Yes, I know you’re not looking to game at 8K. No, the 3080 doesn’t claim to be able
to handle it. That’s reserved for the 3090. But since I’ve got the 3080 that thinks
my screen is 8K, I thought it would be interesting to test gaming at this resolution which- one
day -far, far into the future, might become the norm.
8K. It’s the thing that nobody asked for, and that nobody has. It’s like trying to
power 4 4K screens! 9 1440p ones! Or 16 1080p screens. Ridiculous. My opinion before this
video was that the world isn’t ready for it, and that there’s no content nor hardware
that can really do justice to it. And this video hasn’t changed my mind. In fact, it’s
only elaborated on how gargantuan a task 8K gaming is. 8K in 2020 is a bit like 4K was,
8 years ago. And with 4K still considered a luxury resolution, I’m going to say with
a great degree of certainty that 8K gaming isn’t going to become the norm any time
soon. Nor should it. Because 4K with higher settings is almost always the better option.
Still, if any card’s got a chance at 8K, it’s the Geforce 3080. It’s the fastest
card in the world right now. But at such high resolutions, speed isn’t everything; RAM
also becomes important. With its 10 GB of fast Vram, the 3080 is hardly starved for
the stuff. But other cards have had more; the 1080 and 2080 TI’s had 11, and the Radeon
7 had 16. But the 3080’s faster than those cards by a considerable margin. So until the
3090 is released, with a stonking great 24 GB of the stuff, I’ll consider the 3080
as our best hope of 8K gaming. Let’s dance.
I will be focusing on more taxing titles, because we know that it can run the likes
of Counter-Strike or Solitaire at 8K without a problem already.
I started with Arma 3. Not exactly the newest or most demanding title, but probably the
one that benefits most from a high resolution, since its worlds are so vast and littered
with distant scenery and snipers 500 metres away pretending to be tufts of grass. I admit,
I’m not on an 8K monitor. Because of that, 8K to me looks like 4K but with really nice,
smooth anti-aliasing. And I really appreciated this on the edges of vehicles and stuff. They
looked immaculate, without a hint of aliasing in sight! It makes you realise the compromises
that anti-aliasing makes, and how it can’t compare with the real deal.
And with 8K giving each pixel multiple samples, stuff shimmered less as it moved. But on to
the performance: at MAXIMUM settings, at 8K, it ran at 35-45 FPS on the first campaign
mission. That didn’t feel as smooth as 60 would have done, but it’s enough for this
kind of game and if you want more, there are plenty of options for you to dial back until
you’re happy. I didn’t bother. I went through most of this mission without the framerate
being an issue, though spotted a few moments where it dipped below 30. Arma 3 is one title
that can be run at 8K in 2020- even if we still can’t fully max it out, smoothly.
Assassins Creed Odyssey up next. The game was totally unplayable at ultra high settings,
even with AA set to low. I had to lower the settings to just ‘high’ for it to become
playable, and even then it danced about the 30 FPS mark, with regular dips in performance,
presumably from when it needed to load in more data. It would be interesting to see
if this is a sign that 10 GB of VRAM isn’t enough at this resolution, but I only encountered
this frequent stuttering on this one particular title.
Here you can see the game didn’t quite achieve a 30 FPS average. But when I re-ran the same
test without shadowplay recording, it improved by about 10%ish, pushing it above the cut-off.
For the rest of this video, I’ll only discuss the results when Shadowplay was recording,
but be aware that you could probably get slightly better performance in them with Shadowplay
turned off. Can it run Crysis? No. Sorry. I couldn’t
even get the game to load! I’m really looking forward to the remaster of this title because
I swear the original gets harder to load every time I try. It used to be a simple case of
downloading a 64 bit folder and you were done. But now the game -which I’ve bought on Steam-
proudly tells me I’m not allowed to play the game because I’m a pirate, and to bypass
this I ironically had to become one by cracking the game to bypass the anti-piracy measures.
