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Going UHD....

azith28azith28 Registered User regular

So I was drooling a bit at this monitor over the weekend.
http://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-U28D590-Display-3840x2160-Monitor/dp/B00IY66YRU/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&srs=2530035011&ie=UTF8&qid=1406572855&sr=8-2-catcorr&keywords=uhd+28"+samsung

I'm trying to determine exactly what i need to make this worth a purchase. I'm currently running 1900x1200 resolution on a 24" Dell monitor with a 630 nvidia card that came with my current desktop. It handles games at that resolution quite well, but I know its not going to handle a UHD by itself. I've tried to do some research on what minimal card i would need to make buying the monitor worthwhile but its not really something that benchmark tests really go into unless they are for the super high end cards. I'm looking for something around the 250 max investment range if i was going to buy the monitor, so the question is, is that high enough or am i dreaming without waiting for the technology to drop in price.

Thanks

Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum

Posts

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2014
    I don't think there are any $250 cards that will run games acceptably well at native 4K at the moment, at least not without serious compromises to visual quality. The reason sites only run the high-end cards at 4K is because they're about the only ones that can handle it at settings that will still look good. I personally am not thrilled with how my GTX 770 performs at 2560x1440...I can't imagine how it would be at 4K.

    For $250, you'd be looking at the Radeon R9 280 or Geforce GTX 760, though if you're happy with how a GT 630 does at 19x12, maybe you could live with one of those at 4K.

    Other options include windowed mode, go dual and keep gaming on your current monitor, etc.

    a5ehren on
  • ZxerolZxerol for the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't do so i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered User regular
    If you can't drive something at 4K, you could possibly run at 1080p instead. The theory is that since it's just a 2x linear scale, it'll actually look fine on a 4K display, but of course that is dependent on how the display actually scales the picture.

    And, of course, you still have to ask yourself if it's worth getting a 4K display if you're going to run everything in 1080p anyway.

  • curly haired boycurly haired boy Your Friendly Neighborhood Torgue Dealer Registered User regular
    people are waiting for ati/nvidia's latest offerings (rumored to drop later this year) because the existing cards on the market require SLI/crossfire to run at 4K at desired framerates

    not to mention that as resolution scales up, so do VRAM requirements. for 4K you'll want 4GB VRAM minimum, 8GB preferred (notice how there's not a single card out there with 8GB of VRAM....)

    RxI0N.png
    Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
  • kaliyamakaliyama Left to find less-moderated fora Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    I have one and am underwhelmed. Rushed out the door industrial design, with no vesa mount and no height adjustment. You will need a card with displayport. I am using two r290x cards.

    The cards are good, but sli/crossfire support is never where it should be.

    I sometimes run games at 2500 just because UIs and other features don't scale well at 4k.

    IMO, you are better off waiting until you can find a powerful single card that can game at 4k, and wait for a more mature monitor.

    Even for productivity I wasn't super impressed because it's hard to configure multiple apps on a single hi res screen - I had a much better experience with two 2500 monitors.

    I'm OK with it because I have a $1200 annual home office budget that I bought it from, but I def. would wait if you're spending your own money.

    kaliyama on
    fwKS7.png?1
  • azith28azith28 Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    cool. I suppose i can wait. Only worry for me is my current monitor (2405FWP 24" Dell, which i absolutely love) is about to hit its 9th birthday and I while I have had no problems with it, I know one day its just not going to turn on and I'm going to have a major sad.

    azith28 on
    Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum
  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    On the bright side of things, in my experience monitors usually have some symptoms before they die. If your monitor seems to be doing fine, it'll probably keep on trucking for awhile longer.

  • DixonDixon Screwed...possibly doomed CanadaRegistered User regular
    I think on a 780gtx I ran Bioshock infinite at 4k. All settings max of course but I think I was able to achieve about a frame a minute. Some purdy lookin frames however.

    I've currently got two of the 280x's in crossfire and even on that I'm hesitant to try as I don't think it will really be worth it. I'd say stick with 2500

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    On the bright side of things, in my experience monitors usually have some symptoms before they die. If your monitor seems to be doing fine, it'll probably keep on trucking for awhile longer.

    Yeah, my Dell 2408 got a purple line on the screen for several months before it bit it.

