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Comment by dietr1ch | Hacker News Reader

I was going to joke about 8k@120Hz needing like 4 video cables, but it seems we are not too far from it.

[8k@120Hz Gaming on HDMI 2.1 with compression](https://wccftech.com/8k-120hz-gaming-world-first-powered-by-...)

> With the HDMI 2.2 spec announced at CES 2025 and its official release scheduled for later this year, 8K displays will likely become more common thanks to the doubled (96 Gbps) bandwidth.

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Uncompressed, absolutely we need another generation bump with over 128Gbps for 8K@120Hz with HDR. But with DSC HDMI 2.1 and the more recent DisplayPort 2.0 standards is possible, but support isn't quite there yet.

Nvidia quotes 8K@165Hz over DP for their latest generation. AMD has demoed 8K@120hz over HDMI but not on a consumer display yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Refresh_frequency_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_...

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/graphics-cards/compare/

My primary monitor is the Samsung 57" 8Kx2K 240Hz ultrawide. That's the same amount of bandwidth, running over DisplayPort 2. It mostly works!

I use the same monitor can I love it. Couldn't recommend it more to people.

Fifty seven inches??

Just two 4k monitors slapped together, it’s 8k wide but 2k tall.

Is it actually good for productivity? The curve isn’t too aggressive? Could you, e.g. stack 3 independent windows and use all 3? Or you kind of give up on the leftmost / rightmost edges ?

I think window managers these days do a better job on 3 monitors than on a single one that could have the same area.

With an ultra wide you lose the screen concept for managing area and it gets awful because you lose grouping windows on different screens, picking per-monitor workspaces, moving windows across screens.

Either monitors need to present themselves as multiple screens, or window managers need to come up with virtual screens to regain the much needed screen abstraction.

I have three 4K 27" which yield a bit more screen real estate. Otherwise I'd love to go to a single ultrawide.

I prefer 3 monitors because it eases window management while being cheaper. For gaming I only need one 240Hz+ monitor and for Lan parties I only take that one.

Although for sim racing I've been thinking about getting a single ultra wide and high refresh rate monitor, but I'd probably go for a dedicated setup with a seat, monitor and speakers. It gets pricey, but cheaper than crashing IRL.

Yeah, window management is certainly better with separate monitors, hopefully this will get better with time.

On the flip side I would love to get rid of physically managing three individual pieces of hardware that wasn't made to work together as one setup.

> 4 video cables

The IBM T220 4k monitor required 4 DVI cables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

Also as far as 6k goes, that's half the bandwidth of 8k.

Thunderbolt 5 supports up to 120Gbps one-way.

Just don't try putting something convenient in between, at least that's what my adventures in TB4 taught me: displayport from a TB port works fine, even when DP goes to a multiscreen daisychain and the TB does PD to the laptop on the side, but try multiscreen through a hub and all bets are off. I think it's the hubs overheating and I've seen that even on just 2x FHD (Ok, that one was on a cheap non-TB hub, but I also got two certified TB4 hub hubs to fail serving 2x "2.5k" (2560x1600). And those hubs are expensive, I believe that they all run the same Intel chipset.

How about putting the dock at the end of the chain, after the monitors, does that work?

That would require monitors supporting daisy chain in the first place and I never had any problems with them anyways. Likely related to not using a full on hub but a minimalistic dongle with a DP outlet, a PD inlet and a USB outlet (which then goes to a USB hub switch managing access to simple hubs serving all those low bandwidth peripherals like the mouse).

The failing hubs were either driving cheap office displays connected through HDMI or high resolution mobile displays connected through USB-C. Few of those support anything like daisy chaining or at least simple PD passthrough so that you can use the same port for driving the display and powering the laptop, and I absolutely do want dual mobile displays. Even if only so that I can carry them screen to screen for mutual protection of the glass.

> Thunderbolt 5 supports up to 120Gbps one-way.

Two clarify, there are two options for allocating bandwidth:

* 80Gbps both up- and downstream

* 120Gbps in one direction (up or down), and 40 in the opposite

See:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunde...

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