AMD Lays Out Plans To Support High Dynamic Range HDR Monitors In 2016, But What Is It?

HDR? What’s that? You’ve heard of HDR right? No? Well neither had I. This bewildering acronym actually stands for High Dynamic Range (in reference to monitors), and is set to be rolled out with high-end 4K PC displays in the latter half of 2016. If you joined in with the “Black Friday” brawl excuse and nabbed yourself the latest 4K TV set chances are you already have HDR, it’s only the PC monitor posse who have been left in the lurch and who have to wait patiently.

So what does HDR do and why should you spend your hard earned cash on another monitor, having finally bitten the bullet and purchased your very own 4K monitor, only to find it somewhat obsolete? In summary HDR involves the luminance (brightness in layman’s terms) that your eyes can detect being expelled from the monitor. This luminance is measured in nits (not the embarrassing head lice so prevalent in primary school). The current average PC monitors support 0-250 nits, while a high end LCD outputs 350-400 nits (medium infestation). HDRs can manage 1,000 nits already, rising to 2,000 next year!
Wait, that’s not all! HDRs also employ a new colour standard in order to so kindly improve visual aesthetics for us. At the moment most monitors employ the SRGB standard that covers just 35.9% of what the human eye can detect. With the newly developed standard known as Rec202, this rises all the way up to 75.8%. It works through better encoding of colours, along with improved tone mapping. 

For gaming the HDR tech should mean brighter, much more vivid image quality. This should ensure games appear more realistic, with accurate lighting bringing it closer to replicating real life. It's all very well talking about it of course, but it's another matter entirely picturing the effect this will have. Tech like this is going to need to be seen and used to be fully understood. In some ways though it's better off not knowing what you're missing out on.   
The first HDR monitors should start hitting the market in the second half of 2016. If you want to hop on board with one of these then you're going to need a Radeon R9 300 Series graphics card or newer, with these cards capable of supporting up HDR at up to 4K / 30 FPS. Higher frame rates can be achieved at lower resolutions, however. 
Will you be waiting to pick up an HDR monitor? Or are you perfectly happy with the luminescence of your current gaming set up? 

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