tech
December 5, 2025
Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.
Valve tells Ars its “trying to unblock” limits caused by open source driver issues.
TL;DR
- Steam Machine hardware officially lists HDMI 2.0 support, not the newer HDMI 2.1 standard.
- Valve states the hardware supports HDMI 2.1, but Linux drivers are a work-in-progress.
- The HDMI Forum blocks open-source HDMI 2.1 driver implementations, impacting SteamOS.
- Valve uses chroma subsampling as a workaround to achieve 4K @ 120Hz over HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.
- Chroma subsampling may slightly affect video quality, particularly text clarity.
- DisplayPort 1.4 output is an alternative for higher bandwidth without these issues.
- HDMI-VRR support is not available due to driver issues; only AMD FreeSync is supported over HDMI.
- These limitations highlight challenges in developing Linux-based gaming hardware.
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