Why is everyone obsessed with 4K?

[Ketchup]

I see these threads pop up a lot, and I am not signaling anyone out, but what is it? It is just because 4k displays are out now, so obviously 4k must be the best?

I am very happy with 1080, and I know the day will come when our TV's, video cards, and monitors will be able to do everything we want at 4k, but I can't help but wonder if we are getting the cart before the horse here (and I know that much of that is just due to the fact that 4k TVs and monitors are out now.)

Any thoughts?

 

[MongGrel]

New tech I guess.

 

[biostud]

Yup, just give me a 32", 1440p, 144Hz IPS, freesync monitor.

 

[RaistlinZ]

When I can get a single $400 GPU to game at 4K then I might care.

 

[Berryracer]

I see these threads pop up a lot, and I am not signaling anyone out, but what is it? It is just because 4k displays are out now, so obviously 4k must be the best?

I am very happy with 1080, and I know the day will come when our TV's, video cards, and monitors will be able to do everything we want at 4k, but I can't help but wonder if we are getting the cart before the horse here (and I know that much of that is just due to the fact that 4k TVs and monitors are out now.)

Any thoughts?

Me too mate, on my 18.4" screen on my Alienware 18, even 1920x1080 resolution is a bit too small for my liking so I have to do a DPI scaling of 125%, cannot even imagine they are selling bloody 15" laptops with 4K screens! that must be a big joke! I've had a friend buy a Lenovo Yoga 15" with a 4K display and she either has to hold a magnifier on the screen to see stuff or has to do a 250% scaling to see things at a good size but then not all programs play well with DPI scaling so you get wrongly placed buttons, text, etc.

If you want 4K, I think 34" monitor is the minimum but then that means you need a minimum of 2 high end GPUs or preferably 4 to sustain a 60+ FPS.

1440p is the sweet spot IMHO.

I deliberately chose to buy a 1440p ASUS G-SYNC Monitor because I heard their next screen which is the PG279Q will be an IPS display but have a 4K resolution. I stay away from anything that says 4K on it.

People just wanna jump on to the latest and greatest sometimes without analyzing the shortfalls of these new gimmicks

 

[smithkt]

Some people gaming on 1080p might also like to give VSR/DSR a try as well.

 

[Madpacket]

It's a bit silly really. 4K is nice for work real estate without needing multi-monitor configs but for gaming I don't really see a major benefit (yet). And most of the 4K panels are TN based which kind of defeats the purpose for gaming.

The major advances in panel technology have been with G-Synch / Freesync along with IPS displays fast enough to game with. For competitive gaming I think it's fair to say that 60Hz is not fast enough once you've experienced 120/144Hz. The new vsync tech by both companies is great for demanding games which allows smooth playback even when details are cranked.

I'm glad there's alternatives to the crappy overclocked IPS Korean panels that were never really fast enough to keep up with transition times (poor G2G). The new IPS displays are actually fast enough to render more than 60FPS without turning into a blurfest.

The only problem now is price. Freesync is helping with this but I think we need more panels from different manufacturers to drive the price down even further. Hopefully Nvidia comes to their senses and adopts Freesync, IMO they are losing this battle even with the market share they have over AMD which I predicted over a year ago.

When we have single video cards that can drive IPS or equivalent quality 4K screens that can run at least 90hz then I'll be interested. Perhaps in a few years this will be possible but as of right now 4K is a waste for gaming monitors.

 

[DooKey]

It's important to video card company fans who perceive an advantage for their company. I think it's readily apparent once you see who is pushing it from time to time.

For the average PC enthusiast it's not a big deal because they aren't going to buy anything in 4K until the price is low and the average single GPU can push it at decent settings.

 

[ZGR]

I see 4K as the next big steps in resolution. Having a 27"-30" monitor at 4k 120hz would be a solidstep up from 1080p60.

PPI matters a lot at certain viewing distances, and 1080p is not enough for me since I game with a 30" panel. I remember thinking that 480p looked awesome, but when I jumped to 1080, I realized I was missing out.

Saying 4k is a gimmicky feature is like saying 240p -> 480p -> 720p ->1080p were all pointless jumps. How is 2160p not an important stepping stone?

I do agree that some 4k TV's can be rather silly; depending on the viewing distance. I'd go with 4k 120hz over 1440p 144hz any day, but sadly 2160p120 is a long ways off it seems.

My laptop's 1680x1050 15" display looks way better than my 30" monitor, so a jump to 4k at 30" would look amazing.

 

[thilanliyan]

I'm more interested in having an OLED monitor rather than a 4K monitor. Having said that, I'm on a 24" 1200p monitor which I've had for 8 years, so my next step will likely be a 2560x1440 monitor of at least 30". I'll worry about 4K in about 3 years lol.

 

[Elfear]

For the games with high-res textures, 4k looks amazing. I had a 4k monitor for 4-5 months and modded Skyrim looked absolutely gorgeous. So crisp and detailed. Other games didn't look much better than 1080p or 1600p though like Borderlands 2 and TF2.

