Question Wherefore art thou, 4k?

[igor_kavinski]

4k is still treated as more of a specialty item.

Coz no high end card at the moment can do 4K in every game with its hands tied behind its back. 4K will only become commonplace once the filthy rich people move onto 8K in droves, with cards that can do at least 8K at 60fps in at least one killer game.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Coz no high end card at the moment can do 4K in every game with its hands tied behind its back. 4K will only become commonplace once the filthy rich people move onto 8K in droves, with cards that can do at least 8K at 60fps in at least one killer game.

That about sums it up. Unfortunately with the pace of graphics card development and the price/performance ratio's that have been holding doggedly steady over the last 4-5 years, it will be 10 years before we get $300-400 graphics cards that can easily handle 4k. I mean seriously, there are 3 cards that can consistently hit 60 FPS at 4k Ultra settings, with 2 more that are marginal and all those cards are $800 or over. Only 1 card has a chance of dealing with higher resolution or hitting higher refresh rates at 4k.

All other performance benefits are being provided via phantom frame generation tech like DLSS, essentially cheating to guess what the next frame will look like based on the previous ones, but not actually doing the work needed to really generate the frame.

It will take a quadrupling of the graphics cards performance for something like 8k to even be possible with the highest end cards. Even if we think we will see 50% performance increase for each new generation (which is above the historical average), it will take 4 generations of cards to reach that level.

 

[Mopetar]

It really depends on what you're looking for as far as frame rates are concerned.

You can get an RX 6800 for under $400 these days and that. According to TPUs results that has a 64.5 FPS average at 4K across their 25 game test suite.

You really only need the most extreme high end card if you want every game to run comfortably above 60 FPS while using RT and not having to use DLSS/FSR at the same time.

 

[mindless1]

Ok, I see that some are out there at this point. I guess I was expecting the tech to proliferate and become the standard about $100 to $120 by now. (just like SVGA overtook VGA at some point) It seems like 4k is still treated as more of a specialty item.

They will charge more for it as long as the market can bare that.

Can't see it dropping to $100 to $120 yet, since there is a base (minimum) price for all the components and that price point would be for a cheaper lower res 1080p panel. At least that is fairly standard now instead of 720p or 1680x1050.

Better bang for the buck for 4K these days is a TV used as a monitor, though not all are created equal, especially if you want high refresh rates, and low latency. 2nd tier brands at 50" and smaller can now be had for $200 or less... not that I necessarily recommend 2nd tier brands as their lifespan can suffer or the smart OS can be buggy.

 

[mindless1]

Sure hope it never becomes common. Text is too small.
4K is overated even on TV's.

4K is not overrated at all if used on a decent sized monitor or TV-as-monitor. I mean for daily computing, I leave the gaming angle up to those who want to spend the money on a video card for that, when it seems like if it's not one thing, it's another keeping video card prices artificially high. Mining... covid... AI... what's next?

 

[Eug]

I am not too picky about the display size but DPI. 190-220 is a good range.
If you want a 32" monitor it should be 6K. 27" should be 5K and 24" should be 4K. Unsurprisingly, Apple has this correct at every display size.

As a Mac user, I partially disagree. I like 190-200, but I definitely don’t like 220. Before Retina, Apple’s flagship desktop monitors were at about 100 ppi or less. The then revered 30” Apple Cinena had display was 101 ppi. However, once they went Retina, they went to 220 ppi. IMO 220 is too high with their chosen default text size, and they should have stuck with their previous text sizing but Retinafied, at ~200 ppi. This corresponds to 5K at about 29-30”, but even 32” would be OK. 6K is too high.

Actually, 5K 27” and 6K 32” would be fine if they offered more scaled resolution options, but for some stupid reason they don’t, so in order to get them, people have to resort to 3rd party software.

BTW, another reason high ppi displays are so necessary in macOS is because Apple has removed subpixel anti-aliasing from the OS, so now the OS looks bad with anything under ~160 ppi unless you drop all the way back down to ~100 ppi. This is not true on Windows. It actually looks half decent on lower ppi displays, because it has sub-pixel anti-aliasing. The biggest difference is with 4K 32”. It’s OK on Windows, but it’s terrible on macOS, at usual ergonomic desktop seating distance (20-25”).

 

[igor_kavinski]

It will take a quadrupling of the graphics cards performance for something like 8k to even be possible with the highest end cards.

It's kinda possible right now with a 4090 and ironically, FSR2: https://www.techradar.com/features/...-force-to-play-at-8k-just-the-nvidia-rtx-4090

But I know you meant native 8K rendering.