When I first started reading stories about Ultra HD gaming, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a screen—even if it was one of those $700 models with one HDMI input and a 30 Hz limit. Then there was Asus’ 60 Hz monitor with its $3500 price tag. I know better than to deride the cost of cutting-edge hardware, so if the PQ321Q worked as advertised, I knew there’d be enthusiasts willing to buy it. But as with any new piece of technology, growing pains had to be overcome.
And they’re still being battled. Nvidia’s drivers have clearly come a long way, particularly with regard to DisplayID and getting Surround mode enabled automatically for easier setup. Asus is making the necessary adjustments in its firmware as well. We did run into some issues getting the latest beta driver installed, incorrectly-set resolutions, and intermittent screen flashing. However, I suspect a lot of that was caused by the DVI splitter inserted for FCAT testing. Switching it out for a single DisplayPort cable solved two of those three problems.
This should give you an idea of resolution at 1920x1080
I’ll leave AMD out of this, except to say that the company is targeting the end of this year for its phase-two frame pacing driver, which should introduce Eyefinity, DirectX 9, and OpenGL support. Even if it’s relatively easy to get the PQ321Q configured on a Radeon card right now, spending $3500 on Asus’ monitor, only to drop a bunch of frames in a CrossFire-based configuration, doesn’t make sense. Stay tuned, though—we’re promised more from AMD very soon, and we're counting on this situation improving.
Perhaps the company’s position isn’t really troublesome (in a practical sense) after all, though. To get an idea of who’s buying 4K monitors right now, I had a conversation with Kelt Reeves over at Falcon Northwest, who let me know that nobody is—at least not from Falcon. Naturally, Kelt wants this technology to take off. You just saw that it clearly requires potent hardware, and Falcon is in the business of selling high-end systems. He agrees with me that two GeForce GTX 780s are pretty much the entry point for gaming at 3840x2160. But he’s been testing the PQ321Q for two months (using newer firmware than I have, even), and still isn’t comfortable enough with the outstanding bugs to offer his customers Ultra HD. Although 4K might become an option in the future, support as it exists today is still being treated as beta by Falcon Northwest. Early adopters have their warning.
And this is 3840x2160
In the future, we’ll see single-scalar 4K displays at 60 Hz, though it’s probable that tiled panels carry forward for some time. Monitor and graphics card companies consequently need to work out how to get this technology polished. You simply cannot have a monitor that reports itself capable of 20 different resolutions, but then crops them down rather than scaling.
These devices have only been around for a couple of months though. Give them time. The smart play is to hold off on Ultra HD for now. But if you have a friend with more money than patience who can’t help himself, definitely spend as much time as possible gaming at his place. Sitting in front of 3840x2160 will absolutely wreck 1920x1080 for you—even if you’re used to playing across three screens.
- What Does It Take To Game At 3840x2160?
- How Do We Benchmark Graphics At 4K Resolutions?
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Battlefield 3
- Results: BioShock Infinite
- Results: Crysis 3
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider
- 4K Gaming Is Here And Possible, But Are You Willing To Pay For It?
I know you want to leave AMD out of it since they still haven't completed the fixing of the runt/drop microstutter issue through promised driver updates (actually, I thought it was all supposed to be done with the July 31 update?), but people constantly argue that AMD cards would be superior because of this or that on 4K. Maybe after they release the new flagship?
At any rate, I won't buy a 4K 60Hz screen until the price drops under the $1K mark. I really wish they could make the higher res monitors with a faster refresh rate like 120Hz or 144Hz, but that doesn't seem to be the goal. There must be more money in higher res than in higher refresh. It makes sense, but when they drop the refresh down to 30Hz, it seems like too much of a compromise.
So 2GB of ram on the 770 was not enough for quite a few games... but just how much vRAM is enough? By chance did you peak at the usage on the other cards?
With next gen consoles having access to absolutely enormous amounts of memory on dedicated hardware for 1080p screens I am very curious to see how much memory is going to be needed for gaming PCs running these same games at 4K. I still think that 8GB of system memory will be adequate, but we are going to start to need 4+GB of vRAM just at the 1080p level soon enough, which is kinda ridiculous.
Anywho, great article! Can't wait for 4K gaming to go mainstream over the next 5 years!
This is something I am curious about as well. Anandtech did a neat review a few months ago and in it they compared the different AA settings and found that while there was a noticeable improvement at 2x, things quickly became unnecessary after that... but that is on a 31" screen. I don't know about others, but I am hoping to (eventually) replace my monitor with a 4K TV in the 42-50" range, and I wonder with the larger pixels if a higher AA would be needed or not for a screen that size compared to the smaller screens (though I sit quite a bit further from my screen than most people do, so maybe it would be a wash?).