If the game supports the textures and you've got the graphics horsepower to run it, a 4k monitor is a worthwhile upgrade IMO. That being said, the main reason I sold my monitor is because I didn't want to keep up with the hardware demands and I was playing a lot of older games that just didn't wow me at 4k.

 

[stockwiz]

The one benefit to 4K is at really high resolutions say at 70 inches or greater, you can see the individual pixels on 1080P televisions.. having it in 4K would eliminate that. If you do really have money to throw around, 4K on a large 30 inch computer monitor is viable because with a couple of 980 ti's, you can make 4K games like skyrim look stunning as some have mentioned here already. Also more screen real estate if you're a stock trader for charts and stuff.

Outside that nobody is going to notice much of a difference. I have nothing against 4K, I just don't see enough economic incentive to upgrade.. the gains are not there for me to respend on new hardware when my existing setup works fine.

 

[bigboxes]

I think it's great. It's definitely on my radar. I've been wanting to upgrade my monitor for quite some time. If I go 4K it will have to be at least a 32" IPS panel. That new Asus monitor coming out looks like what I would like to see in a monitor. The $2K price tag is another thing. Then there is the new KVM switch that I would have to buy, as well as a new video card. I'm not a big gamer so I can see being ok with a 980i or Fury X type of card. That's a significant amount of cash. I will eventually pull the trigger, but a lot of research and planning will go before that decision is made. You don't want to get the wrong equipment.

 

[Red Squirrel]

More pixel real estate = more productivity. 1 4k monitor is equivalent to 4x HD monitors. (I think?) Would be nice if they would become more available though. At over a grand, it's not exactly available.

For TV? It's probably not really THAT much better. HD seems to be the sweet spot. At least get everything switched to HD before trying to introduce another standard. Most channels still arn't HD yet these days, or lot end up being letterboxed or other crap. TV stations/producers need to just pick a standard and stick with it.

 

[OlyAR15]

I think it depends on what you are doing. For text/ graphic work, the higher resolution would be nice, but that would depend on how well the OS and programs handle scaling. Just look at how much nicer the retina screen on an iPad, for example, looks compared to the original. For games, I wouldnt go 4k.

1080p for computers is getting a bit too low res, especially for monitors above 24".

 

[HWTactics]

Have you seen a 4K monitor in person? The detail truly is better than 1080p or 1440p. With the general consumer just looking at videos and pictures and wanting the higher DPI/PPI, there's your answer.

One of the problems from a PC or tablet perspective is scaling text and UI to that size, which has started in Windows 8 and carries on to Windows 10.

Gamers get hit the hardest at 4K with the higher GPU requirements, but as usual, there's the "if they can afford to buy a 4K monitor, they can afford to build a killer PC to support it" reasoning that isn't all that far off.

 

[MongGrel]

Have you seen a 4K monitor in person? The detail truly is better than 1080p or 1440p. With the general consumer just looking at videos and pictures and wanting the higher DPI/PPI, there's your answer.

One of the problems from a PC or tablet perspective is scaling text and UI to that size, which has started in Windows 8 and carries on to Windows 10.

Gamers get hit the hardest at 4K with the higher GPU requirements, but as usual, there's the "if they can afford to buy a 4K monitor, they can afford to build a killer PC to support it" reasoning that isn't all that far off.

Knock yourself out.

 

[HWTactics]

Knock yourself out.

I don't quite fall into the killer PC gamer category ^_^ but I did pay $450 for my BenQ XL2720Z. Worth every penny.

 

[Eymar]

For the games with high-res textures, 4k looks amazing. I had a 4k monitor for 4-5 months and modded Skyrim looked absolutely gorgeous. So crisp and detailed. Other games didn't look much better than 1080p or 1600p though like Borderlands 2 and TF2.

If the game supports the textures and you've got the graphics horsepower to run it, a 4k monitor is a worthwhile upgrade IMO. That being said, the main reason I sold my monitor is because I didn't want to keep up with the hardware demands and I was playing a lot of older games that just didn't wow me at 4k.

This, I think most people who care about 4k have tried it and can't go back which is good enough reason to be obsessed. Combine that with affordable 4k monitors and TVs out now I can see why 4k discussions are picking up steam for those who have not tried it. I prefer high FPS so I'll visit 4k when 120z monitors\tvs are out.

 

[Grooveriding]

4K monitors are great because of the super high PPI and fidelity you get from that. Unfortunately we don't have GPUs really up to the task to run that as a gaming resolution without compromises. So it becomes a choice of great pixel density but turning game settings down or maxing game settings at a lower resolution.

For TV it's pointless; no content and upscaling 1080p to 4K is a PQ reduction rather than running native. I think we're a long way off from TV content at 4K. The delivery networks for cable probably don't have the bandwidth without using a lot of compression. For film we need to wait for a new blu ray standard and see if it gets adopted and BRs start releasing at that resolution.

 

[dave1029]

Almost everyone above is commenting on something they obviously have not seen. 4K scaling on 8.1 has never given me an issue, and almost all the games I've played have scaled well with 4K. 4K really does bring games to life... the detail you start to see is absolutely incredible. I *can't* go back to 1080p. It looks that awful comparatively. Now the *only* downside, is you need serious GPU horsepower to push this resolution. Like 2x Fury X, 980 Ti, Titan X quality cards. But, if you can afford that without giving an arm or a leg, you are a moron if you choose a 1080p display over a 4K one *if* you have plenty of money.

