Op-ed: Are we ready for 4K?

[cliffordcooley]

I am not against progress. But we just got gaming graphics awesome. Now we have to start over and have $6000.00 machines just game. dual titans and 2000w power supplies

Nothing is stopping you from continuing your gaming experience, on any of the lessor resolutions! As much as I don't understand the desire for 4K on anything less than 40", if that is what they want to spend their money on then so be it. I know I will not be distracted by little jagged edges. Especially when I have to get closer to the screen and concentrate on where they are. So with that said, you won't see me rushing out and buying a 4K monitor either.

 

[Guest]

In regards to gaming at 1440p; I have a 27 inch running at 2560x1440 and I am very satisfied. In terms of GPU power req'd: I am currently running a GTX 770 4GB and it runs most games on VHigh. (Watch_Dogs, Wolfenstein & other recent releases). It definitely has frame drops sometimes depending on the situation. Particularly if I try Ultra settings...
Sometimes I wish I had shelled out for the 780 or a second 770 but I just can't justify the extra price for the small graphical improvement right now.

 

[Nima304]

I'm waiting another year before investing in 4k, and will most likely buy two 4k monitors and scale them down to 2k for the foreseeable future. I'm not ready to put the thousands of dollars necessary to be able to game in 4k at 60FPS on high settings just yet.

 

[TheLastPanda]

"AMD’s persisting driver and frame-pacing issues."

Last I checked those were mostly sorted out. The frame-pacing on the r9 295x2 is better than some single gpu's from Nvidia. The other driver issues related game works optimization are around but other than that I haven't seen problems.

 

[Guest]

You guys are so easily satisfied. I'm on 1080p 40" and my next screen will be at least a 60", so 4k is a must. If your monitor is small enough you don't need 4k but that's your problem. Don't need to be one percenter, get a better job. 4k is better and NOT overkill.

 

[GhostRyder]

This was a very nice article except for this: "you’ll be dealing with AMD’s persisting driver and frame-pacing issues"

On here you can even look at recent reviews and see there are no frame pacing issues or drivers problems so I do not know where you got that idea from

Back to the Article, I plan on grabbing a 4k display to replace my 3 monitor setup (Selling 1 or 2 of them and having just a secondary screen) to game at because personally I love extreme resolutions and pushing boundaries while gaming. In this day we can game at 4k with the hardware provided so I intend to do just that. Do I think everyone needs to do it, no, but its still something cool and I enjoy a bit of eye candy which I why I prefer the PC platform.

4K will not be a main thing until 2 Years I believe where we will all look back at this and laugh thinking how we ever got by running on a 1080p screen as with any resolution jump. I do not know what we will get next after this, but 4k is going to be the next big thing.

 

[cliffordcooley]

4k is better and NOT overkill.

4K is overkill, but that is not gonna stop its development. Talking about 1 percentile's, probably only 1 percent of the population actually need 4K. As for the rest of us, it is only a notch in our belt.

 

[LNCPapa]

I thought we were the 1 percenters on this forum. I want 4k but unfortunately I have the income of the 99 percenters.

 

[MonsterZero]

Great article, you totally just saved me from buying AMD for my next build, I have been and AMD fan for a while, but you are spot on with regard to the lack of updated and buggy drivers. It's been this way since I first picked up my 5850's years ago.

 

[Guest]

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s beastly GeForce GTX 780 Ti eats the 290X alive at conventional resolutions

Are you serious? 7%-15% is eating alive now?

you’ll be dealing with AMD’s persisting driver and frame-pacing issues

Oh Ok. I see now, you just don't like AMD. If you would be bothered to look at some of the latest reviews around the web including your own site you will see AMD driver team has been working to fix this issues for some time now and the issue is almost fixed in most games.

 

[Firewalker]

I'm thrilled there's so much focus on 4K now. I actually just picked myself up a Seiki 39" 4K TV that I'm using as my computer monitor and it's suuper cheap. $389 on amazon. It only does 30hz at 4k, but I am using a GTX 570 so am lucky to get 30fps at that resolution anyway. It does 120hz at 1080p, which is awesome. 30hz isn't ideal for gaming, but is still usable. I was able to play DayZ standalone with my buddies online yesterday and my card was pumping out over 30fps with some graphics tweaks and the game still looked very nice - it was a crazy experience. I did need to use Custom Resolution Utility to add the resolutions to the registry because they were not being detected by Windows 7 or my graphics card, but after that, it worked beautifully. I'm loving the extra desktop real estate. It's like 4x 1080p monitors lol, how could you NOT love that? I am a hardcore PC guy though, so all this tweaking is not for everyone. When they come down in price I'm definitely getting a 60hz or higher 4k panel and then will use this for a TV for my room, or have dual 4K displays LOOOL. Waiting for the Nvidia Maxwell 880's to come out and will pick one of those up for sure.

