AMD Intentionally Added Artificial Limitations To Their HDMI Adapters

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 8, 2013 @01:29AM from the market-segmentation-works-best-on-the-sly dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA was caught removing features from their Linux driver and days later Linux developers have caught and confirmed AMD imposing artificial limitations on their graphics cards in the DVI-to-HDMI adapters that their driver will support. Over years AMD has quietly been adding an extra EEPROM chip to their DVI-to-HDMI adapters that are bundled with Radeon HD graphics cards. Only when these identified adapters are detected via checks in their Windows and Linux Catalyst driver is HDMI audio enabled. If using a third-party DVI-to-HDMI adapter, HDMI audio support is disabled by the Catalyst driver. Open-source Linux developers have found this to be a self-imposed limitation and that the open-source AMD Linux driver will work fine with any DVI-to-HDMI adapter."

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Re:Why do this? by wagnerrp · 2013-10-08 03:50 · Score: 1, Troll

Except, those are only physical adapters. DVI and HDMI are two different languages. If you're connecting a DVI output to an HDMI input, one side of the other needs to be able to switch modes. Typically, the DVI output outputs DVI, and the HDMI input runs in DVI mode. With the ROM, the DVI output now outputs HDMI, which in turn supports audio. If you actually had an adapter which converted between DVI and HDMI electrically, it would cost you $50 rather than $5.