ThunderBolt

Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It has been developed by Intel, in collaboration with Apple. Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into two serial signals, and additionally provides DC power, all in one cable. Up to six peripherals may be supported by one connector through various topologies

DisplayPort

DisplayPort (DP) is a digital display interface developed by a consortium of PC and chip manufacturers and standardized by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). It is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor. It can also carry audio, USB, and other forms of data.

DisplayPort was designed to replace VGA, FPD-Link, and Digital Visual Interface (DVI). It is backward compatible with other interfaces, such as HDMI and DVI, through the use of either active or passive adapters

Refresh Rates

The refresh rate of your display refers to how many times per second the display is able to draw a new image. This is measured in Hertz (Hz). For example, if your display has a refresh rate of 144Hz, it is refreshing the image 144 times per second. When paired with the high frame rates produced by a GPU and CPU working together, this can result in a smoother experience and potentially higher FPS.

In order to take advantage of higher refresh rates, three of the most important components to consider are:

• A monitor with the ability to refresh quickly.
• A CPU that’s fast enough to provide critical game instructions, including AI, physics, game logic, and rendering data.
• A GPU that’s fast enough to execute these instructions quickly and create the graphics you see on the screen. The monitor can only display an image at the rate the system produces it, so it’s important that your CPU and GPU are capable of completing this process quickly. If your CPU and GPU are incapable of supplying the monitor with a sufficiently high number of frames then your monitor won’t be able to produce a high-refresh rate image regardless of how good its specs are.

If your monitor has a refresh rate of 144Hz but the GPU is only supplying 30 frames per second, that higher refresh rate is not being utilized.

Resolution

Version

1.3

DisplayPort version 1.3 was approved on 15 September 2014.[19] This standard increases overall transmission bandwidth to 32.4 Gbit/s with the new HBR3 mode featuring 8.1 Gbit/s per lane (up from 5.4 Gbit/s with HBR2 in version 1.2), for a total data throughput of 25.92 Gbit/s after factoring in 8b/10b encoding overhead

Using Multi-Stream Transport (MST), a DisplayPort port can drive

1.4

DisplayPort version 1.4 was published 1 March 2016. No new transmission modes are defined, so HBR3 (32.4 Gbit/s) as introduced in version 1.3 still remains as the highest available mode. DisplayPort 1.4 adds support for Display Stream Compression 1.2 (DSC), Forward Error Correction, HDR10 metadata defined in CTA-861.3, including static and dynamic metadata and the Rec. 2020 color space, for HDMI interoperability,[23] and extends the maximum number of inline audio channels to 32.

DSC is a compression algorithm that reduces the size of the data stream by up to a 3:1 ratio. Although not mathematically lossless, DSC meets the ISO 29170 standard for “visually lossless” compression in most images, which cannot be distinguished from uncompressed video.

2.0

Mini DisplayPort

It was announced by Apple in October 2008, and by early 2013 all new Apple Macintosh computers had Mini DisplayPort, as did the LED Cinema Display. However, in 2016 Apple began phasing out the port and replacing it with the new USB-C connector. The Mini DisplayPort is also fitted to some PC motherboards, video cards, and some PC notebooks from Asus, Microsoft, MSI, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP, Dell, and other manufacturers.

PCIe

PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common motherboard interface for personal computers’ graphics cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware connections.

USB

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad variety of USB hardware exists, including 14 different connector types, of which USB-C is the most recent.