  • kaliyamakaliyama Left to find less-moderated fora Registered User regular
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    kaliyama wrote: »
    I have one and am underwhelmed. Rushed out the door industrial design, with no vesa mount and no height adjustment. You will need a card with displayport. I am using two r290x cards.

    The cards are good, but sli/crossfire support is never where it should be.

    I sometimes run games at 2500 just because UIs and other features don't scale well at 4k.

    IMO, you are better off waiting until you can find a powerful single card that can game at 4k, and wait for a more mature monitor.

    Even for productivity I wasn't super impressed because it's hard to configure multiple apps on a single hi res screen - I had a much better experience with two 2500 monitors.

    I'm OK with it because I have a $1200 annual home office budget that I bought it from, but I def. would wait if you're spending your own money.

    There is a single card out that can game at 4k. It costs $3000, but it exists!

  • DixonDixon Screwed...possibly doomed CanadaRegistered User regular
    That is like double the price of the old titan I think when it came out?

    That is also slightly larger then the down payment I just put on a car

    ...do it

  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    I want 3.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    LD50 wrote: »
    I want 3.

    They only go to 2xSLI. Two GPUS on each card for a total of four maximum.

  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    Oh, well that's just a shame. Where else am I going to spend my inheritance?

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Send the extra one to me!

  • BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    As a proud original Titan owner, even I get GPU envy looking at that beast.

    Of course that single card cost almost 40% more than I spent on my entire rig last year (3930K w/ 180mm closed loop cooler, Rampage IV mobo, 32GB 1866MHz RAM, 1000W Corsair PSU, Maingear Shift chassis, 480GB M500 SSD, 2TB WD Black HDD, originally had a 4GB 770GTX got the Titan later)

    No matter where you go...there you are.
    ~ Buckaroo Banzai
  • DixonDixon Screwed...possibly doomed CanadaRegistered User regular
    @BlackDragon480‌ I'm saddened you have not put 64gb of ram in to that beast...RAM DRIVE

  • iTunesIsEviliTunesIsEvil Cornfield? Cornfield.Registered User regular
    Send the extra one to me!

    Or keep it as a spare for when one of the other two eventually catches fire!

  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    I know you guys are down on AMD and all for not being as on their shit with drivers but the R9 295x2 offers similar performance at half the price! You could literally build a crossfired 4 gpu AMD setup for the same price as just one titan Z. Although you'd need a gigantic case to hold the dual radiators.

    Jebus314 on
    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • LD50LD50 Registered User regular
    But can that beat TWO titans?

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I know you guys are down on AMD and all for not being as on their shit with drivers but the R9 295x2 offers similar performance at half the price! You could literally build a crossfired 4 gpu AMD setup for the same price as just one titan Z. Although you'd need a gigantic case to hold the dual radiators.

    Or I can get two 780ti and get the same performance for $1300 :P

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

  • BubbyBubby Registered User regular
    We're about 3 years away from 4k being a good idea, across every media front. Video games, movies, video production, etc. It's close, but jumping into it now is silly unless you have tons of cash to burn.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Bubby wrote: »
    We're about 3 years away from 4k being a good idea, across every media front. Video games, movies, video production, etc. It's close, but jumping into it now is silly unless you have tons of cash to burn.

    Hence, the $3000 video card. We should all SLI two of them!

  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    edited August 2014
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    Jebus314 on
    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • ZxerolZxerol for the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't do so i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered User regular
    edited August 2014
    VRAM isn't aggregate in crossfire/SLI setups. Each GPU only* has access to its own 4gb, and the marketing of these things combining the RAM into one big value is deceptive at best.


    *"Only" he says, when referring to 4gb of VRAM.

    Zxerol on
  • kaliyamakaliyama Left to find less-moderated fora Registered User regular
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    In an SLI setup, only one of the cards RAM is used, the bridge acts as a link between the tertiary GPUS and the primary card's RAMBUS.

    And 4 gigs of RAM is heaps for 1920x1080/1920x1200, enough even for up to 1600p. But 4K? That's stretching it pretty hard, especially for newer games.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Well hmm, that's kind of the wrong way to describe how SLI works, but it is simple and explaining it in detail would take pages of text.

