4k monitor questions

[Marco Cinnirella]

My PC is dual purpose, used for gaming as well as photo editing with LR, PS, C1 etc.

My question - I currently have just an HD monitor, running at 1920 x 1080. if I upgraded to a 4k monitor, which I guess would be great for PS and working on images, would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

 

[mclewis]

would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

Yes they would run slower. You don't have to run your games at the resolution of the screen though so they can run at an acceptable speed.

 

[Marco Cinnirella]

would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

Yes they would run slower. You don't have to run your games at the resolution of the screen though so they can run at an acceptable speed.

So will a 1920 x 1080 res look ok on a 4K monitor?

 

[Austinian]

My PC is dual purpose, used for gaming as well as photo editing with LR, PS, C1 etc.

My question - I currently have just an HD monitor, running at 1920 x 1080. if I upgraded to a 4k monitor, which I guess would be great for PS and working on images, would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

Yes, indeed.

However, much will depend on the specific game and its game settings, such as frame rate, level of details, antialiasing, etc.

Search for your graphics card's benchmarks on the specific games you intend to play; that will give you an idea of what you can expect.

At 4K/UHD, the graphics card is usually the limiting factor, but in some cases CPU and memory might also be important.

 

[mclewis]

would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

Yes they would run slower. You don't have to run your games at the resolution of the screen though so they can run at an acceptable speed.

So will a 1920 x 1080 res look ok on a 4K monitor?

It will depend on the game and what settings you use for the game.

 

[Robert Zanatta]

It depends, as your game could change the display resolution while it is running in full screen mode.

So if you set the resolution to 1080p full screen mode you'll get the same performance that you would with a 1080p monitor.

 

[robertfel]

As others have said, you don't need to run the game at 4k. There will be a setting to up-res the game to full screen and it will look fine enough. If you want to play most games at 4k on ultra settings, you're looking at spending close to $3000 on GPUs.

 

[SoupOrPhoto]

My PC is dual purpose, used for gaming as well as photo editing with LR, PS, C1 etc.

My question - I currently have just an HD monitor, running at 1920 x 1080. if I upgraded to a 4k monitor, which I guess would be great for PS and working on images, would all my games run slower because I would have to set the resolution to 4k and I imagine that pushed my 980 GTX harder than running at 1920 x 1080 ?

I have a 4k 15" laptop and regret getting the 4k screen. Lots of software does not scale well and so I have tiny menus and controls. I also find myself zooming in when editing pictures to roughly the size they would be on a 1080 monitor.

I looked at getting a larger 4k monitor for my desktop computer. Given my workspace, I was not going to get a very large screen and I didn't see any difference sitting a typical distance from the screen. Given that you can get two decent HD monitors for the price of some of the decent 4k monitors, I skipped it. I find two monitors much more useful than one monitor with lots of little windows on it--but my eyes aren't so great anymore!

No doubt there are people who need and make use of 4k monitors, especially for 4k video production. But I choose to stick with HD which is much cheaper, faster, and uses much less energy (never get a 4k laptop unless you want to travel with a portable power station!).

 

[Mark K]

Depending how good your hardware is. I have just upgraded mine to 1 2k PC gaming monitor and a 4k photo editing monitor. My current GTX970 has no problem driving both monitors at all.

 

[robertfel]

Lots of software does not scale well and so I have tiny menus and controls.

I have that issue with Nikon's old software. It takes 5 seconds to switch the screen to 1080 resolution. Why don't you do that?

 

[SoupOrPhoto]

Lots of software does not scale well and so I have tiny menus and controls.

I have that issue with Nikon's old software. It takes 5 seconds to switch the screen to 1080 resolution. Why don't you do that?

I could, but usually have multiple applications running and most play nice with 4K. Still wish I would have just gotten the 1080, non-touch display instead.

 

[chas1723]

Depending on the game you are playing, your video card will have a hard time pushing 4k resolution with all the graphical options checked. I have a 980Ti overclocked on water cooling and it struggles at 4k on several of the games I play. Some I have had to bump down to 2k.

 

[upnorth47]

Don't game but use LR and it is slow when editing/cloning using 4K monitor. Only have a 1060 card and Adobe tech removed it from using in my LR preferences. Seems a iittle faster?

 

[Marco Cinnirella]

Depending on the game you are playing, your video card will have a hard time pushing 4k resolution with all the graphical options checked. I have a 980Ti overclocked on water cooling and it struggles at 4k on several of the games I play. Some I have had to bump down to 2k.

Thanks, seems like it is premature for me to move to 4k until I upgrade my graphic card and maybe processor as well (i7 3790 at 4Ghz).

 

[Austinian]

Depending on the game you are playing, your video card will have a hard time pushing 4k resolution with all the graphical options checked. I have a 980Ti overclocked on water cooling and it struggles at 4k on several of the games I play. Some I have had to bump down to 2k.

Thanks, seems like it is premature for me to move to 4k until I upgrade my graphic card and maybe processor as well (i7 3790 at 4Ghz).

The processor may be OK depending on the game. At 4K/UHD the graphics card is often the limiting factor.

I can only say for sure that a 4 GHz turbo i7-7800X is adequate for me to run Fallout 4 at 4K/UHD using a GTX 1080Ti at mostly Ultra settings. A few settings such as Godrays are turned down. YMMV, of course.

 

[markam04]

I went through this conundrum recently when buying a monitor for my son. He had a gaming laptop with a standard HD 1080 x 1920 screen with a 120 hz (FPS) refresh rate. Tried a 4K 60Hz monitor which had great definition, but was laggy for gaming and wasn’t acceptable after being used to a 120hz refresh screen. Tried some g-sync WQHD 120hz screens and had issues with all of them, (flickering, etc). Eventually tried a non g-sync WQHD screen and have had no problems. Just make sure you get the monitor from somewhere with a good return policy.

 

[Austinian]

I went through this conundrum recently when buying a monitor for my son. He had a gaming laptop with a standard HD 1080 x 1920 screen with a 120 hz (FPS) refresh rate. Tried a 4K 60Hz monitor which had great definition, but was laggy for gaming and wasn’t acceptable after being used to a 120hz refresh screen.

I haven't yet seen a 4K 120Hz monitor; there may be some, but I shudder to think of the graphics card requirements to run today's more demanding games at 4K 120Hz. Mine works pretty hard just to do Fallout 4 at 60Hz.

Tried some g-sync WQHD 120hz screens and had issues with all of them, (flickering, etc). Eventually tried a non g-sync WQHD screen and have had no problems. Just make sure you get the monitor from somewhere with a good return policy.

Good advice; there's a lot that can be wrong with a monitor, and a bad monitor can make PC use unpleasant.