Does gaming at 4K make sense.. ??

[trog100]

i dont think it does with current hardware but many seem to think otherwise..

i see many things to be lost by 4K gaming and not a lot to be gained.. so why are people doing it.. ??

i can think of only one valid reason.. someone owns a 4K monitor for other purposes and wants to play games on it..

if i am missing something i would be happy to find out what it is..

trog

 

[RCoon]

No current hardware can run it 100% smoothly in AAA games. My 295x2 struggles due to a lack of crossfire profiles in many titles, while any single GPU available on the market can at best average ~45 FPS in modern AAA titles. For some 45 FPS average is "good enough", for others, not so much. There are thousands of games that run perfectly on 4K though. Most of the popular indie titles today will run on 4K just fine, the main sticking point is the "big" titles, like XCOM and Far Cry and what not.

It may not feel like it, but 4K for gaming is not as far away as you might think. I'd be willing to bet the top end cards from NVidia and AMD that come out near the end of this year (The 1080ti/R9 490X) will run 4K@60 FPS. The 980ti is pretty damn close already. The issue is always going to be cost though. It'd be naive to think that 4K will become domestically viable any time soon. For enthusiasts it will be within reach. For domestic users, 4K will only become the norm when TV stations and films are actively being shot and rendering in 4K. These media content companies develop where the money is, and there's currently little to no market for 4K right now. Once Sharp and every other panel maker start ramping up 4K VA/IPS/PLS production on "common" screen sizes, the market will be available and people will start developing for it. Content creators go where the money is, right now its still firmly in 1080p content.

Currently there are like, two or three games with 4K textures? One of which is done with mods. For the most part, most games don't look inherently better on 4K unless the graphics style is entirely vectorised. Vectorised graphics in games look ultra sharp and clean on 4K, and entirely negate the need for AA. Beyond this, no, there is very little that makes 4K gaming remotely worth it. I went back and played Mass Effect 3 on 4K. It still looks crappy and has that bitmap effect when you look closely at any surface textures - just blocks all over the place, I'm convinced the textures in ME3 are barely a scratch above 720p.

Also bare in mind current consoles can barely play games at 1080p. The PS4 upscales from 900p, and the Xbone upscales from 720p. In many cases they can't even achieve a solid 60 FPS either. So yeah, 4K is MILES away when it comes to consoles.

 

[EarthDog]

Sure it makes sense... if you can afford it. You would need 2 980Tis/2 Titans/2 Fury X/2 Nano's and manipulate the eye candy to get your FPS where they need to be.

Like RCoon, I would also bet that Pascal and AMD's new flaghsip single GPU will be really close to having 'playable' FPS across more titles at 4K.

I don't understand what you "lose" when you try to play games at 4K outside of money in your bank account..........

 

[dcf-joe]

 

[RCoon]

For fun, here are my 4K FPS figures on the 295x2. I haven't been doing 4K benchmarks for long, so there's only a few

Now here are the GPU usage figures that go alongside both of those charts. Notice all those 50% usage bars? That's because the games don't have a crossfire profile. It's rather a lot.

 

[INSTG8R]

Heck I just made the jump to 1440. 4K is not even on my radar. Rcoon sums up the reasons why pretty nicely.

 

[Champ]

I'll always say, when you can get it to play lag free, 4k is a thing of beauty. I'm personally backing down to 1440p, because I don't make the same money I did before.

 

[peche]

4k, is all about money

 

[Vayra86]

4K or at least, high resolutions, are no novelty.

Before we had 4K panels with all the pixels on a single screen, there were already multi screen setups that crunch just as many pixels, or even more.

At this point it's not feasible at a reasonable price point. In that way, I don't feel like it 'makes sense'. Also, a lot of pixels =/= a pretty game. If it looks like shit on 1080p, it looks like shit on 4K. If it has great quality textures at 1080p, it has the same textures at 4K.

The only réal gain is that you can drop AA and the slight reduction in IQ that some methods of AA give. I can't really think of any reason to drop an additional 1k EUR on my GPU's for that - even though I can. Regardless of how much cash you've got, you can only spend it once, right

Also, people go wild about extremely high PPI, but that actually only has disadvantages to me; competitive play is harder at higher resolutions (more to see = more to respond to), you get all sorts of scaling issues with text in-game and UI elements, or you just can't read them, you've got more pixels to render so maintaining steady minimum FPS is much more difficult.

