When will 4k become standard/affordable?

[DarkDynasty]

4k is still in it's infancy, but prices are going down rapidly...In fact, you can get one right now for less than £400 if you looked hard enough...The prices are going to reach a point where it will become affordable and become a standard of PC gaming...

1. When will 4k monitor become affordable and standardised?

2. How much will it cost? >£200? Maybe?

3. What hardware is required to play games at 4k @ 60fps? R9 290x's can just about run games in 4k, surely, in the future we will be able to do a lot more...?

4. Is it a noticeable difference?

5. The new consoles, how will they utilise 4k?
Upscale?
I'm not that familiar with upscaling but the Xbox and PS4 are struggling to do even 720p/900p...How will a 4k res be maintained?

 

[skit75]

4k resolutions are not desirable in all genre of games. RPG/MMO/Turn-Based games = great. FPS games, maybe not so much as they might enjoy more frames at a lower resolution. It will be years still, if 4k displays become standard. Moving to 4k is also a physical display size upgrade. The 27" display market is getting bigger but still dwarfed by the 24" market.

 

[Onus]

From a purely technical standpoint, I'd think 3-5 years would probably do it. Unfortunately, the economically (and otherwise) destructive policies being wrought by the world's appointed and/or elected parasites and their bureaucratic minions make any realistic predictions impossible.

 

[ngbeslhang]

Typically 4K monitors seems to not to be suitable for those who play seriously on a multiplayer FPS game, but for some beautiful casual FPS games like BioShock Infinite or Thief it seems to be nice.

 

[DarkDynasty]

4k resolutions are not desirable in all genre of games. RPG/MMO/Turn-Based games = great. FPS games, maybe not so much as they might enjoy more frames at a lower resolution. It will be years still, if 4k displays become standard. Moving to 4k is also a physical display size upgrade. The 27" display market is getting bigger but still dwarfed by the 24" market.

I would think in due time AMD and Nvidia will come out with monster graphic cards capable of outputting 4k...Even right now, AMD is really pushing 4k...I heard GDDR6 is coming soon - maybe 2015, but I'm not sure how that affects gaming performance.

I don't think frames will be a problem after Nvidia comes out with Gsync and..AMD's dubbed "FreeSync."

 

[cst1992]

GDDR6 is probably 3D memory, where they'll stack chips to enable huge memory bandwidth(1TB/s).
NVIDIA is already saying their Titan Z cards are capable of 4K, but they're not launched yet, and they're not exactly cheap at $3000.

I'm guessing the new Maxwell 800 series cards will have much more processing power than the 700 series due to their energy efficiency(which will allow more transistors in a given TDP target of 250W for a high-end card).

Gsync has limitations - you can't expect 10FPS to appear smooth on a 60FPS display(OK, I exaggerate).

 

[DarkDynasty]

The R9 295x2 is $1500, a lot cheaper than the the GTX Titan Z...It does run hot, but you're not going to buy $1500 card and get a $5 cooler...

Anyway, those are years ahead of their time..If the R9 290x can get over 30fps in games in very high details at 4k, surely in a year and a half's time, we will get over 60fps in games?

30-40 FPS is what the R9 290x can achieve...With Gsync it could reach 60fps, and obviously we are always getting new GPU's so it won't stay 30fps for long...

 

[cst1992]

Gsync doesn't work like that. It doesn't make the 40FPS a given GPU is putting out 60 - but the other way round, it reduces the monitor's refresh rate to 40, eliminating tearing, and increasing smoothness.
I'd say a problem with the 295x2 is that it's a 500W card, and must be watercooled. It doesn't support pure aircooling.
Where did you see the 290x getting 30FPS at high details at 4K? It gets only 25FPS at 2560x1600 in Crysis 3. 4K has twice the number of pixels.

 

[skit75]

4k resolutions are not desirable in all genre of games. RPG/MMO/Turn-Based games = great. FPS games, maybe not so much as they might enjoy more frames at a lower resolution. It will be years still, if 4k displays become standard. Moving to 4k is also a physical display size upgrade. The 27" display market is getting bigger but still dwarfed by the 24" market.

I would think in due time AMD and Nvidia will come out with monster graphic cards capable of outputting 4k...Even right now, AMD is really pushing 4k...I heard GDDR6 is coming soon - maybe 2015, but I'm not sure how that affects gaming performance.

I don't think frames will be a problem after Nvidia comes out with Gsync and..AMD's dubbed "FreeSync."