  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    In an SLI setup, only one of the cards RAM is used, the bridge acts as a link between the tertiary GPUS and the primary card's RAMBUS.

    And 4 gigs of RAM is heaps for 1920x1080/1920x1200, enough even for up to 1600p. But 4K? That's stretching it pretty hard, especially for newer games.

    Why do you think 4 gigs per gpu is stretching it at 4k/UHD? Everything I've seen so far has indicated that a single 295x2 can run pretty much everything fine, and most reviews I've seen have shown sli'd 780ti's with 3GB per gpu being almost enough.

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    What framerates and quality settings are they pushing?

  • frenetic_ferretfrenetic_ferret wildest weasel East Coast is Best CoastRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    In an SLI setup, only one of the cards RAM is used, the bridge acts as a link between the tertiary GPUS and the primary card's RAMBUS.

    And 4 gigs of RAM is heaps for 1920x1080/1920x1200, enough even for up to 1600p. But 4K? That's stretching it pretty hard, especially for newer games.

    WRONG!

    In multi GPU the frame buffer is loaded into both cards. So both cards are using all their VRAM, but it doesn't double since the same information is loaded into both, it's not just loading into one card.

    Why do you think 4 gigs per gpu is stretching it at 4k/UHD? Everything I've seen so far has indicated that a single 295x2 can run pretty much everything fine, and most reviews I've seen have shown sli'd 780ti's with 3GB per gpu being almost enough.

    I've got two PC's on my LAN with dual 780ti's and one with dual Titans, I can eat more than 3gb of VRAM and even 4 fully cranked. Games like say Watch Dogs (among a few others) do better on the 8 core xeon, 64gb, dual Titan Black box by leaps and bounds. The kicker is that if you max out VRAM you go to system RAM, this isn't going to really tank "average FPS" but it will cause stuttering to hell and back when it has to do it. If you're doing 3/4gb the game will work fine till things get heavy and then it stutters like an old NES on Contra, that's a bug not a feature.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    In an SLI setup, only one of the cards RAM is used, the bridge acts as a link between the tertiary GPUS and the primary card's RAMBUS.

    And 4 gigs of RAM is heaps for 1920x1080/1920x1200, enough even for up to 1600p. But 4K? That's stretching it pretty hard, especially for newer games.

    WRONG!

    In multi GPU the frame buffer is loaded into both cards. So both cards are using all their VRAM, but it doesn't double since the same information is loaded into both, it's not just loading into one card.
    Well hmm, that's kind of the wrong way to describe how SLI works, but it is simple and explaining it in detail would take pages of text.

    Turns out it's not as hard to explain as I thought. I tend to go into far too much detail...

  • frenetic_ferretfrenetic_ferret wildest weasel East Coast is Best CoastRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Not enough VRAM for 4K 60+ fp/s.

    ? It has 8GB, with 4 GB per gpu. Seems legit. Plus that link I gave has them testing it at 4k/UHD and it gets 60+ fps in several titles, while beating the titan Z in almost all of the tests. Dual R9 295x2's can almost certainly run all titles at 4k/UHD no problem. You might get into a little bit of trouble for something like a heavily modded skyrim but that is sort of an edge case.

    In all honestly something like tri sli'd 780ti's or titan blacks is probably the best and cheapest way to get decent 4k/UHD game play.

    In an SLI setup, only one of the cards RAM is used, the bridge acts as a link between the tertiary GPUS and the primary card's RAMBUS.

    And 4 gigs of RAM is heaps for 1920x1080/1920x1200, enough even for up to 1600p. But 4K? That's stretching it pretty hard, especially for newer games.

    WRONG!

    In multi GPU the frame buffer is loaded into both cards. So both cards are using all their VRAM, but it doesn't double since the same information is loaded into both, it's not just loading into one card.
    Well hmm, that's kind of the wrong way to describe how SLI works, but it is simple and explaining it in detail would take pages of text.

    Turns out it's not as hard to explain as I thought. I tend to go into far too much detail...

    You aren't off there. It would take pages to fully describe what's going on in SLI. But it doesn't take much to clear up why SLI doesn't double up on VRAM like it doubles up on GPUs.

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