How is running the game in 1080 benefiting you having a 4K display? You either render the pixels or you don't, there is no substitute.
You render the UI in 4k. One of the nice benefits of having high PPI screens are that it improve readability of texts. Also i don't think AA affects 2d graphics in the UI so having a high resolution version of it would be nice as well.
Does this mean we are supposed to buy 4K screens so the UI can look nicer?
And textures still meant for 1080p gaming and 1 GB cards in those games. Roll in some 4k suitable texturing and even that quad Titan would scream to stay in double digit frame rates.
Now that SMAA has come out there is no longer the need to do use SSAA and the huge memory footprint it needs, you can make use of all those extra shader cores to get pretty much the same quality.
Watch the 2nd half of the video I linked to and you'll see what I mean.
lavans. which display are you currently rendering 4k (8.2MP)? if single 680 is enough for 4k for you. highly doubt you are playing high/max setting much less any msaa.
please post a youtube video showing bf3 with that single 680 on that 4k display on high/max setting with 2xmsaa. love to see the avg fps and min fps.
My displays are 3x Acer H233H and 1x Vizio E421VO.
I don't have a youtube video of BF3 at 4k, nor do I have any desire of making one. BF3 has already been benched on a single GTX680 @ 4k on both high and ultra presets.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/6/18/the-4k-graphics-card-shootout.aspx
Those benchmarks basically show that high and ultra settings are not playable. For some, high might be barely playable, though I'd think medium settings would likely be enough.
This is a bit different as the jump to 3840x2160 is an epic one in comparison to any previous jump. Likewise, in the far future, the jump from 4k to 8k will be far greater than the jump to 4k.
~30fps is playable for me. IMHO, anything over 45 is a waste of hardware potential. Also, not all games are as graphically intensive as BF3, and not all future games will be either. By the time BF3 quality graphics becomes standard, or at least common with high profile games, we'll have cards that are twice the power, if not three times the power, of a single GTX680. Using one game to set an example of single card performance at 4k resolution does not paint a proper picture.
On an absolute scale it's bigger sure.
But on a relative scale, 3840x2160 is only twice the resolution of 2560x1440, which is twice the resolution of 1920x1080, which is twice the resolution of 1280x720 etc etc...
This is nothing new, when 1080p came out it was the same kind of magnitude increase from 720p, technology does this all the time, HDD space, CPU speed, RAM size, they mostly all double in speed every X years leading to exponential growth
I don't consider 30 FPS playable, especially when talking about average, where the lows are much lower, I'd think for most people 40 FPS is about the lowest average that is playable.
That said, for myself, 60 FPS is the minimum average I play a game at. 80 FPS or higher is ideal. I get simulator sickness until I average over 80 FPS, though 60 FPS is not bad, as it takes 30-60 minutes before I start to feel nausea at that rate.
Most tech sites tend to share my opinion that 30 FPS average is not playable, or "barely playable". I also realize I have much higher requirements than most, which is why I mentioned 40 FPS as what most people consider playable, and seems to be shared by most review sites.
I'm also not so stuck with idea that you must play things at maxed settings for it to be good. So I still consider the 680/7970 playable on the 4k screen, but I'd never do it at high or ultra based on those benchmarks. I'd attempt medium and see how that goes.
Running Battlefield 3 at High settings at 4K resolution, the HD 7970 got an average FPS of 33 FPS with a minimum of 26 and a maximum of 45. At this resolution and these settings, there was absolutely no noticeable lag and the game played like butter. The GTX 680 didn't do much worse with an average frame rate of 30 FPS and a maximum of 45 and a minimum of 18. This also played smoothly for the most part, but there were a few instances where a short bout of lag could be noticed.