The rendering hardware will be there by the time enthusiasts are grabbing 4K displays off of shelves in stores. As ngbeslhang mentioned, the issue is more about resolution/accuracy. Having twitch like reflexes is a bit easier in 1920x1080 resolutions than it would be in 4K. Maybe it is more of learning mouse scroll scaling, I am not sure.

Shooting at someone 50M away in BF4 @ 1920x1080 will be easier than shooting the same person standing at 50M in 4K resolutions(the 4K displayed guy will appear almost twice as far away compared to 1920x1080 guy). This is a disadvantage in a twitch shooter game, even though it would look better, lower resolution gamers would have an aiming advantage, on some level.

 

[DarkDynasty]

Makes sense.

 

[cst1992]

I don't understand what you're saying. The textures will be scaled automatically to match the higher resolution, so characters will appear the same size, not smaller.

 

[Kekoh]

Yeah that doesn't make any sense at all. They wouldn't appear further away.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

5. The new consoles, how will they utilise 4k?
Upscale?
I'm not that familiar with upscaling but the Xbox and PS4 are struggling to do even 720p/900p...How will a 4k res be maintained?

Well, you hit the nail on the head here. Microsoft and Sony have said that they would like for the XB1/PS4 to have a 10 year lifespan. The problem is that they're using mid-level PC hardware at best, and they struggle to hit 1080p. Some people say, based on past console experiences, that games at the end of a console generation are much better visual quality than the beginning because it takes time to learn how to tweak the hardware. The problem is that this time, it's a different situation because they're using x86-based and AMD hardware. The developers already know the ins and outs of this hardware, and the visual gap isn't going to be as great as past consoles. My point is that we have 10 years worth of "next gen" consoles that aren't even going to come close to hitting 4k. Sure, you can upscale, but that's not going to come close to native 4k.

Another thing to think about is the real reason 720/1080p became mainstream so quickly. It's because the US government made a huge push to switch broadcast TV over to HD digital to free up the old SD bandwidth for emergency communication purposes. People were basically forced into either buying an HD TV or a converter, and stores stopped selling the old tube TVs as a result. This made it a prime opportunity for Blu ray tech to become popular quickly. So now that the bandwidth is freed up and everyone has transitioned over to HD, there is absolutely no reason for a government push to have a speedy transition to 4k. Shows won't broadcast in 4k and cable/satellite providers won't switch over because it would cost too much to change all of their equipment. They're just now starting to recover from being forced into switching everything over to HD.

So with all of this in mind, I think it will be a very long time before 4k becomes mainstream.

 

[cst1992]

Nice! India followed suit, I guess, but some crappy providers still exist, who have "technical difficuties" with 1080p hardware.

Also, I'd say without proper compression technology, 4k will not become mainstream. When 4K first launched, they had to stream it at 24 Gbps, compared to around 12Mbps of 1080p. So unless they find out a way to compress the signal, it'll become impossible to stream UHD movies online.

 

[skit75]

So, if you are going to scale away resolution advantages in textures, why go to a bigger resolution in the first place? If I am wrong, I just want to understand.

Every time I've gone to a higher resolution, everything has gotten "smaller". Understandably, I am seeing more. How does that not hold true going forward?

 

[WoodenSaucer]

So, if you are going to scale away resolution advantages in textures, why go to a bigger resolution in the first place? If I am wrong, I just want to understand.

Every time I've gone to a higher resolution, everything has gotten "smaller". Understandably, I am seeing more. How does that not hold true going forward?

That depends on whether you are talking about upscaling or running a game in native 4k. If you're just having the TV/monitor upscale for you, it's not going to change the size. And if a game is made to have hires textures and run in 4k, it's not going to change the size too much, either. But if a game isn't developed to run that high, and you push it to run at that resolution, I can see how it would make it appear smaller. And upping the resolution in Windows does seem to make everything look smaller until you adjust the settings.

 

[cst1992]

In newer games (such as LA Noire), if you go from say 800x600 to 1280x960, everything just appears clearer, not smaller. That means the textures are scaled up to adjust to the higher resolution, keeping size same.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

In newer games (such as LA Noire), if you go from say 800x600 to 1280x960, everything just appears clearer, not smaller. That means the textures are scaled up to adjust to the higher resolution, keeping size same.

That's kind of what I was thinking. It's been quite a few years since changing the resolution changed the size of things.