For those who say 1080p is enough, I say pish posh. Grab something cheap like the one I bought, or even spend a couple grand on one that'll do 60hz if you had deep pockets, and welcome to the good life!

 

[Nobina]

Right now 4k is just a waste of money, I don't know why would anyone buy 4k now when there is litteraly nothing optimized for it and hardware can barely keep up. You may think it's pretty, but it's probably nothing compared to what it will be when games get optimized for it, but then it will also cost much less so why spend so more money now for nothing? It seems that some people here just want to throw their money away.

 

[LNCPapa]

Egg... chicken. Why would anyone move toward making 4K content if there was no possible way to consume it at 4K? There will always be a tick tock sort of motion for advancements in technology and the early adopters (like the type of people you would find on a site like this) are the ones that help show the developers that there is a want or need for the technology. These "4k is unnecessary" threads are identical to old threads we had when moving from 1024x768 many years ago on Techspot and whatever our old name was before that. Just go with the flow and be mainstream if you're going to be mainstream... but don't pee on our cutting-edge parade.

 

[techgod]

Amd drivers are amazing update your article

 

[oldikes]

Lol at people saying that you cant tell the difference between 1080p and "4k"...and that 1080p is lifelike.

1080p is pretty close to lifelike but I can definitely see more in 4k and its definitely more lifelike.

 

[SNGX1275]

@ikesmasher 1080 can be very misleading if you are talking about visual quality. Codec and bitrate are the 2 things you have to consider together. If you compare a web-dl of a show at 1080 vs someone capturing the raw mpeg-2 vid and transcoding to h264 mkv, you will see a HUGE difference in quality. So this can be analogous to the megapixel race - anyone can put in a big MP count, but if the sensor is crap (or lens) it doesn't matter - just like anyone can encode to 1080p but if they choose the wrong settings it will look bad.

 

[tipstir]

What's next is Transparent UHD that's coming. I am waiting on that tech. 1080p HDTV with Boardcast only showing 480, 720p and 1080i max. So why would I need to purchase 4K. Computer side all monitors are 1080p Ultra-Thin LED.

 

[Guest]

Another pointless article about 4k gaming. 4k is for movie makers. If you can adjust your mindset to what it is like to make a movie with a camera like the GH4 then you might start to understand why 4k rocks. It isn't for gaming or productivity.

 

[cliffordcooley]

It isn't for gaming or productivity.

But yet movie making is productivity. Sheesh, what a contradictory comment!

 

[Capaill]

According to Wikipedia, the 4K movie sizes are quite big -- I hope you have a very very large download capacity!

"The large files (~40GB), distributed through consumer broadband connections, raise concerns about data caps."

TV manufacturers are struggling to market new TVs. 3D has failed and they need something else. Curved screens don't seem to offer much appeal. They are latching on to 4K (and 8K in Japan) but the problem is getting the media to the screen.

PCs will drive new hardware but only if consumers need and can get an improvement. We can't just move to 4K monitors -- an infrastructure needs to be built up to support it (display software, GPU, power, bandwidth). If it's worth it, we'll get there. If not, it will be dropped just like 3D has been.

 

[Guest]

I'm still waiting for the 144hz 1440p to come out. Going from 60hz to 144hz is a much more satisfying gaming experience than eye candy in the leaves.

 

[Guest]

The little nerds are quivering like a virgin on her wedding night... 4x OMG! I will be able to see the sweat on the balls of that guy in the video!

Come on dudes... Don't we have enough to pay for in this country without having to pay for some dim-witted utensil that we're being made to think actually will improve our "gaming". And another thing ... These motherboards will at the most hold 4 video cards. Are we expecting a 6pack soon?

Take a deep breath, my cub bears ... Take a deep breath and be glad you have what you have. The next big thing isn't all that big once you factor in the costs. And keep in mind, your wives will kick your a** if you drag this thing home.

 

[LNCPapa]

I think you should take a deep breath and remember that you've come to an enthusiast site and told everyone not to be enthusiastic about new tech.

 

[Guest]

Clifford - the article doesn't mention movie making at all so why do you assume that the author's meaning of productivity includes movie editing ? The article disparages 4K "productivity" because it is no good at 60Hz. Movies are 24fps and 30 Hz is fine, and in fact, 48fps movies look weird - hard to explain if you haven't seen one.

It's a crap article written from a blinkered point of view and sadly this has become normal on tech sites - seems people just don't get that 4k is a movie standard, not a gaming standard. Hopefully the penny will drop at some point and articles like this will improve.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Clifford - the article doesn't mention movie making at all so why do you assume that the author's meaning of productivity includes movie editing ?

OMG, I hope you are not the guest I quoted. Because if you are, you are the one that brought it up. I never once said the topic was about movie editing.