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4K Monitors: Not Now, But Soon
An anonymous reader writes 4K monitor prices have fallen into the range where mainstream consumers are starting to consider them for work and for play. There are enough models that we can compare and contrast, and figure out which are the best of the ones available. But this report at The Wirecutter makes the case that absent a pressing need for 8.29 million pixels, you should just wait before buying one. They say, "The current version of the HDMI specification (1.4a) can only output a 4096×2160 resolution at a refresh rate of 24 Hz or 3840×2160 at 30 Hz—the latter, half that of what we're used to on TVs and monitors. Connect up a 4K monitor at 30 Hz via HDMI and you'll see choppier animations and transitions in your OS. You might also encounter some visible motion stuttering during normal use, and you'll be locked to a maximum of 30 frames per second for your games—it's playable, but not that smooth. ... Most people don't own a system that's good enough for gaming on a 4K display—at least, not at highest-quality settings. You'll be better off if you just plan to surf the Web in 4K: Nvidia cards starting in the 600 series and AMD Radeon HD 6000 and 7000-series GPUs can handle 4K, as can systems built with integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics or AMD Trinity APUs. ... There's a light on the horizon. OS support will strengthen, connection types will be able to handle 4K displays sans digital tricks, and prices will drop as more 4K displays hit the market. By then, there will even be more digital content to play on a 4K display (if gaming or multitasking isn't your thing), and 4K monitors will even start to pull in fancier display technology like Nvidia's G-Sync for even smoother digital shootouts."
Why pay $1000+ for a 4K monitor tomorrow when you can pay $500 for a TV today?
http://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-i...
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Some will call me a troll, but as a gamer I'm no longer interested in 4K video since I know Occulus Rift (and competing VR set) are coming.
Why spend a shitload of money of a new 4K screen and the video card necessary for an acceptable game experience when I'll be able to do VR with a fraction of the cost and with my existing hardware setup?
Obviously that's a gamer perspective - I'm sure plenty of people will find 4K for what they are doing.
Displayport doesn't have the same limitations that HDMI has at those resolutions. and is available now.
Nvidia 6xx and ATI 7xxx (not to mention intel hd4000) are not exactly brand new, and available now.
IF anything, this sounds like "HDMI is showing it's age, use displayport"
I'm typing this on a monitor with 3840x2160 resolution, at 60hz right now. I posted about it weeks ago:
Clicky
It's like $600 when on sale, and it works superb for coding and playing games. Skyrim/Saints Row 4 plays fine on a GTX 660 at 4k resolution, you just disable any AA (not needed), but enable vsync (tearing is more visible at 4k, so just use that). Perhaps that's just me - but things seem fine at 4k res on a medium-cost graphics card.
A few generations of video cards, and everything will be > 60-FPS smooth again anyway (partially thanks to consoles again), so I don't really need to wait for a dynamic frame smoothing algorithm implementation to enjoy having a giant screen for coding now.
I don't see any reason why you'd want to wait - it's as cheap as two decent monitors, and if you're slightly near-sighted like me, it's just really great. See my previous post for a review link and an image of all the PC Ultima games on screen at once.
Ryan Fenton
But all I really need is a LCD running 720p.
Truthfully all I really need is a super vga CRT.
In all honesty I could live with the warm glow of an ega screen.
Net net I miss a nice monochrome to get me through.
All things considered, teletype handles 99% of my day to day needs.
Actually, I feel like anything more than a single blinking indicator light is pretty decadent.
Frame rate is for gamers. Programmers need pixels.
What do game programmers need?
... clear giant work area for multiple windows.
All this.
There are way too many applications I use that fail to do anything useful for multi-monitor setups. There's a few useful features like being able to resize window panels to customize my view better, but I want to be able to tear panels off and put them on a different monitor. To me, that is so vastly more important than just increasing resolution.