I then tried downloading dated frameworks, then to disable all of the windows security
features so that the game’s invasive DRM measures weren’t detected as a virus, only
to still get told that I’ve… played the game too many times, so I’m not allowed
to any more. Screw it. I’ll wait for the remaster instead.
I did play Crysis 3, though. At its Very High preset, with SMAA, I was getting 30 fpsish.
It wasn’t as smooth as I’d have liked from a shooter. It felt ‘filmic’, like
it was closer to 25, despite what was said on-screen. But what a beautiful game it is!
Even after all these years, it has an artistic quality to its visuals that makes me want
to take screenshot after screenshot. Here the game is, at 8K. I promised myself that
I wouldn’t spend time tweaking settings, but I felt this game deserved a chance. After
lowering the settings to ‘High’, the game responded well and it ran more at around 35-40
FPS. Which made it feel a lot more responsive, if still not AS responsive as it could have
been.
What about raytracing, at 8K? What a terrible idea. I didn’t even go there because I could
imagine it tanking my performance so much that I would be unable to revert it back again.
What I DID try, though, was raytracing at a lower resolution, then to use DLSS to reach
8K. I first tried Control at 4K, DLSS upscaled to 8K. It was cinematic. And surreal. But
miles from being anything that could remotely be considered playable. Even at 1440p, upscaled
to 8K, the game still chugged along at 10 fps or so. Which is weird cos at 1440p upscaled
to 4K it’s a beautiful 60 FPS! I imagine this must be down to 10 GB of Vram not being
enough for whatever it is it’s trying to do. It wasn’t until I dropped the resolution
to 720p that the framerate became playable, but even then we’re only talking 30 fps
or so. Control, with raytracing, is not a viable 8K experience on the 3080.
There is talk of a 9x DLSS mode, which would render the game at 1440p then upscale to 8K,
effectively making 9 pixels out of 1! This certainly sounds like a sensible approach
to the problem of 8K raytracing, so I’d like to try Control again once it supports
this mode. While 9x DLSS doesn’t exist yet, Death Stranding
apparently doesn’t need it. The game ran at a wonderful 50-60 FPS at 8K, using DLSS
Performance mode, which is effectively rendering at 4K and then upscaling. As you’d imagine,
it looked great. This game’s engine is so well designed. I even pushed it further, trying
DLSS Quality mode. This ran more at around 30 FPS. It was still playable enough for me
to engage in fights and to win them, but I’d personally rather play at Performance mode
because it does feel more fluid. And this is with just 4x DLSS scaling! I imagine the
upcoming 9x mode would run even better. Being able to play the most recent title I own,
at ‘8K’ smoothly, was a welcome surprise, and probably the high point of my 8K testing.
Even if it was technically just 4K with upscaling. I tell a lie. I do have a title newer than
Death Stranding- and that’s Teardown, which isn’t even out yet! So here I am, playing
on a game that isn’t yet released, running on a graphics card that isn’t out yet. At
8K, the game ran at about 20 frames a second. Bear in mind the game’s doing raytracing.
8K raytracing, in double figures, without any upscaling trickery! …It wasn’t exactly
playable. At 75% resolution scaling it reached the 30’s, but it was only when I dropped
to a 4K resolution that the game achieved 50-60 fps at all times, which felt totally
pleasant and smooth. This game looks pretty decent even on its LOW detail setting. So
I tried that at 8K and it ran in the high 20’s, low 30’s. While it wasn’t fun
at this sort of framerate, it could still be argued that it’s playable.
Wolfenstein Youngblood didn’t run at 8K. It warned me that I was out of VRAM the moment
the game loaded, so I think we’ll have to wait for the 9x DLSS option to be added before
even CONSIDERING this game at this sort of resolution. After trying again, I did manage
to get it working, on low settings, with DLSS and no ray tracing… at 1 FPS. Horrible.
Which is odd, since the game is one of the best performing titles I know, running smoothly
at native 4K, even with ray tracing! This is very possibly a VRAM limitation.
