I'm not sure I understand the appeal of 4K?

Things change I've changed

Things change I've changed

Things change I've changed

Soldato
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I'm after a new monitor and obviously there is a lot of excitement over 4K atm and it seems to be the new 'buzz word' in the monitor kingdom atm but surely from a practical sense the resolution is to high?, and how does the OS work with 4K? plus I'm guessing you need sli at least to play current games?

Who is buying these displays and why?
 
I tried a 4K monitor and I can definitely see the appeal. Games that support the resolution look absolutely fantastic on it, I thought 1080p was fine, but after using 4K it made it very hard to go back.

But as you noted, there are definitely caveats. Scaling at the moment isn't fantastic. Windows can be hard to use etc. (although improved in 8.1). GPU requirements is another. I have an R9 295x2 and a 290x and Crysis 3 still barely reaches 60fps. But that IS at maxed settings, knock down a few settings and it's totally feasible.

I returned the display though - the input lag was too much. I don't think the monitors are quite worth it yet, not because the resolution isn't fantastic, but because there is better to come in the future, and will be far better supported by newer hardware.
 
Windows 8.1 at 2ft back without any scaling is a little small but I play games only on my PC so i don't really care. Games look sublime at 4k and every little detail in the distance looks great, even fine tree branches. 1080p just can't display this kind of fine detail at all and looks frankly awful compared to 4k even on things in the foreground. You also don't need to worry about AA options at all. Textures on games look way better on 4k as well, almost photographic on some games. 1440p with some non blurry AA is a decent compromise though.
I will say though that you need a close viewing distance to appreciate 4k over 1440p at 27/28" depending also on eyesite as well.
If you have ever seen the same FPS or action game on the IPAD 2 and then again on the IPAD 3,4 or air with the game supporting proper retina resolution it is kind of the same thing, or at least the closest comparison. As soon as I saw that kind of difference to eye candy on games with resolution increase being the only difference i knew i had to go for it.
Yes you do need x2 SLI at least unless you want to game at circa 30fps at max settings on new games. I would also only buy 4k with g-sync if you have nvidia as this works great at between 40-60 fps.
 
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lowrider007 said:
Who is buying these displays and why?
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These are probably the main reasons:

Creative people: People who want to produce stuff that uses 4k or Hi-DPI artwork. Could be everything from web designers to video producers to programmers.

Gamers: People who want the extra super smooth hi-res graphics and got the $$$ to run it

General people: People who want same desktop space but Hi-DPI graphics, much like the Retina MBP does, or people with smaller displays (22"-24") who run with no scaling to get the extra screen estate
 
Ayahuasca said:
60hz and having to use multi GPU puts me off using it.
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I agree with the multi gpu part. I dislike the fact that all the sub £500 4k monitors all have high input lag and TN, when we start seeing 32" with better input times I will be interested, think it will be a year before we see a GPU that can Ultra 4k with just one card so will be waiting for that.
 
I really don't find it that useful for day to day use - would be/am far happier on a 1920x1080 or 2560x panel depending on use.

There are some areas that they work really well though for instance some productivity, development or media creation software where your working from a palette or gallery/album, etc. its really great being able to spread the source material over the 4K panel then drag and drop it onto a 2nd lower res panel that your actually doing the work on.

There are 1-2 games where the experience at 4K is immense i.e. something like elite dangerous - especially if your not using mouse input but for general gaming I don't find it that great personally - especially anything where your doing fast and precise mouse input.
 
People like me bought GTX 970 and 980 really don't need to buy 4K monitors when it has 4K Dynamic Super Resolution feature. I tried it on my 32 inch 1080p Sharp LED HDTV and really very surprised higher resolutions all the way up to 3840×2160 is supported in every games.

I tried 9 games at 4K maxed out with Star Trek, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Old Republic, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Alien: Isolation, Far Cry 3, Watch Dogs, Tomb Raider all ran great at 50-60fps with no jaggies. But with Ryse: Son of Rome it ran at 20fps and when I turned around everything gone blurred so it probably driver issue. Tried 1920x1080 but holy crap it moved too fast 70fps then tried 2560x1440 so it ran much better 45-50fps.