I currently use two monitors. One in landscape and one in portrait and I use them exactly how you'd expect, documents on the portrait screen, video/games/etc on the landscape screen. If I use Photoshop, it's great because I can use the landscape screen for the image and the portrait screen can hold all of my panels ... nice and out of the way. Unfortunately, this is one of the few suites that supports these tear-off panels. I have yet to find an IDE/coding environment that makes me happy in this regard (while also making me happy in others). If I could stand to use Eclipse, I would ... I just absolutely loathe it.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Was that summary written by someone who's never used a 30Hz 4k display?
A 30Hz feed to an LCD panel is not like a 30Hz feed to a CRT. The CRT phosphors need to be refreshed frequently or the image fades. That's why 30Hz was all flickery and crappy back in the 90s. But 30Hz to an LCD isn't like that. The image stays solid until it's changed. A 30Hz display on an LCD is rock solid and works fine for a workstation. I know. I've seen me do it. Right now. There are no "transition" issues, whatever that is supposed to mean. Nothing weird happens when I switch between applications. Multitasking works fine. I'm playing multiple HD videos without a hitch. Same way the 30hz 1080 programming from cable and satellite plays just fine on LCDs. Gaming's not great but turn on vertical sync and it's not terrible. I'd rather be running at 60Hz but I got my 4k panel for $400. It'll hold me over until displays and video cards with HDMI 2 are common.
Really, it's fine for anything this side of gaming. Even Youtube and local media plays just fine. Very little out there has a framerate over that 30hz mark. The only real downside is that you can only fit one of them on your desk at a time.
Squash
If you watched something with high resolution and a clean picture, like Disney's "Frozen," on a high-quality display, like a Samsung 55", then you should be able to tell the difference b/w 720p and 1080p easily. For many things, it is hard to tell the difference at a reasonable distance. Monitors are different in that you're usually much closer to one. At 24", 720p monitors look like crap compared to 1080p. 4K, however, seems like overkill at anything below 30".
For gaming, I'm totally with you. For computer gamers, what's really popular are the 27" 2560x1440 monitors that can be overclocked, ideally to 120Hz and that do not have a scalar which reduces response time (which means it can only be run at 2560x1440 and has a single dual-dvi input). Many cheaper monitors will advertise sort of bogus or software-corrected response times that are not representative of real-world use, so it's important to read the reviews. For the more mainstream models, tftcentral is a very good resource. It's trickier if you import from Korea trying to get the magic 120Hz overclock.
The other nice thing about the Samsung UD590, apart from 4K @ 60Hz, is that it presents itself as a single 4K monitor, rather than two half-size monitors tiled next to each other. That can make a big difference to some uses, like running games at lower resolutions. The Asus PB287Q is another such single-tile 4K monitor.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I live in a rather small apartment and would really like a triple monitor setup. So I prefer smaller hardware. I'm also nearsighted and usually take my glasses off when computing for a long period, so smaller, closer displays are actually more relaxing. But to each his own.
As far as which is technically better, I haven't seen any solid comparisons. G-Sync does use proprietary hardware in the display, which means it has the potential to do a lot more. FreeSync works with existing panels provided they support V_BLANK, which isn't many yet, and none are exposing it to the GPU.
FreeSync has been incorporated into the DisplayPort standard (as "Adaptive-Sync", an option in DP1.2a and 1.3) but no displays have made it to market yet. G-Sync has the advantage of shipping, but unless it's either far superior in a technical manner, or Nvidia flat-out refuses to support Adaptive-Sync, I expect it to die sometime next year when the competition arrives.
I got one of the early Dell 4K 30 hz monitors and I can NOT recommend it. You think, "hey, 30hz isn't bad even for a game, it should be fine for web-surfing and Word editing." The problem is the mouse cursor motion at only 30 hz is downright annoying! YMMV but for me that alone ruins it. Now I run that monitor at 1080p (60hz) most of the time and only kick it into 4K to look at maps (which look great!)