UltraHD gaming - worth it or not?

[LFCNZ]

Considering building an UltraHD gaming PC, but is it worth it?

Is the image quality that much better than a game at Full HD?

Are there any games coming out that have texture specifically for UltraHD resolutions?

I beleive that Project Cars might?

Cheers

 

[cmdrdredd]

I believe that for the money spent, no it isn't worth it now. If there was more 4k content then perhaps, but not yet.

 

[LFCNZ]

Yeah I just dont think there is the content to warrant it, maybe in a years time it might be worth it.

Any thoughts on if there might be reasonable price reductions on any of the components in the next year or so?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Supposed to see some price drops on 4k panels soon. TVs will start shipping with HDMI 2.0 that will allow 60hz @ 4k. I think the real sticking point for gaming is GPU pricing. Right now, to get the best experience from new and demanding titles you need pretty hefty GPUs that are going to run up to the $1k mark. I suppose if you can afford it and just want it because you can then this doesn't matter.

 

[HitAnyKey]

I would say save your $$$. The market is not quite ready for it. Give it 2 years for prices to drop once it becomes more commonplace.

 

[xantub]

nope, definitely not worth it.

 

[RockinZ28]

Once a single $600 or less GPU can handle it with good quality and 60fps, plus affordable led monitors/tvs hit I'll bite.

A 4k lcd is still an lcd. Pass.

I also find games look great on my 58" plasma from the viewing distance. Most look bad at 25x16 on my 30". Getting close just exposes how little detail the textures have. At least that was true a couple years ago, can't run new games at that res without serious upgrades now. Bonus is 1080p is fine, and I save a ton of money.

 

[Bateluer]

If there was more 4k content then perhaps, but not yet.

Bare in mind, the OP is talking about UHD PC gaming. 4K content being available means you select the 3860x2160 resolution from the Display options in the game.

Supposed to see some price drops on 4k panels soon. TVs will start shipping with HDMI 2.0 that will allow 60hz @ 4k. I think the real sticking point for gaming is GPU pricing. Right now, to get the best experience from new and demanding titles you need pretty hefty GPUs that are going to run up to the $1k mark. I suppose if you can afford it and just want it because you can then this doesn't matter.

Display Port 1.2 can do 60Hz@4K resolutions as well. And no, you will not need 1,000 dollars worth of GPUs to game in 4K. Source: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1056?vs=1072

You won't be hitting 120fps in any game, and newer titles are definitely going to make that 290X/780Ti work. But if you're willing to make a few easy tweaks to your visual settings, you'll have few issues getting playable frame rates in today's games. Not sure why people keeping saying you need xFire 295X2s and SLI 780Tis for UHD gaming when every review and benchmark says otherwise.


Now, my own two cents to the OP's question. Its still in the early adopter stage. Are you an early adopter and willing to deal with the usual early adopter issues, high costs, performance issues, driver bugs, bad/broken UI scaling, and so on? If yes, and you've got the cash to drop on it, by all means, go for it. If you don't consider yourself an early adopter, then I'd hold off until roughly mid 2015. We'll see more UHD displays available on the market, and both Nvidia and AMD will, hopefully, have refreshed their GPUs lines with actual ~20nm parts instead of rehashed/rebranded 28nm parts.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I have not played 4k. I think at first it is going to be much more for editing.

I play using surroundview 5760x1200. It takes two decent graphics cards and you have to limit AA a bit, but overall I really enjoy it and would recommend it. Especially now where 1080p monitors are cheap.

You mentioned Cars and driving simulation games are the best for this setup. I think it will trump playing at 4k because it gives you the immersion and means you can see turns and cars next to you much more naturally.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Does 2160p scale well to 1080p if you decide to switch for a specific game that your new GTX 980 won't handle?

Also, where is a good list of these upcoming 4k products? I know Seiki has a few but that's all I know of.

 

[Bateluer]

Does 2160p scale well to 1080p if you decide to switch for a specific game that your new GTX 980 won't handle?

Also, where is a good list of these upcoming 4k products? I know Seiki has a few but that's all I know of.

I wouldn't touch the Seiki TVs myself. Reviews on Amazon make it look very lackluster.

I know Linus Tech Tips reviewed the Samsung UD590 and came away positively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YXWqhL9ik

I'm sure there's going to be some UHD 4K focused enthusiast sites spring up soon, if they haven't already.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Bare in mind, the OP is talking about UHD PC gaming. 4K content being available means you select the 3860x2160 resolution from the Display options in the game.