GTA 5 is an old game now. I’m honestly surprised it’s only been out on PC for 5 years cos
I swear it’s been around forever! Thanks to its last-gen console origins, the game’s
exceptionally well-optimised at lower settings, but can still challenge systems at its higher
presets. My first attempt was a disaster because I didn’t notice that it had slipped 4x MSAA
on, which apparently requires 14 GB of VRAM at 8K resolution. The benchmark lasted about
30 seconds, during which time I saw maybe 10 frames, and then it crashed. I’ll just
state the obvious: NEVER use MSAA in new titles; it tanks performance far more than it used
to in older games. And CERTAINLY never bother with it when at 8K- when every pixel is so
insignificant, I believe you still need some sort of anti-aliasing, but cheap post-processing
solutions like FXAA should be enough. With MSAA now disabled, but everything else still
on max settings, the benchmark didn’t crash. It ran in the low 20’s. Which isn’t a
nice framerate. It’s hardly smooth, but it’s a long way from being a slideshow,
either. There was the occasional stutter where I assume the VRAM couldn’t quite keep up
with the streaming. So it was far from being a perfect experience, but it worked and I
wouldn’t be surprised if, within a year or so, we could have high-end graphics cards
capable of maxing GTA 5 out at 8K, 30 fps. Just be sure to disable MSAA.
I tried again at only ‘high’ everything + extended view distance, and it yielded an
extremely playable 30-50 fps, running particularly well when in the city. The only place it dropped
below 30 was at this waterfall bit, and even then it was only for a brief second or so.
GTA 5 is definitely playable, at 8K, high settings.
Red Dead Redemption 2 uses the same engine as GTA 5, but heavily updated and improved.
As one of the few titles without raytracing to challenge the Geforce 3080 at 4K, I took
some precautions by dropping the game to medium quality before even attempting 8K. The game
still threw shade at me by immediately crashing and by asking that I checked my PC met the
game’s minimum requirements. I loaded it up again with the intention of
dropping the settings further, but accidentally loaded my latest save game with the game still
set to the medium preset, and to my surprise, the game didn’t crash! It ran between 20
and 25 FPS, but there was severe pop-in. Mountains and houses would ‘pop’ into high detail
a few seconds after becoming visible. Sometimes I was able to see through the sides of mountains,
and I’m sure the grass is supposed to look better than this. And I think the dog slid
across the floor at one point. In short, the Geforce 3080 could load this game at medium
settings at 8K, but I wouldn’t want to play like this. Far better instead to play at 4K,
high settings… even on an 8K monitor.
Shadow of War isn’t a title you see benchmarked much any more. It looked gorgeous when it
came out but looks decidedly dated and primitive by today’s standards, which shows how far
we’ve come in the past 3 years since it came out in 2017. Back then I remember playing
it at 4K on a Geforce 1080, which handled it similarly to how the 3080 does at 8K. This
is the sort of game that’s best run with Dynamic Resolution scaling. I predict on a
Geforce 3080 it would run somewhere between 4 and 6K most of the time.
But I didn’t use this feature for benchmarking the game. Because that’s cheating. I instead
tried 8K ultra settings, which used up way too much Vram, and the game lagged about in
the 20’s throughout the benchmark. Dropping the resolution to 69% made it more like 30-40,
which is probably playable. Dropping the game to just ‘Very High’
settings reduced the VRAM usage considerably… but at full 8K, the benchmark still ran below
30 FPS. In conclusion: I don’t think it’s the 10 GB of VRAM that’s limiting the Geforce
3080 in Shadow of War- there simply isn’t the GPU power to handle this game at 8K just
yet. Maybe if you play the game at low settings. But then 8K would only highlight how ugly
that is, so why bother. And last, I tried Kingdom Come Deliverance,
a game famous for murdering PCs. At 8K, high settings, it ran in the 20’s. It felt a
bit jerky, but was better than being a slide-show. Dropping the game to ‘Low’ settings yielded
quite a solid 30 FPS average. Mouse movements felt more responsive, but you still wouldn’t
want to play like this, would you.