 

[BSim500]

I am very happy with 1080, and I know the day will come when our TV's, video cards, and monitors will be able to do everything we want at 4k, but I can't help but wonder if we are getting the cart before the horse here (and I know that much of that is just due to the fact that 4k TVs and monitors are out now.)

Any thoughts?

I know exactly what you mean. Obviously tech sites will be biased towards new technology out of proportion to existing users by their very nature, but it does get comical when some act like "1080p is over" as click-bait headlines / in benchmarking when you look at Steam stats (0.06% on 4K, 1.11% on 1440P, and 98.4% on 1920x1200 or below). Personally I've tested 4K on both TV & PC, and found it a marginal visible improvement but also well into the realms of depreciating gains, ie, for TV there's a slight sharpness increase if you have a very large set (which not everyone wants or has room for) or sit very close (which not everyone finds comfortable or has a living room layout conducive to), but it felt nothing like the 2 jumps from analogue VHS -> DVD -> Blu-Ray. Certainly not worth rebuying my DVD / Blu-Ray collection for (which is what it's all about on the content side). 720/1080 content on 1440p/4K via upscaling actually looked worse vs native res despite the "quality scaling" hype. 4K won't "kill off" anything the way DVD did with VHS due to a lot of older content already reaching its limit, ie, "soft" Blu-Ray's that look barely better than DVD's due to grainy 35mm film sources / transfer limitations, or TV shows shot in 15mm vs 35mm.

4K PC gaming was more noticeable as you sit much closer to the screen, but again 1080p to 4K felt nothing like the jump in overall experience from 800x600 4:3 on a 14" CRT to 1920x1080 16:9 24" IPS TFT to me. Certainly not worth massive frame rate drops or needing to buy 2x 980Ti's for. Likewise, above a certain sized monitor (24-27" or so), different people have variable levels of comfort / discomfort simply sitting up close to a large screen regardless of resolution. The recommended view distance for Home Theatre setups are also a lot closer than many feel comfortable or is the typical norm in many households (8-10ft). I can't find the link now but there was a study a while back on "priorities" of viewing criteria. No. 1 was contrast ratio. No. 2 was color accuracy (over-saturation, black & white vs color, etc). No. 3 was "temporal resolution" (ie, smooth motion of 15fps vs 30fps vs 60fps). "Spatial resolution" (pixel count) itself actually came down in 4th place.

Many people predicting the glories of 4K broadcasting (both over-the-air & streaming) also ignore the obvious issue that 1080p is already over-compressed on many services in many countries, to the extent of looking barely any better than upscaled high-bitrate 720p, and although test services will be introduced at a high rate, after 1-2 years of "mainstream", bitrates will inevitably be reduced, and we'll be back to square one again of the "rat race" of each resolution jump being partially nerfed by over-compression which washes out half the detail, so you end up with sharp edges but mushy macroblock interiors (Youtube and broadcast TV "HD" in a nutshell), which is then held up as "ugly" to promote the next jump to sell the next wave of premium TV's after the 3D flop...

Personally I find 1080p 24" good enough too for gaming / general usage. For larger 27-32" monitors for professional work, 1440P is still the "sweet spot" (fewer "scaling" issues in Windows, higher performance in games for same larger monitor size, etc). Can't work out the "hype" behind "not needing AA" (as some claim, whilst others disagree). There's nothing wrong with AA for most people, and stuff like SMAA is an order of magnitude more hardware friendly for most during actual gameplay (outside of side by side static screenshot comparisons often involving zoomed cut outs and red arrows to highlight relatively trivial differences for epeen).

My overall attitude is "wait and see". It may be "the next big thing", but then again, the "enthusiast targeted push marketing" vs "mainstream demand pull" is remarkably similar to what we've just seen with 3D TV's with people being "told" to buy them "or be stuck in the past", and "IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!" turning out to be "marginal visual improvement on larger sets, almost zero different on smaller ones" rather than any significant number of people sobbing "I just can't watch 1080 Blu-Rays anymore. They're so hideously ugly. [Weeps quietly...] 1080p now looks like 240-288p VHS with analogue noise bars and vertical hold errors to me, man..." :biggrin:

 

[Sabrewings]

I don't quite understand it either. I still use 1080p on my 55" TV for gaming and its great. Games look absolutely gorgeous with DSR. I could see me wanting 1440p, but I don't notice a deficiency with 1080p to have any interest in spending money on it. My next "big thing" for fidelity I'm eyeing is VR.

Like was mentioned, after seeing a game running on a 4k TV the difference wasn't enough to make me want to spend the money to change. It just isn't jaw dropping.

 

[BigDH01]

Having worked with retina and non-retina MBPs, I don't think I'd like to go back to 1080p. High DPI is where it's at for me, but I mostly use my laptops and desktops for work developing.

 

[CarpeDiem99]

Currently running 3 x 30" in eyefinity, 5200x2560 resolution. 1080P cannot compare to the amount of pixels I'm pushing.