And then what? Do games look significantly better? I believe there are too many things that should be improved first before 4K gaming makes sense. Like more detailled terrain and surfaces (geometry, not just plain 2d surfaces), dynamic weather effects (think of accumulating water in rain, dripping down from roofs, making the ground wet and occluding the ground if it rains enough, or an advanced dynamic snow system in a game like Skyrim) etc.
4K doesn't give you all that, it takes a lot of performance away that could be invested in things like these.

When will there be another jaw dropping moment like watching the first Unreal or Far Cry 1 or Crysis 1? 4K is meh, at least for me personally.

Edit:
That is not to say that higher resolutions don't make sense. There should be progress there, too, but the step to 4K is too large imo.

 

[BSim500]

I tried 4K gaming on a friend's PC. Personally I didn't think it was worth it. For me it boiled down to comfortable screen size vs depreciating gains & performance drop. ie, to really notice a big difference you need a bigger screen, but there comes a point where too big a screen just feels uncomfortable to sit close to (just like you don't sit 2ft away from a 2m projection screen). 24" is the "sweet spot" for me for desktop PC gaming. Problem is, if you don't get a bigger screen, then the difference isn't that much greater vs 1080p with decent AA on. Texture sizes are still the same (often limited anyway due to VRAM / developer budget limitation) and don't look more "real", etc. At the same time, you do notice the general fps drop. A stuttery 4k "experience" isn't exactly an "upgrade" over a silky smooth 1080p rig.

So to me, it isn't worth it, certainly not worth it in money / being an early adopter. A lot of people are saying 1080p is good enough, and we may well be reaching the point of depreciating gains. 320x240 on a 14" CRT monitor -> 1920x1080 24" LED was a huge step up (as was 240-288 vertical VHS resolution -> 1080p Blu-Ray). But 1080p 24" -> 4k 24" is very marginal at best on most typical screen sizes (same is true of Blu-Ray vs 4k demo's on normal TV screen sizes at normal view distances). I could buy a bigger monitor, but up close, I'm then running into ergonomics issues (I personally find 30" screens uncomfortable to sit close to for more than an hour or so but could sit in front of a 24" all day). Different people may have different "sweet spots" though.

Finally there's also the question - is 4K market driven (demand) - or marketing driven (manufactured hype)? ie, are people crying out for it, or is it just being pumped as "the next thing you must buy" - another "hype train" you "need" to jump on to resell another batch of monitors / TV's / content all over again, like the "3D Blu-Ray", DVD-Audio / SACD, etc fads that flopped before?

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I wouldn't touch the Seiki TVs myself. Reviews on Amazon make it look very lackluster.

I know Linus Tech Tips reviewed the Samsung UD590 and came away positively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5YXWqhL9ik

I'm sure there's going to be some UHD 4K focused enthusiast sites spring up soon, if they haven't already.

Oops, I meant these that are upcoming:

http://www.tekrevue.com/seiki-4k-monitors/

 

[cmdrdredd]

Bare in mind, the OP is talking about UHD PC gaming. 4K content being available means you select the 3860x2160 resolution from the Display options in the game.



Display Port 1.2 can do 60Hz@4K resolutions as well. And no, you will not need 1,000 dollars worth of GPUs to game in 4K. Source: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1056?vs=1072

You won't be hitting 120fps in any game, and newer titles are definitely going to make that 290X/780Ti work. But if you're willing to make a few easy tweaks to your visual settings, you'll have few issues getting playable frame rates in today's games. Not sure why people keeping saying you need xFire 295X2s and SLI 780Tis for UHD gaming when every review and benchmark says otherwise.


Now, my own two cents to the OP's question. Its still in the early adopter stage. Are you an early adopter and willing to deal with the usual early adopter issues, high costs, performance issues, driver bugs, bad/broken UI scaling, and so on? If yes, and you've got the cash to drop on it, by all means, go for it. If you don't consider yourself an early adopter, then I'd hold off until roughly mid 2015. We'll see more UHD displays available on the market, and both Nvidia and AMD will, hopefully, have refreshed their GPUs lines with actual ~20nm parts instead of rehashed/rebranded 28nm parts.

Cause turning everything on at 1080p with 4xAA is better than medium at 4k to get a solid 60fps.

Why play at 4k if you are going to reduce texture detail and such to medium settings? It won't look better than 1080p and in fact will look worse. Unless you are spending the cash to do it at the same detail settings as 1080p, it is totally a waste.

 

[Bateluer]

Cause turning everything on at 1080p with 4xAA is better than medium at 4k to get a solid 60fps.

Why play at 4k if you are going to reduce texture detail and such to medium settings? It won't look better than 1080p and in fact will look worse. Unless you are spending the cash to do it at the same detail settings as 1080p, it is totally a waste.

