HDMI 2.2 spec tease suggests existing cables might not keep up

The next generation HDMI standard could require a new cable to get the most from the feature set according to the HDMI Forum.

Ahead of the reveal of the new specification at CES 2025, a press release from the HDMI forum says the new technologies will enable “higher resolutions and refresh rates” than the current HDMI 2.1 standard. It could also boost the bandwidth beyond the current 48Gbps offered by HDMI 2.1.

“The new specifications, featuring next-gen HDMI technology and increased bandwidth, will support a wide range of higher resolutions and refresh rates, enabled by a new HDMI cable,” the press release spied by VideoCardz purportedly says.

That ties into rumours that AMD and Nvidia will release new graphics cards that will unlock greater visual fidelity and refresh rates with the RTX 50 and Radeon RX 8000 ‘Reaper’ GPUs. The new standard is reportedly going to be called HDMI 2.2, according to reports from DDay and others.

While HDMI 2.1 standard can currently handle 10240 x 4320 (10k) resolutions and 120Hz refresh rates, we might be getting more from the new graphics chips and the new HDMI standard could support that. The need for a new cable might be some collateral damage, according to the reports today.

To achieve the full benefits of HDMI 2.1 you also need a special cable to achieve the peak bandwidth advantages of 48Gbps, so this isn’t necessarily anything new.

However, you could get the 10K resolution from a HDMI 2.1 cable and 120fps at 4K resolution. It’s not clear how HDMI 2.2 would increase the capacity on all fronts.

Given we’re just a month away from CES 2025 and with press releases likely to drop in the first week of January, we may not be too far from finding out. Indeed, the HDMI forum plans to reveal full plans for the new spec on January 6.

It does seem thus far that the key benefits of HDMI 2.2 will be in the gaming realm, with these next generation GPUs improving matters on all fronts for serious PC gamers. That’s the most exciting thing. A new cable won’t be anything gamers will cry about and it’s likely to be a long time, if ever, for the rest of us to need to replace cables.

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