[SOLVED] Can I use a 4k monitor with a GeForce 710 GT?

[Dimitri001]

I understand the 710 GT can only work at 25 Hz at 4k because it doesn't have HDMI 2.0, is that right?

If that is indeed so, is 25 Hz too low for watching movies? I don't game, so could I get by with 25 Hz for movies?

 

[hotaru.hino]

It has HDMI 1.4, which can do 4K60 with 4:2:0 subsampling. Since a lot of movies are subsampled, this won't be much of a problem.

 

[Myst_8362]

You can

 

[BFG-9000]

nVidia drivers for Kepler have for some time done an excellent job compressing 4k60 into the limited bandwidth of HDMI 1.4. It's not perfect--some things like Control Panel elements flicker noticeably so perhaps those are actually being rendered at 4k30, but most things seem fine at 4k60 with only some loss in color accuracy (4:2:0 has only 1/4 the color information of 4:4:4 YCbCr )

That said, Kepler can only hardware decode H.264 in 4k60 which is something even your 3GHz Athlon II could do in software. There's no chance that CPU could software decode H.265 4k though without dropping frames, so I'd suggest a GPU that could fully hardware accelerate that. The oldest one that can is the GTX950, which can also hardware accelerate VP9 as used in 4k Youtube videos. If you don't play >720p games a GT1030 would serve just as well.

Supposedly nVidia finally replaced the GT710 in January with the new GT1010 which is a cut-down GT1030 but I've never seen one for sale. Too bad as that would likely be near MSRP since it's no good for either gaming or mining.

 

[Dimitri001]

nVidia drivers for Kepler have for some time done an excellent job compressing 4k60 into the limited bandwidth of HDMI 1.4. It's not perfect--some things like Control Panel elements flicker noticeably so perhaps those are actually being rendered at 4k30, but most things seem fine at 4k60 with only some loss in color accuracy (4:2:0 has only 1/4 the color information of 4:4:4 YCbCr )

Just to see if I understood you correctly, you're saying I might be able to use 4k60 with no subsampling at all with the 710 GT?

 

[BFG-9000]

Nope, I'm saying the drivers automatically apply lossy Chroma Subsampling when needed to maintain a desktop resolution of 4k60. Not everything can be rendered this way so there are some noticeable artifacts, but movies should generally look fine.

Keep in mind most television video is 30fps progressive (60fps interlaced) but film movies are 24fps. How well 24fps is converted to 60fps depends on how good the 3:2 pulldown or Telecine converter in your player software is. If it's bad, then setting 4k24 would look better (or a closer multiple such as 75Hz). However if someone reencoded the movie to 30fps badly, there's no fixing it.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Just to see if I understood you correctly, you're saying I might be able to use 4k60 with no subsampling at all with the 710 GT?

The best the GT 710 can do is 4K 30FPS with no subsampling. However, even with subsampling at 4K60 if you were planning to watch videos at that frame rate, it won't really matter because a lot of videos are encoded with 4:2:0 anyway.