Is Dis­play­Po­rt better than HDMI?

When comparing HDMI to Dis­play­Po­rt, no major dif­fer­ences jump out im­me­di­ately. But a closer look reveals details that may speak for or against one of the two digital in­ter­faces. It all depends on what you wish to use them for.

What are the dif­fer­ences between Dis­play­Po­rt and HDMI?

The two digital in­ter­faces HDMI and Dis­play­Po­rt look similar and are usually located next to each other on modern graphics cards. The ab­bre­vi­ation HDMI stands for “High-Defin­i­tion Mul­ti­me­dia Interface” and describes a wired interface for the digital trans­mis­sion of image and sound signals. Ethernet con­nec­tions are also included. The founders primarily intended it to be used for consumer elec­tron­ics.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers using HDMI are required to pay an annual license fee. The current version is HDMI 2.1a (January 2022). Different sizes are available including the HDMI standard, mini-HDMI and micro-HDMI. The latter, for example, is used in compact cameras that can be connected to monitors or TVs. Dis­play­Po­rt was first created in an effort to reduce the size of large VGA or DVI con­nect­ors for laptops and tablets while also enabling digital signal trans­mis­sion. Its aim was to improve the digital con­nec­tion of computers.

Dis­play­Po­rt is stand­ard­ised by the Video Elec­tron­ics Standards As­so­ci­ation (VESA) and license-free. The current Dis­play­Po­rt version is 2.1 (October 2022). In addition to the standard version (see picture), this digital port exists in different variants: as Mini Dis­play­Po­rt (in­tro­duced by Apple) and as Thun­der­bolt (Apple and Intel). This is a backward-com­pat­ible, universal data interface, similar to USB or FireWire.

Ac­ci­dent­al insertion of the wrong cables is im­possible due to the design of the plugs and sockets. But there are other dif­fer­ences between HDMI and Dis­play­Po­rt. Let’s take a look at their features.

What are the ad­vant­ages of Dis­play­Po­rt?

Dis­play­Po­rt was developed to digitally connect monitors with computers. This involved high transfer rates of up to 240 hertz. An AUX channel in the Dis­play­Po­rt con­nec­tion enables bi­d­irec­tion­al operation between the end device (monitor) and a PC (graphics card) for plug-and-play. The G-Sync (Nvidia) and FreeSync (AMD) methods are supported, which allows graphics cards to com­mu­nic­ate directly with the monitor, de­liv­er­ing a perfect picture and making tedious ad­just­ments no longer necessary. This mutual syn­chron­isa­tion makes the Dis­play­Po­rt an in­ter­est­ing option for gamers.

Using the latest Dis­play­Po­rt version, im­press­ive transfer rates of up to 77.37 gigabits per second are possible. A trans­mis­sion of 8K res­ol­u­tions—i.e., 8,192 × 4,320 pixels—at 60 hertz and a colour depth of 12 bits per colour channel without com­pres­sion is possible.

The daisy chain function lets you connect several monitors in series. But monitors will need to be equipped and con­figured with a DP-Out port for this to work. Here, the multi-stream transport (MST) of the display port is used which is only com­pat­ible with Windows computers right now. You can read more about con­nect­ing and con­fig­ur­ing multiple monitors to a computer in our articles “Dual monitors for a laptop” and “How to set up dual monitors in Windows 10 and 11”.

You can use ad­di­tion­al channels of the Dis­play­Po­rt for touch-sensitive screens, USB con­nec­tions, cameras, mi­cro­phones and other hardware. In addition, Dis­play­Po­rt con­nect­ors have an optional locking mechanism as a safety feature. Barbs are used to release the connector upon the press of a button.

What are the ad­vant­ages of HDMI?

So how does HDMI compare to Dis­play­Po­rt? HDMI tends to be used more widely because it was designed for consumer elec­tron­ics. TVs, beamers, game consoles and about every PC monitor have at least one HDMI port. HDMI allows you to easily connect a PC to a TV to view videos or images on a larger monitor. The entire signal path is digital. There’s no con­ver­sion from analogue to digital signals, reducing trans­mis­sion losses.

HDMI 2.1a offers a res­ol­u­tion of 8K at 60 hertz or 4K at 120 hertz but transfer rates of only up to 42 gigabits per second. The FreeSync (AMD) syn­chron­isa­tion option between graphics card and monitor is also supported by the current HDMI spe­cific­a­tion.

A maximum cable length of 10 meters shouldn’t be exceeded with HDMI. Longer lengths can cause trans­mis­sion problems. However, if special HDMI fibre optic cables are used, up to 100 meters are possible.

HDMI vs. Dis­play­Po­rt: Which one is better for gaming?

Gaming places high demands on the trans­mis­sion speed between PC and monitor (and on the sound output). After all, high frame rates, i.e., a high number of frames per second (fps), must be trans­mit­ted smoothly to larger monitors with higher res­ol­u­tions. This is es­pe­cially true for high-res­ol­u­tion action games and shooter or flight sim­u­lat­ors that use photo-realistic displays at res­ol­u­tions of 4K.

This is where Dis­play­Po­rt shines. Its automatic syn­chron­isa­tion between graphics card and monitor is a serious advantage. The image in­form­a­tion adapts dy­nam­ic­ally to the re­quire­ments of the game or sim­u­la­tion so that a smooth screen ex­per­i­ence is guar­an­teed.

While HDMI has caught up, it doesn’t quite reach the per­form­ance para­met­ers of Dis­play­Po­rt just yet. Older PC games tend to work well with HDMI. However, low res­ol­u­tions may be prob­lem­at­ic for gaming. With Moorhuhn and Co. it’s hard to get around the settings on the monitor (OSD) and the graphics card.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers of graphics cards are con­stantly op­tim­ising their products, so it’s worth con­sid­er­ing upgrading your graphics card driver in addition to staying up to date on how HDMI or Dis­play­Po­rt can improve playback per­form­ance.