In addition, sitting too close to a high PPI screen will actually reduce the degree of oversight on what's happening on the screen, you have to move your head if you are too close which doesn't really benefit your gaming, it slows response and you miss out on things happening. Then, the alternative is sitting further away, up to the point that you no longer see the additional detail that you are still rendering, making the increased resolution effectively useless.

I can see the merit of 1440p at 25-27 inch, beyond that you enter the realm of losing the benefit because of viewing distance versus screen size. It's the same reason 4K HDTV is generally worthless investment, even regardless of a lack of content - you sit too far away from it, or you have to cover an entire wall in pixels to have a benefit. And to top it off, 4K HDTV most of the time has an even higher input lag than 1080p TV's, making console gaming or even PC gaming on it essentially impossible.

 

[EarthDog]

Hey, you could get a 4K monitor and a couple of 980Ti's and then run games on a lower resolution while capping your FPS...

 

[trog100]

the money has gone into my system.. around £1800 quid on graphics cards and monitor.. so i dont thinks its all about money..

i started the thread with simple question.. does 4K gaming make sense.. so far i aint seen anything to suggest it does..

the gist so far seems to say it can be done.. it can be done.. but the price is too high both in frames rates.. power consumption and set up costs to even vaguely suggest it makes even the slightest sense.. he he

so okay we know it can be done.. but if the much talked about 60 FPS as a basic aim makes any sense at all.. it cant even be done in a reasonable fashion with titles that do have pretty enough graphics to maybe justify the extra pixels..

it all has to be compared to lets say a base 1080 resolution.. 1080 can be done well even on a mid range system.. 1080 makes sense..

1440.. yep that can be done well on a high end system.. 1440 makes sense but maybe not as much sense as 1080..

4K.. as yet that cant be done well at all.. i see no sense in 4K..

by the time 4K can be be done and done well we will be after 8K.. okay maybe not all but some.. he he

trog

ps.. i do run 1440 and do cap my fps at around 70/75 -ish.. my own kind of minimum choice for fluid game play..

 

[EarthDog]

So, your idea of "sense" is actually "cents"(meaning money) and nothing else?

If that was the case, why did you get a 4K monitor and a couple of 980Ti's and then run games on a lower resolution while capping your FPS...?

It just costs money, that is all. But it can easily be done and with good eye candy benefits (regardless of 4K textures, to me, there is a significant difference between 4K and even 2560x1440 - I can't wait to see what 4K textures at 4K looks like!!!!).

 

[Sam008]

4k will be 60fps avg on sli/xfire on pascal & polaris top end gpus. before that not really outstanding i have fx 6300 @ 4.5ghz & msi r9 270x gaming @ 1200mhz core & 1500mhz mem. its enough for me on my 32" sony full HD tv. What i think is needed to play games better is quality in graphics not in res.

 

[Sam008]

So, your idea of "sense" is actually "cents"(meaning money) and nothing else?

If that was the case, why did you get a 4K monitor and a couple of 980Ti's and then run games on a lower resolution while capping your FPS...?

It just costs money, that is all. But it can easily be done and with good eye candy benefits (regardless of 4K textures, to me, there is a significant difference between 4K and even 2560x1440 - I can't wait to see what 4K textures at 4K looks like!!!!).

4k textures @ 4k look good & will get better as time passes.

though the games with 4k textures aren't standard right now. they'll be in 2 years for all AAA titles.

 

[cdawall]

I like 4K, but cards need to catch up now. Playing on a single 390 backed by an FX9370 has some downfalls (medium settings and 30-50FPS)

 

[bubbleawsome]

Of course it doesn't make sense if that is your view on "sense." Might as well stick at 720p and a R9 270x and render 60fps fine. 4K makes sense right now, it offers tangible benefits over 1440p, and it is possible to lower your resolution if you have to.

 

[cdawall]

Of course it doesn't make sense if that is your view on "sense." Might as well stick at 720p and a R9 270x and render 60fps fine. 4K makes sense right now, it offers tangible benefits over 1440p, and it is possible to lower your resolution if you have to.

Or just lower your settings. Most games play fine at 4k if you can accept less than "ultra" settings.


I do however play at 1080P/1440P and just go over to my brothers if I want to play 4k.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Not unless the game was designed to be played at 4K. People seem to forget that.

 

[EarthDog]

Or just lower your settings. Most games play fine at 4k if you can accept less than "ultra" settings.


I do however play at 1080P/1440P and just go over to my brothers if I want to play 4k.

Viable... but, a personal preference. I will readily admit, I am a gaming snob. It's either Ultra or bust for me (knowing damn well the difference between Ultra and High I could barely notice on most titles - I know, there pills for that, LOL!!!).

