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.