Upgrading from 1080p to 4K - is it worth it?

[Lector87]

With the PC remake of Dark Souls supporting native 4K resolution, I've begun casting covetous eyes on new displays. But is going from a 1080p to a 4K monitor actually a good idea? I'm under the impression that most games are still optimized for 1080p - so if I changed to a 4k display, a few games would look absolutely stunning, but *most* would be stretched/distorted/scaled oddly.

Do I actually understand how this works?

[halfeye]

With the PC remake of Dark Souls supporting native 4K resolution, I've begun casting covetous eyes on new displays. But is going from a 1080p to a 4K monitor actually a good idea? I'm under the impression that most games are still optimized for 1080p - so if I changed to a 4k display, a few games would look absolutely stunning, but *most* would be stretched/distorted/scaled oddly.

Do I actually understand how this works?

It depends what you mean by 4k. UHD (3840*2160) is often called 4k on advertising, and it's exactly four times the area of 1080p, so no stretching or anything like that. You will need a really beefy graphics card because there are four times as many pixels to be generated. On the other hand, if by 4k you mean what movie buffs call 4k, which is 4096 * 2160 pixels, then yes that would imply either stretching of black bits at the end for 1080p content, however this is quite rare as hardware at this stage and you shouldn't pick it up by accident while shopping for UHD so long as you watch out that your prospective hardware is also called UHD.

It really is worth it for text, the extra screen depth is hugely useful. A lot of quite old games play in UHD (Oblivion, Halflife 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Fallout New Vegas). Fallout 4 plays in 1080p, and is graphically fabulous in that, better graphically than New Vegas in UHD, Fallout 4 probably wants a better graphics card than my GTX 980 for the game to play in UHD with all the fancy bits.

[Lector87]

It depends what you mean by 4k. UHD (3840*2160) is often called 4k on advertising, and it's exactly four times the area of 1080p, so no stretching or anything like that. You will need a really beefy graphics card because there are four times as many pixels to be generated. On the other hand, if by 4k you mean what movie buffs call 4k, which is 4096 * 2160 pixels, then yes that would imply either stretching of black bits at the end for 1080p content, however this is quite rare as hardware at this stage and you shouldn't pick it up by accident while shopping for UHD so long as you watch out that your prospective hardware is also called UHD.

I'd definitely be getting a 3840x2160 display if I did make the leap.

Right now I've got a Geforce GTX 1060 - I'm pretty sure that can handle 3840x2160?

[halfeye]

I'd definitely be getting a 3840x2160 display if I did make the leap.

Right now I've got a Geforce GTX 1060 - I'm pretty sure that can handle 3840x2160?

http://www.hwcompare.com/31194/geforce-gtx-1060-vs-geforce-gtx-980/

I'm seeing the GTX 1060 as a little below a GTX 980, which isn't enough apparently that Fallout 4 would like to run on it at UHD. It might be enough for older games.

[Mando Knight]

I'd definitely be getting a 3840x2160 display if I did make the leap.

Right now I've got a Geforce GTX 1060 - I'm pretty sure that can handle 3840x2160?

The 6GB model can handle it better than the 3GB model, but for any given graphics card there's essentially a three-way tradeoff between the resolution, the framerate, and the rendering quality, and better graphics cards have more power to run all three. If you're used to running games on High at 60fps on a 1080p screen, you may find you'll have to turn down some of the graphics features (like a lower draw distance, or less antialiasing) in order to compensate for wanting the computer to push out 4x as many pixels per frame, or otherwise deal with a reduced (or worse, choppy) framerate.

[Drasius]

Right now I've got a Geforce GTX 1060 - I'm pretty sure that can handle 3840x2160?

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/01/30/best-graphics-cards-2018-for-1080p-1440p-and-4k-gaming/

TL;DR?

1050 Ti for 1080p
RX580/ GTX 1060 for 1440p
1080 for 4k

I'm sure you could find people who will argue up or down for what's "required" for it to be playable since everyone has their own preferences and limits though, but from what I understand (and one of the reasons I splurged on a 1080) was that the 1060 isn't quite enough to make 4k easy work and to me, if you can't crank all your settings to max on a brand new card, you've made a mistake.

[Lector87]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/01/30/best-graphics-cards-2018-for-1080p-1440p-and-4k-gaming/

TL;DR?

1050 Ti for 1080p
RX580/ GTX 1060 for 1440p
1080 for 4k

I'm sure you could find people who will argue up or down for what's "required" for it to be playable since everyone has their own preferences and limits though, but from what I understand (and one of the reasons I splurged on a 1080) was that the 1060 isn't quite enough to make 4k easy work and to me, if you can't crank all your settings to max on a brand new card, you've made a mistake.

Good rundown, thanks!