I thought DSR only worked in games but boy I was wrong when I found another big surprise disovered in Windows Screen Resolution has 3840x2160 so I clicked it to apply it and then 1920x1080 desktop turned into 3840x2160 desktop. Wow the fonts and icons was very tiny but I can read it from 2 feets away, I opened Display DPI scaling to changed default Larger 150% to Extra Extra Large 250% and it was much better. Opened IE11 and Chrome, wow it was very tiny pages, fixed it by turned up scale to 250% to fit screen perfect. Been enjoyed watched 2160p youtube clips on 4K desktop. :)

Really look forward to watch first 4K Blu-ray movie in 2015.:D
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
People like me bought GTX 970 and 980 really don't need to buy 4K monitors when it has 4K Dynamic Super Resolution feature. I tried it on my 32 inch 1080p Sharp LED HDTV and really very surprised higher resolutions all the way up to 3840×2160 is supported in every games.

I tried 9 games at 4K maxed out with Star Trek, Star Trek Online, Star Wars Old Republic, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Alien: Isolation, Far Cry 3, Watch Dogs, Tomb Raider all ran great at 50-60fps with no jaggies. But with Ryse: Son of Rome it ran at 20fps and when I turned around everything gone blurred so it probably driver issue. Tried 1920x1080 but holy crap it moved too fast 70fps then tried 2560x1440 so it ran much better 45-50fps.

I thought DSR only worked in games but boy I was wrong when I found another big surprise disovered in Windows Screen Resolution has 3840x2160 so I clicked it to apply it and then 1920x1080 desktop turned into 3840x2160 desktop. Wow the fonts and icons was very tiny but I can read it from 2 feets away, I opened Display DPI scaling to changed default Larger 150% to Extra Extra Large 250% and it was much better. Opened IE11 and Chrome, wow it was very tiny pages, fixed it by turned up scale to 250% to fit screen perfect. Been enjoyed watched 2160p youtube clips on 4K desktop. :)

Really look forward to watch first 4K Blu-ray movie in 2015.:D
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That option is just supersampling in an easy to use way. It makes image quality and jaggies look real nice for 1080p users but is nothing like using an actual 4k monitor at all in games. The screen still only has 1080p as a vertical resolution. If you can power 2160p via downsampling you may as well be using an actual 4k monitor IMO.
 
VEGACORTEZ said:
That option is just supersampling in an easy to use way. It makes image quality and jaggies look real nice for 1080p users but is nothing like using an actual 4k monitor at all in games. The screen still only has 1080p as a vertical resolution. If you can power 2160p via downsampling you may as well be using an actual 4k monitor IMO.
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Agreed. You can't overcome a lack of real physical pixels no matter what you get the GPU to render. I've seen both actual UHD and 'fake UHD' on monitors of similar size and in similar scenarios and the difference is profound. This DSR thing is a nice upgrade from normal 1920 x 1080, but it is not comparable to actual '4K'.
 
I've gone 4K and I do think that in many cases it is a bit too big at the minute.
It takes a lot of grunt to run games at that res and I find the desktop with no scaling to be too small.
I'm getting used to the 60Hz thing, but it's not ideal.

For me I think a 2560x1440p monitor would actually be a better option. Wishing I'd paid the extra and got the ROG Swift now.

But that's just me!
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
I thought DSR only worked in games but boy I was wrong when I found another big surprise disovered in Windows Screen Resolution has 3840x2160 so I clicked it to apply it and then 1920x1080 desktop turned into 3840x2160 desktop. Wow the fonts and icons was very tiny but I can read it from 2 feets away, I opened Display DPI scaling to changed default Larger 150% to Extra Extra Large 250% and it was much better. Opened IE11 and Chrome, wow it was very tiny pages, fixed it by turned up scale to 250% to fit screen perfect. Been enjoyed watched 2160p youtube clips on 4K desktop. :)

Really look forward to watch first 4K Blu-ray movie in 2015.:D
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What you are actually doing here is making everything 4 times smaller and then using scaling to make it 2.5 times bigger :D
 
ahh man you guys killed the fun out of Dynamic Super Resolution feature was hoping it was going to be cool and a nice stop gap till 4K lol
 
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