd get a usable cable.)