My takeaway at the moment (until/unless somebody else weighs in) is that if I had the Geforce 1080, then I could make the jump to 3840x2160 without sacrificing performance.

But given that I have the Geforce 1060, I'm going to get better FPS etc. out of the 1920x1080 display, if I want to run games on mid-high settings.

So if I'm saving for an upgrade, it makes more sense to go for the more powerful GPU before I go for the higher-res display.

[halfeye]

Good rundown, thanks!

My takeaway at the moment (until/unless somebody else weighs in) is that if I had the Geforce 1080, then I could make the jump to 3840x2160 without sacrificing performance.

But given that I have the Geforce 1060, I'm going to get better FPS etc. out of the 1920x1080 display, if I want to run games on mid-high settings.

So if I'm saving for an upgrade, it makes more sense to go for the more powerful GPU before I go for the higher-res display.

It's your choice.

One thing about upgrades is that you get almost nothing from a more powerful GPU until you get the higher res screen. That's assuming you already have a 1080p screen, if you do then you are set for the moment. If you don't have a 1080p screen, then it might make sense to get a 1440p screen as an intermediate, because it will be better and your GTX 1060 can apparently drive it okay. Even before the current crypto-currency surge, the price of UHD capable graphics cards was higher than those of monitors to suit those cards.

[Lector87]

It's your choice.

One thing about upgrades is that you get almost nothing from a more powerful GPU until you get the higher res screen. That's assuming you already have a 1080p screen, if you do then you are set for the moment. If you don't have a 1080p screen, then it might make sense to get a 1440p screen as an intermediate, because it will be better and your GTX 1060 can apparently drive it okay. Even before the current crypto-currency surge, the price of UHD capable graphics cards was higher than those of monitors to suit those cards.

I've currently got a 1080p, so yes, I think I'm set for now. Until I have over a grand to drop on a top-of-the-line GPU and a higher-res monitor, I think I'll be content with what I've got.

Thanks all, this has been helpful.

[halfeye]

Hm, I feel I've been a bit negative about UHD in this thread, and actually I really love it.

What UHD is most good for is browsing forums like this one. I have the resolution set to 130% because otherwise text can be too small for my old eyes to see, but even so when not at the top of the page I can have 25 topics visible at once, and at the top of the page counting the stickies I'm seeing 16 topics, which is good.

For dealing with photos or other graphics, it gives you a lot more space to work in, Wikipedia's Hubble galaxy photos are very nice on UHD.

Screenshots come out big, these are all somebody else's but they are nice, the main producer puts a lot of work into setting them up, he starts this page on 1080p? then upgrades to UHD.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=33161&page=162

It's also good for playing Civ V.

For FPSs UHD is okay, if you have enough graphics grunt, but as I said, Fallout 4 on 1080p is stunning, almost photographic. I'm not sure Fallout 4 is a good game overall (the first person Civ aspect doesn't suit me at all), but graphically it's wonderful.

Since it is an exact multiple of 1080p, there is almost no overhead and no smearing whatsoever from playing at 1080p on a UHD monitor.

[Lector87]

Probably guilty of thread necromancy with this post, but a friend of mine is offering to sell me this display for half the list price: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=27771

Seems like a good deal for the cost. I'd be moving from a TV to a monitor with no speakers, so I'll have to bust out my old Logitech speakers (oh man, how long have I had those?) but great sound quality was never going to come from built-in speakers anyway.

[halfeye]

Probably guilty of thread necromancy with this post, but a friend of mine is offering to sell me this display for half the list price: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=27771

Seems like a good deal for the cost.

That does sound good. Do you know or can you ask why it is surplus to their requirements?

[Lector87]

That does sound good. Do you know or can you ask why it is surplus to their requirements?

My friend's moving out-of-state and wanted one less thing to have to pack up. This particular monitor wasn't even one of his two! primary displays - just the one he was using with his laptop. He got a good deal on it on Black Friday, so he's only losing about fifty bucks overall.

[halfeye]

My friend's moving out-of-state and wanted one less thing to have to pack up. This particular monitor wasn't even one of his two! primary displays - just the one he was using with his laptop. He got a good deal on it on Black Friday, so he's only losing about fifty bucks overall.

That sounds reasonable.

I'm not hugely bothered about brands, but having none at all is unusual here.

If the unit isn't faulty, UHD is well worth having.

[halfeye]

I'm nosy, so what happened with this? Did you get the monitor and love it? Got it but thought it was meh? Didn't get it?

[Lector87]

I'm nosy, so what happened with this? Did you get the monitor and love it? Got it but thought it was meh? Didn't get it?

Got it and love it! Really looking forward to Dark Souls Remastered coming out in May, so I can enjoy it in 4k at 60fps. :smallcool: