Buying 4k at the moment would be a poor decision.
Only a fool- nay- an IDIOT- would take the plunge on such a new and developing standard.
But that didn't stop me from running out and buying one.
Time for an honest review of this new tech.
I'll start with gaming performance, even though it's by far the most underwhelming and disappointing
feature.
Here you can see gaming benchmarks for my Geforce 670 in 4K when compared with HD.
There are plenty of places online that already offer benchmarks such as these so this video
will instead be about what 4K feels like to use, both in general and in particular games.
In fact, let's start with PICTURES, which sums up the problem I have with it nicely.
I looked at some high quality 4K wallpapers online, since I figured that this would be
a good way of demonstrating 4K's superiority.
Nope.
I couldn't see a difference.
Don't get me wrong, it looked nice and crisp, but it's as though my brain had suddenly forgotten
what HD looked like, despite having used it for the past decade.
It wasn't until I compared it side-by-side with my old HD monitor that the difference
was noticeable and even then it wasn't massive.
It's not going to change the picture.
It's still going to have the same features and blemishes- in fact, 4K probably makes
those more obvious.
It was only when I compared some tiny detail on the screen, like distant rocks or windows,
that I could appreciate the improvement, as though the draw distance was a bit further
before details were reduced to a hazy mess.
Which you'd expect, given more pixels.
What I didn't expect was how little I cared.
In fact, it made me appreciate HD a lot more.
With hindsight I feel that it's the sweet spot between clarity and performance.
It WAS a jump up from SD and the mess of resolutions we had had before it.
It united consoles, TVs and PCs alike and has served us faithfully for years.
With 4K you can stare at any spot in the screen and make out more individual detail, but in
practice you don't.
In the past I would zoom in to pictures to get a more detailed view of the interesting
bits and I ended up doing the same with 4K, even if every pixel was visible pre-zoom.
In other words, it's got to the stage where the SIZE of the thing you're looking at more
important than the amount of detail present on it, even if your eyesight isn't the problem.
We humans are capable of seeing more details than HD, it's just that I personally don't
CARE about what those improvements are.
And I love graphics and technology.
I can imagine that 4K will be handy in one-off instances, like those rare occasions where
you have to confirm kills from across a map.
But for things where it's more about viewing a small detail on a picture or for recreating
an impossible scene from CSI, it's the resolution of the media itself that matters rather than
the monitor on which it's viewed.
And now, as I promised, I'll try it out in games.
The problem I mentioned previously rings true here as well, but on top of that there are
other issues.
At the moment we're in an awkward situation where we can choose between running new games
in 4K at unplayable framerates, or older games that would run it well but probably don't
support it.
At these resolutions, it's the graphics card that's the limiting factor.
You can see on this chart how my Geforce 670 compares to your setup.
I know that my PC isn't particularly powerful anymore which is kind of what makes this test
exciting.
Most of us DON'T have multiple top-end GPUs so a PC like mine will probably help to show
what an average gaming PC is capable of.
Fortunately I can power the monitor at 60 Hz which should let me review these games
in the best possible light.
My older Radeon 6870 can only run at 30 hz which is horrible for gaming and my old potato
laptop can't even output at 4K!
Looks like it's up to you, main PC.
And another note- if you think that games are poorly supported at 4K, try recording
at that resolution!
Only the LATEST generation of Nvidia graphics cards support shadowplay recording footage
in 4K.
I don't have one of these and Fraps craps its pants and crashes the moment I try to
record it, which is just as well otherwise my hard-drive probably would.
Because of this, I apologise for the lowly HD recordings that I'll show here.
We really are exploring new territory.
Surprise surprise, the original Operation Flashpoint, released in 2001, happily supports
it and can still bring my PC to its knees when on highest settings.
I booted up the old Battlefield scenario which recommends a 1 Ghz processor.
Somehow I don't think they were expecting the trials of 4K!
I must have run down this hill a hundred times but never with such clarity.
The tops of distant trees could be identified and long-range headshots confirmed.
But other than that, the graphics are still from 2001 and don't really do 4K justice.
I didn't even bother recording the framerates with this game.
You know you can handle it... provided you have at least a 1 Ghz processor.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the one you all want to know about.
It ran well at 4K.
And by that I mean that everything looked as it should.
The HUD and options scaled beautifully and there were no more glitches than normal.
But there were problems, not specifically with 4K.
Frame-rate wise, I was getting about 100 FPS on average, which you'd think would be okay
for a 60 hz monitor, but it wasn't.
Moving the mouse felt jerky and I was at a serious disadvantage when compared with my
normal play.
Turning off antialiasing boosted the framerate to about 140 which improved things substantially,
but it wasn't until I dropped to HD and got a solid 250 FPS that it felt as responsive
as it could have done.
I've been used to a 120 Hz screen but I could quite happily play with this monitor at HD
resolutions.
The input lag was non existent with the Asus PB287q, which is something that most larger
monitors fall down on.
In conclusion, for competitive gaming, this monitor is probably the best 4K, 28" screen
that you can currently get.
And most importantly, the gun models look great.
It's easy to see that they've been designed with 4K in mind and they certainly display
more clarity than HD can provide.
Here are a few of my skins.
If you want me to demonstrate more then please give me them.
I also gave Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 a go.
It's disheartening to see Source games running at lower than 100 FPS but they were both fluid
enough to sustain 60 FPS but, like CSGO, weren't optimal, though it's not as important in games
such as these.
If you have a graphics card like mine or better, Source will run at 4K, but I'd still rather
have the FPS boost that HD provides, particularly in Left 4 Dead 2 where it really helps your
accuracy.
Arma 3 is a demanding game but is very scaleable.
I did a number of tests.
The first involved the intro sequence at HD and at 4K to see the performance drop.
Amazingly, during this section 4K only lowered it by between 15 and 20%!
I suspect that scripted sequences such as these are more CPU-limited.
In actual gameplay the impact was more noticeable.
Using their recommended settings during gameplay 4K only managed 40% of the frame-rate, identical
to CSGO's results.
All was not lost for 4K, however.
Starting with lowest details and slowly adding to them I was able to double my FPS while
still retaining decent graphical fidelity.
With details like these I could manage 60 FPS most of the time, dropping to 50 FPS in
cities.
Skyrim next.
I have no problem running it in HD or even in 3D mode but 4K brought it below the important
60 FPS mark.
With both 2X antialiasing and FXAA I got the same 40 FPS.
Disabling antialiasing raised it by a few important frames per second and made it a
lot more responsive, even if it wasn't 100% perfect.
I didn't bother to tamper with other graphics settings but I'm sure that if you're willing
to sacrifice quality a bit then you could get a solid 60 FPS with this game.
4K in this game looks gorgeous.
There's a lot of spiky and messy looking stuff in this game and 4K really gave clarity to
the edges.
I could appreciate distant views a lot more even though they're not exactly that detailed.
The HUD scaled beautifully apart from the LEVEL UP text which was always present on
the screen even when I didn't need to do it.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is annoying at the best of times for insisting that you NEED graphics
RAM to be able to run certain settings and sadly, the high resolution textures had to
go for me to even be able to LOAD this game at 4K.
And worse still, 4K was only 36% of the framerate that HD was!
This was when I had an idea.
The real benefits of 4K is the distant detail.
That and your gun model, but this isn't Counter Strike!
I ramped down the texture and close-up settings and set the draw distances to maximum and
sure enough, it looked great.
Sure, it might only have been console-quality up-close but I didn't really care since GTA5
isn't an ugly game even at those settings, plus it meant that I had beautiful distant
scenery all around me as well as perfectly playable FPS.
I had a good battle against the police on a skyscraper with excellent framerates at
4K and could really appreciate it on a sandbox game like this.
So I decided to boot up Cities Skylines, which I've never considered too taxing a game.
Despite this, I was surprised by how low my framerates were, even at HD settings.
This goes to show that for slow-paced management games such as this one you don't need 60 FPS.
Upping it to 4K made the average framerate drop by 40% from 44 to 26.
It was a bit more jerky but still playable and it really looks better in 4K thanks to
its emphasis on quantity over quality.
It's great to be able to see distant structures with more clarity since the game's focus is
on the grand scale of city building.
It seems as though you have to set your desktop to 4K for the game to be able to run at the
setting though.
Just a word of warning if it keeps reverting for you.
Another, even more impressive example of 4K was Rome 2 Total War.
The campaign map looked crisp and clear.
I noticed things like details on the trees and cities that I hadn't seen before and although
the frame-rate was halved, I didn't feel it negatively impacted on the experience at all.
The battles were BEAUTIFUL.
It still maintained at least 20 fps at all times at ultra settings and the armies went
from pixellated messes to tidy rows of people, kitted out with shiny looking gear.
I was almost sick after going back to HD.
Quantity over quality any day for me on this game.
I may even give the campaign another go, using low details but high resolutions.
This is what 4K does well.
And finally, the age old question: can it run Crysis 3?
The answer is: sort of.
At 4K I was getting about 30 frames a second on lowest details.
On high settings, a solid 20.
At very high... uh, I couldn't run Crysis.
This game has very consistent framerates.
But run the same high settings at HD resolutions and I was getting over 100, making the jump
to 4K worse with Crysis than with any other game that I tested.
I'll show you a load of 4K screenshots because it's still one of the prettiest games out
there, but I simply can't justify the impact it has on gameplay just to be able to run
it at 4K.
In conclusion, if you can comfortably run a game a high settings at HD then you should
be able to get away with passable 4K frame-rates provided you turn down some of the details,
unless the title in question is Crysis.
But is it worth it?
I'd say that for the majority of games, it isn't.
If you have to sacrifice the quality of the distant scenery in exchange for seeing their
flaws in higher detail it feels like a double whammy and makes even modern games look like
they're from the previous generation- or sometimes even further back.
4K works best for games that deliver QUANTITY rather than quality, such as RTSes or strategy
games.
For fast-paced games I can't justify or appreciate the extra clarity in expense of the frame-rate.
So yeah, genre matters more than the individual titles.
I'm somewhat spoiled since I also have a 120 Hz screen and I did notice the drop to 60
Hz that my 4k monitor supports.
But this isn't the main problem.
What's worse is that I'm not capable of running any game at a frame-rate high enough for 4K
to genuinely shine.
With more beautiful, graphically intensive games I can't manage 60 fps and with those
where I can, they're often more twitch-based games where 150 frames a second or more is
desirable.
But this is my fault more than the technology's.
If you're willing to invest enough into your PC you will be able to run today's games at
4K with everything on high... but do you want to?
I feel that today is a bad time to buy a new computer what with both the next generation
of CPUs and GPUs coming out in the next few months which will either increase performance
or lower prices of existing tech.
And even then, I don't think the hardware will be future-proof for long.
4K is the biggest leap in resolution that I've encountered in a long time and hardware
won't be ready for it overnight.
For now, even hardcore gamers may prefer the smaller graphical overhead that gaming at
HD has which will instead allow for them to ramp up the antialiasing, enable tessellation
and all of the other fancy effects that today's games have.
All things being equal, I would rather game at 4K than at HD but you have to make so many
sacrifices for the luxury that it's currently not worth it.
Another big issue is that if I run HD resolutions on my 4K screen, it looks as blurry as a TV
screen.
If I didn't know better I would say it looks like 1280x720!
This surprised me since it should be able to simply double up the pixels since 4K is
exactly twice the width and height of full HD.
But it doesn't work like that.
Because of this I will only be using my 4K monitor for 4K- and that excludes most games
at the moment.
Earlier I said that it was hard to appreciate the improvements that 4K delivers.
But it's worse than that.
When I look back at my old HD screen It looks blockier than it used to.
Making the jump is the worst of both worlds!
If you're going to make the leap to 4K, don't expect it to bring you happiness.
It will only make you an elitist.
A similar thing happened I when used a 120 Hz screen for the first time.
Let me quote my review: 'I was kind of disappointed in games when
I moved to my 120 Hz screen.
It's not instantly going to make you AWESOME if you sucked before and I could hardly notice
the difference until I went back to the old monitor again.'
...now, I can DEFINITELY feel the difference and wouldn't want to return to 60 Hz when
playing twitchy games and if given the choice, I'd favour higher FPS than higher resolutions.
HD is a sweet spot.
Appreciate it for its strengths while you can!
That being said, 4K will inevitably become the standard sometime in the future.
With this video I can only offer my first impressions with this new technology and I
conclude that for gaming, and probably movies and pictures as well, that it isn't worth
it.
Yes, it boosts your E-peen to insane levels and lets you take outrageous screenshots which
you can send to friends to remind them of how superior you are.
But inside you probably don't feel too amazing for having shelled out so much money for the
privilege.
In conclusion, a bit like 3D, 4K would be worth it if it could offer its benefits without
any compromises but at the moment it can't.
Wait until you can get at least a 120 Hz display and a computer capable of running games at
that framerate.
But until then, enjoy the frame-rate benefits that a lower resolution provides.
I'll probably use my 4K screen to replay older single player games where it's more about
being immersed in a place than hitting targets with sub-pixel accuracy, which is somewhat
ironic when you think about it.
And I WAS impressed with the support the games that I ran had for it.
I was expecting buggy menus and out-of-place text but they were all practically perfect,
which kind of made the comparison videos that I've shown between HD and 4K pointless since
I can only capture at HD resolutions any way.
But this is a good thing, right?
4k isn't bad.
It's just in its early stages and the rest of the world hasn't quite caught up yet.
But even now, it's excellent for some things which I'll be covering in another video.
Click HERE to see what these perks are and whether it may help you to justify getting
that 4K monitor that's been gnawing away at you every time you load up Amazon!