Not exactly. A number of games will look better at 4K than 1080p. Keep in mind, at 4K you can turn AA off completely, saving you a lot of performance.

And 1080p at Max won't necessarily look better than UHD at high either. Compare the last 7th gen console games running at 704x576(576p) to the same game running on the PC at 1280x720. The PC version will look better even with settings turns down a little.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not exactly. A number of games will look better at 4K than 1080p. Keep in mind, at 4K you can turn AA off completely, saving you a lot of performance.

And 1080p at Max won't necessarily look better than UHD at high either. Compare the last 7th gen console games running at 704x576(576p) to the same game running on the PC at 1280x720. The PC version will look better even with settings turns down a little.

Your link shows a lot of games barely hitting medium at 60fps when running 4k. That would always look worse than max settings at 1080p. Some games at low quality can't even hit 50fps at 4k without more GPU power.

Everything is a trade off and I would never trade 60fps+ at very high or ultra for 30fps at medium at 4k.

 

[BSim500]

Keep in mind, at 4K you can turn AA off completely, saving you a lot of performance.

In my experience that's only true if you've got a really small monitor with a very high pixel density. On larger 30" screens, aliasing on 0AA is still noticeable even at 4k res. Even if you don't like the FXAA style post-processing based AA, traditional 4x MSAA (with a typical 20-40% performance hit), is still extremely efficient compared to having to render 300% more pixels purely to avoid using MSAA. That's on par with SSAA (Super-Sampling) which is by far the most inefficient AA method of all.

Compare the last 7th gen console games running at 704x576(576p) to the same game running on the PC at 1280x720. The PC version will look better even with settings turns down a little.

HD vs SD is noticeable on pretty much anything. Problem with 4k is depreciating gains for exponentially increasing hardware requirements. If you don't run a large monitor, 1080p vs 4K is nowhere near the gap of PAL/NTSC vs HD on typical 22-24" screens. (And if you do run a large monitor you do still need AA which can lead to crippling fps at 4k res). And as "cmdrdredd" said, slowdowns to 30fps vs stable 60fps is noticeable at every resolution. The problem isn't necessarily average fps but min fps during "heavy" scenes - consoles have no interest in 4K, whilst many PC games are unoptimised when it comes to narrowing the min vs avg fps gap, which gets further exacerbated with 4k resolutions.

 

[BrightCandle]

I wasn't willing to give up my 144hz monitor for the increase in resolution all the way up to 4k so I only went to 1440p with the ROG Swift (and gsync). Its a fairly significant increase in density and a moderate increase in the size of the thing you are looking at but only half way towards 4k. I can't say I am particularly impressed with the resolution or monitor size bump. Its a moderate improvement but its no where near as important IMO as the higher refresh rate.

 

[Midwayman]

A low persistence, high refresh rate panel is way more important to me than resolution. I'd love 4k, but the market isn't there yet. Give it a couple years. However if you're a money is no object sort of guy and don't play a lot of FPS, why not?

 

[lupi]

From what I heard on those in the video/artist buisness, br/1080 was a dramatic improvement over previous gen but 4k relatively minor. The format after 4k that is being work on will be a big improvement and they say save your money till that's out.

 

[cmdrdredd]

From what I heard on those in the video/artist buisness, br/1080 was a dramatic improvement over previous gen but 4k relatively minor. The format after 4k that is being work on will be a big improvement and they say save your money till that's out.

With the right content I can tell the difference side by side. Blind test maybe not though.

I appreciate what 4k brings, but for gaming it requires more power than I am willing to pay for and wouldn't recommend it to the average person.

 

[Tattare]

im confused when you say UltraHD gaming are you talking gaming on a 4k or Moding your games like skyrim to support better textures and then Downsampling?

 

[Skurge]

I think it is worth it.

I came from 24" 1080P 60Hz, to 27" 1440P IPS, to 27 1080P 120Hz, to 28" 4K

There are things I miss about IPS and there are things I miss about 120hz, but overall. I would take the 4K display every single time. Games look amazing. The textures automatically look sharper. Although poor textures stand out more, but overall for U$500 I think it is worth it.

I am currently running it on a single 290X as I have sold my crossfire setup and most games run pretty good with no AA.

 

[h9826790]

I think it depends on your monitor.

I'd try to play 4K games on my 84" TV, there is a huge difference between 1080p and 4K. Also, since I am using a TV, I can basically tune all filter off, and let the TV to do all the post processing job. So, I don't really need to have a super powerful multi graphic cards setup to make the 4K game playable.