With all of the crap math out on the internet, it would be very nice for someone at Tom's to do a real 4K review to shed some real testable facts on the matter. What can the human eye technically see? What are UI scaling options are needed? etc. 4K is a very important as it holds real promise to being a sort of end to resolution improvements for entertainment in the home. there is a chance for 6K to make an appearance down the road, but once you get up to 8K you start having physical dimension issues of getting the screen through the doors of a normal house on a TV, and on a computer monitor you are talking about a true IMAX experience which could be had much cheaper with a future headset. Anywho, maybe once a few 4K TVs and monitors get out on the market we can have a sort of round-up or buyer's guide to set things straight?
I think there is a gap in the market for a enthusiast PC website that caters to those who live in the real world with real life budgets.
Just curious Chris, with the CPU not oc'd, are you sure there are no CPU
bottlenecks going on anywhere? Wondering whether an oc'd 4960X (as
I'm sure most who'd buy that chip would do) could help in any of the test
scenarios, inparticular Crysis3, though I see you do highlight Skyrim as
being one test that's platform-bound.
Ian.
There are a few reasons:
1) If you can afford a $3,000 TV then you ought to be able to afford a decent GPU or two, making your argument seem kinda silly.
2) More resolution makes detail MUCH more important. If you have an image that is (pulls number from ass) 100x100 pixels then that image will always look it's best at that native 100x100 resolution. You can take that image and display it at a lower resolution (say 50x50 pixels) because you are displaying less information than is in the source material. But there is only so much that can be done to display that image at a higher resolution than the source (say 200x200 pixels). You can stretch things out and use AF on it, but at the end of the day you end up with a texture that looks flat, chunky, and out of place.
We are playing games today that are either console ports aimed at 720p, or native PC games aimed at 1080p. Nither of these are anywhere near 4K resolution, and so an 'ultra' setting for any game out today designed around these resolutions is really a 'basic' setting for what a 4K TV is really capable of. The true 'ultra' test is simply not possible until we get some much larger texture packs designed with 4K in mind.
3) While some performance can be gained back by dropping a bit of AA and AF, the vast bulk of the performance requirement is dictated by the raw amount of vRAM required, and the sheer 8MP image you are making 30-60 times a second (compared to the 2MP image of a 1080p display).
4) Next gen consoles are right around the corner which will be loaded with tons of RAM. This ridiculous amount of ram is available because next gen games are going to have much higher resolution textures, and a wider variety of them. On top of that we are going to see a lot more 'clutter' in games to make environments much more unique. All of these objects are going to have their own textures and physics to calculate, which means that yet again that today's 'ultra' settings are simply the 'basic' setting of what is coming in just 1 year.
So if you want to do 4K gaming then you need to afford the monitor, a duel head GPU setup, and be prepared to replace that duel head GPU setup in a year or two when next gen games simply become far too much for today's GPU capabilities. However, you do not need this raw horsepower to run a desktop, or to watch 4K video as even today's onboard GPUs can handle those tasks just fine at 4K. But if you want to be on the bleeding edge, you are simply going to have to bleed a bit, or else be like the rest of us and wait another year (or three) when the price drops and the GPUs catch up.
How AWESOME was it playing BF3 or Crisis3 with dual Titans at 4k?? Is it better than 3x1080s in surround? How much so? It's like you just had a morning in a Ferrari Enzo at Laguna Seca and just showed us charts of max G's and velocity time variance. I want to know what it's like to drive that rig!
And get some hi-res packs plus ENB for running Skyrim already!!
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2013/9/18/nvidia-launches-amd-has-issues-marketing-offensive-ahead-of-hawaii-launch.aspx
and the offending article;
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Eyefinity-vs-Surround-Single-and-Multi-GPU-Configurations/AMD-Ey
And the twitter note from Roy Taylor of AMD;
https://twitter.com/amd_roy
As far as AA goes, ya, I have a ZR30W and AA makes gaming more "comfortable" on the eyes. It's already 2560x1600, but with AA on, it's difference *can be seen.
cost aside, I'm not going to spend top dollar on something that essentially runs as synced split-screen, and requires some sort of SLI or Crossfire system to get playable rates. by the time GPU technology advances enough, we can probably get a better quality 4K OLED at the cost of that ASUS panel
Just curious Chris, with the CPU not oc'd, are you sure there are no CPU
bottlenecks going on anywhere? Wondering whether an oc'd 4960X (as
I'm sure most who'd buy that chip would do) could help in any of the test
scenarios, inparticular Crysis3, though I see you do highlight Skyrim as
being one test that's platform-bound.
Ian.
Hey Ian,
I was expecting this to be graphics-limited across the board. Skyrim didn't quite surprise me. I would have thought Grid 2 would have been the next-most-likely to demonstrate a processor bottleneck. Crysis 3, particularly at those higher settings, seems less likely to be platform-bound. Great idea for a follow-up, though (same for the suggestion that we evaluate quality without AA to see if it's perceived as necessary with 8.3 MP--thanks for that one).
cost aside, I'm not going to spend top dollar on something that essentially runs as synced split-screen, and requires some sort of SLI or Crossfire system to get playable rates. by the time GPU technology advances enough, we can probably get a better quality 4K OLED at the cost of that ASUS panel
You'd be fine with DisplayPort, too. The limitation isn't the interface, it's the hardware inside the monitor.