4K Gaming with a MSI 780 Lightning?

Newbie765

Reputable
May 21, 2014
3
0
4,510
Im thinking of upgrading my gtx 660 with a Msi 780 Lightning.
I was wondering if i could do some 4k gaming with it...
And i could would i have to upgrade my cpu aswell (i5 4440)
 
Solution
If a 780 cant power a 4K display adequately, there isn't much else that could. Theirs the 780Ti (which isn't a massive improvement), and the R9 295x2 as your remaining options if you dont find the 780 powerful enough.

LostAlone

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2011
296
0
18,960
Put simply there is no single graphics card on the world that can do 4k gaming at the moment.

In the real world it's more complex than that (trade offs between detail and resolutions and post-processing) but unless you invest in 2 or more very high end cards you won't be able to stay at 'ultra' settings and just poke the resolutions up to 4k.

There's a great article over at extremetech that you should check out that deals with this subject. Have a look at it. http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/180402-five-things-to-know-about-4k-gaming-were-glitching-our-way-to-gaming-nirvana

In brief they found that 4k performance is presently pretty buggy and has all kinds of issues with it, including pretty badly implemented things in many games and applications. Things like text not scaling properly and so being impossible to read and the problems with only being able to use a new and somewhat buggy implementation of display port 1.2. Also each game has it's own graphics engine with it's own quirks and while some games deliver great performance (60fps@4K or greater) many do not. Cracking up the resolution to 4k means vastly more pixels than 1080p and 2k, and it really shows with massive performance drops at 4k.

The bottom line they gave was that you at least need a dual graphics set up (they were testing with a 295x2, and felt the needed twice that power) then you won't get good results. Even if you can afford that you need to be both willing and technically capable enough to handle the constant frustrations of trouble shooting each game and application.

In my opinion 4k gaming is not worth the investment. Even if you were already planning on running a multi-card set-up with high end card, you can still expect to see unpleasing performance dips in some games that are inherent in the vastly higher resolution. So even if you want to build a behemoth of a machine you will almost certainly be better served by getting a good (and much much cheaper than a 4k display) 2k display, cranking all the bells and whistles to ultra and enjoy 120+ fps of gaming joy, and never have to deal with a single glitchy crappy problem.