Haswell laptops, HDMI and high res displays

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,496
2
81
I've been wanting to buy a laptop for a little while, but one thing that has held me back, is the fact that you can not drive a resolution higher than 1920x1200 off of an HDMI port. I was looking at laptops with DP's, but they are a bit expensive, and/or make other tradeoffs that I don't want to accept.

For years now, the HDMI spec has supported up to 2560x1440, but for whatever reason, this has not been incorporated into graphics cards to my knowledge (nor has it been supported by the majority of monitors).

With the release of Haswell, I've seen claims that it will support up to 4k displays. Are we to take this to mean, that all Haswell's with HDMI will be able to display high resolution, or does that mean Haswell itself is capable, but the manufacturer has to incorporate it into their design? Is it reasonable to expect that all Haswell laptops will be able to output 2560x1440 via HDMI, or is this to be determined?
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
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HDMI 1.4 only supports 4K with 24FPS. You need an unreleased 2.0 spec to get 60FPS. Both Haswell and IB supports 4K. So if you want 60FPS you need DP.
 

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,496
2
81
I'm really only interested in 2560x1440 or 2560x1080.

On a side note, do you think most people (non-gamers) would notice much of a difference in non-gaming tasks between 60Hz and 30Hz?
 

dagamer34

Platinum Member
Aug 15, 2005
2,591
0
71
I'm really only interested in 2560x1440 or 2560x1080.

On a side note, do you think most people (non-gamers) would notice much of a difference in non-gaming tasks between 60Hz and 30Hz?

Yes, movies only get away with 24fps because each frame has the same amount of blur and motion. That's terrible for computers where each frame is crisply rendered and you can easily have fast movement on the screen. Also keep in mind that with movies, there are certain things that simply cannot be done with 24Hz (fast panning is one of them).

If you have any interest in 4K, you need DisplayPort out with Haswell.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
You will get 60FPS with 2560*1600 from HDMI 1.3. But its always good to check the manufactor specs before purchase.