 

[cdawall]

Viable... but, a personal preference. I will readily admit, I am a gaming snob. It's either Ultra or bust for me (knowing damn well the difference between Ultra and High I could barely notice on most titles - I know, there pills for that, LOL!!!).

At 1080P there aren't very many games my old ass pair of 7950's can't play at ultra. That was what 3-4 years ago those came out? GPU's need to make some progress...then I will get my own 4k monitor and two new video cards because like you I too choose to run things at max settings for no reason because I can.

 

[peche]

im still happy on 1080, but i would like to try this xmas a new setup 1440, GPU and display.. but the idea of getting 2x 1080 screens more and make a surround display makes me wonder more about it,

Regards,

 

[Vayra86]

TBH we all focus very much on resolution and technical specs of how the game is run, but the choice of monitor is probably even more important for having the best image quality. And, along with that, the game needs to be built with 4K in mind (scalable UI and whatnot). Now you can rest assured that not many console-first titles will actually be like that. So what remains? Star Citizen and Elite?

If you buy some cheap-ass 4K panel you'll have a crapload of pixels with a shitty response time, and utterly crappy motion resolution. So anytime your image moves, you've got a blurfest. I'll take 120hz and fast pixel response over that shit any day of the week. To me, that is another reason 4K gaming at this point isn't sensible. You spend a fortune on GPU, and an even bigger fortune on a decent 4K panel, while in one or two years there is a solid market for 120hz and fast 4K panels at a far more reasonable price point. And as a bonus, you'll also be far more likely to keep 60 min fps and 120 fps at lower settings because GPU's have finally caught up. And even on top of thát, we've got OLED, a new REC specification and HDR around the corner for movies and TV, you can bet your ass that stuff is going to come to gaming and monitors too.

Nah... I really can't see the sense today unless you really have money you'd otherwise toss out the window. The whole digital entertainment market is on the eve of a big step forward in many ways, investing big now is investing in tech that will be outdated faster than you can really enjoy it. You can expect value of these products to drop *very* fast in the recent future.

 

[trog100]

So, your idea of "sense" is actually "cents"(meaning money) and nothing else?

If that was the case, why did you get a 4K monitor and a couple of 980Ti's and then run games on a lower resolution while capping your FPS...?

It just costs money, that is all. But it can easily be done and with good eye candy benefits (regardless of 4K textures, to me, there is a significant difference between 4K and even 2560x1440 - I can't wait to see what 4K textures at 4K looks like!!!!).

i tried to make it clear that it wasnt all about money.. plus i didnt buy a f-cking 4K monitor.. i bought a more "sensible" 1440 monitor instead..

the point i was trying to make and the one you missed is that i did spend the money but still didnt choose 4K (which meant for me) it wasnt simply about money..

i do agree about better textures though.. they would improve the gaming image quality more than a higher resolution does.. sadly they do eat up vram..

i played battle of mordor a while back on a 1080 monitor.. it has some extra quality textures that can be downloaded.. having the 6 gig 980 TI cards did enable me to try them out.. they did show a positive visual improvement over the normal game textures even at 1080.. they also easily used up 6 gigs of vram..

at no point have i said i own a 4K monitor.. what i own is in my specs.. they are up to date..

as to why i cap at 70-ish fps.. having done a fair amount of experimenting 70 to 80 seems seems to be a sweet spot.. a balance between nice smooth fluid game play with good visuals and excessive heat noise and power usage.. 4K would give me none of what i want .. which is why i dont use it..

or see any sense in using it.. which is more to the point..

and yep i do know that anything i say is purely my own opinion.. the purpose of the thread was to hear some alternative opinions..

trog

 

[EarthDog]

Oops, I missed you had 2560x1440... my fault T.

But, it makes plenty of 'sense' to get a 4K monitor and the cards to push it......... if you have the money.

 

[trog100]

Oops, I missed you had 2560x1440... my fault T.

But, it makes plenty of 'sense' to get a 4K monitor and the cards to push it......... if you have the money.

what cards would you recommend.. assuming i dont want to run at less than 60 fps without having to lower settings..

a cost estimate would also be helpful..

and an explanation as to what you mean by plenty of sense.. are the extra pixels really worth what it takes to get them..

trog

ps.. i am into photography as another hobby.. the same kind of pixel argument goes on there.. 4K is also a buz word.. 4K is only 8 mega pixels though.. pretty low for still images but high for moving images.. being able to capture 8 mega pixel still images from a movie is considered useful.. even a game changer.. just take a movie and select out your desired still image.. birds in fight or whatever..