DisplayPort vs HDMI for Gaming: Which is Better?

These days, almost all consumer devices like PCs, games consoles, Blu-Ray players, and laptops connect to displays with either DisplayPort, or HDMI. From the outside these may look arbitrary, after all you simply plug them in and they work right? Well, there are unique pros and cons to both, so let’s have a look at each cable to learn about the differences.

• 1.4 - Supports 4K up to 30FPS (Not ideal for gaming PCs best avoided)
• 2.0 – Supports 4K at 60Hz and adds basic HDR (perfect for older consoles)
• 2.1 – Supports 8K at 60Hz and 4K at 120Hz adds Dynamic HDR support, eARC and Variable refresh rate (Freesync / Gsync) will require an Ultra High Speed HDMI cable (much better option for gaming but will limit some modern displays)
• 2.2 – Supports 16K at 60hz 8K at 120Hz, and uncompressed 4K at 240.480Hz. Will require an Ultra96 HDMI cable.

The good news about these HDMI is, any cable meeting a given standard, will work with all preceding standards too. The cables are fully backwards compatible.

• Smart audio – HDMI 2.1 and 2.2 cables support a feature called eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel) which allows multi-channel audio up to up to 8 channels at 24-bit/192 kHz with HDMI 2.1 allowing uncompressed audio formats. eARC is vital for most consumer soundbars.
• Common cable – Most modern devices will use HDMI and DisplayPort, or in the case of TVs and games consoles, just HDMI exclusively.
• Longer cables – HDMI cables can be up to 15 metres long before signal attenuation begins to set in.

• Lower refresh rates - At the top end, HDMI cannot match the refresh rate of DisplayPort (but it's unlikely that you will absolutely max out either HDMI or DisplayPort)
• No locking tabs - Can easily be pulled out when you're moving stuff around.
• No Daisy-chaining - This isn't a drawback for most people, but it's worth mentioning.

DisplayPort is more popular in the world of computing right now. If you look on the I/O of a modern GPU, DisplayPort is the more numerous connection. Outside of PCs, it's not common however, with TVs seldom including it. As a result, it is not used on games consoles.

• 1.0 – 1.1a - Supports 4K at 30Hz or 1080p at 144Hz
• 1.2 -1.2a - Supports 4K at 60hz or 1440p at 1440hz. Adds Multi Stream Transport (MST) to allow daisy chaining of displays also added Adaptive-Sync (Freesync / Gsync)
• 1.3 – 1.4a - Supports 8K at 6Hz or 4K at 240Hz added HDR10 support and Display Stream Compression (DSC)
• 2.0 – 2.1b - Supports 16K when using DSC, 10K at 60hz (120hz with DSC), 8K at 120hz (240hz with DSC), 4K at 144hz, 165hz and 240hz uncompressed high refresh rates depending on display and GPU lane allocation. 2K at 360hz and above.

As with HDMI, the cables are backward compatible.

• Higher band width and refresh rates - Higher refresh rates with the more recent cables than HDMI
• Better FreeFync / GSync support - DisplayPort has native support wheres as HDMI requires active work arounds in order to work
• Locking connector - DisplayPort connectors feature a latching mechanism to prevent the display accidently unplugging

• Limited implementation - It is not a common connector for consoles and TVs
• Shorter cable length - Passive DisplayPort cables have a strict limit of 3 metres.
• DSC black screens - In some situations there can be a black screen delay where alt-tabbing out of a full screen borderless game can cause a short black screen as the display changes refresh rates.

It depends on the resolution and refresh rate of your monitor, whether you intend to use HDR, and your GPU. Remember that even though DisplayPort technically has higher maximum bandwidth, this is unlikely to be relevant. HDMI 2.1 is perfectly capable of 240Hz at 1440p, and despite what you see on reddit, very very few people have a monitor like that.

But, yes, technically DisplayPort is the more performant display connection standard. So, if you have a very high end monitor, or multiple, then you should use DisplayPort if you can. You probably don't strictly-speaking need it, but additional headroom means that if you encounter weird display issues or fail to find your target resolution or refresh rate options in the display settings menu.

Gaming consoles use HDMI because they are usually connected to TVs. This is because TVs are traditionally less focused on performance and must be more broadly compatible with consumer A/V equipment. At time of writing, there are no other options here. If you use a Switch 2, PS5 or an Xbox S/X, you will be using HDMI.