In conclusion: 8K is vicious. Even at lower settings, and in older titles, the mere fact
it’s trying to handle this sort of resolution takes its toll on the poor Geforce 3080. You’re
probably able to get playable performance at 8K in most of these titles if you’re
willing to compromise on the detail settings enough. But at that point, why not just compromise
on the resolution a bit instead? I’ve seen people complaining that 10 GB
of VRAM isn’t enough for 4K, which I haven’t seen cos it seems to handle everything I chucked
at it fine at that tiny little resolution. Next you’ll probably ask ‘well, what about
tomorrow’s titles’ to which I will confess I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does.
I prefer the idea that a faster card and more Vram will put you in better stead for the
future, of which the 3080 is certainly more ready for than most cards - but nothing you
buy today can guarantee good performance in future titles. Ultimately, you should be buying
a card for what it can do NOW, and whether it fulfils your current requirements. And
on that note, I can say quite confidently that the 3080 CAN’T do 8K. Not acceptably
nor consistently. At that resolution, its 10 GB of VRAM most likely was NOT enough.
It made my results inconsistently slow, whereas with 20 GB they might have just been… consistently
slow. I suspect 8K pushes EVERY bit of this GPU
equally hard. It’s just because the VRAM utilisation is visible that it’s the bit
that’s easiest to blame. The truth is, 8K is the real problem here. I could have told
you that even before testing what I have in this video.
If you want high image quality then 4K is still the resolution to aim for. It is NOT
a low resolution. It will look great, even if you’re the sort of person to press your
nose up to a monitor and to study its pixels. And at least with 4K, you’ve got the option
if you like of having higher refresh rates and so on. With 8K I feel you sacrifice everything
else simply to say that you’ve got 8K. And then you’re left with hardly any decent
8K content to play on it any way. And this is where the 3090 comes in! Nvidia
are marketing this card as being ready for 8K. Looking at the titles it claims to be
able to run, they’re either less demanding games like Apex Legends and Rocket League.
Or they require DLSS to get above 60 FPS. So really, I’ve been approaching this challenge
from the wrong direction. I’ve been looking for demanding titles, and haven’t had 9x
DLSS to help me. I should have instead asked ‘can you get older games to run at 8K for
the best image quality possible’. Or maybe even ‘can you play CS:GO at 8K’, to which
the answer is ‘yes’, but also: ‘would you want to’. If 8K has any purpose right
now then it would be as the ‘premium’ version of the console experience. If you
were rich enough, you’d have your own cinema room with a huge 8K screen in. Perhaps you’d
occasionally invite a few mates around to play split-screen rocket-league, or to take
in turns to fall off mountains in Death Stranding or whatever. That might be what you’d use
8K for right now. But even that’s a niche use.
For 8K to be possible in modern single-player titles, you really need DLSS. And if you’re
using DLSS, you’re not technically at 8K any more. I’m absolutely fine with that,
but you do have to ask whether you’re wanting 8K for the resolution or simply to be a tough
benchmark for PCs to handle. I feel like the new 9x DLSS upscaling option
was borne out of necessity. To be able to say that a new game can be run at 8K, upscaling
WILL be required for the foreseeable future. It might ultimately be how you prefer to play,
even if you COULD run 8K natively. But the fact is: in order to run at 8K right now,
a key part of that is to NOT run at 8K. Which essentially hammers home the situation right
now. 8K is pointless. In 20 years’ time you can
point your finger at me and laugh at how short-sighted I was being, but the reality is, right now
there’s nothing 8K can really tempt me with that can’t be offered with 4K at higher
quality settings. One fundamental flaw in my argument is that I haven’t seen an 8K
screen. It might be that I stare at one and suddenly go ‘oh no, I was wrong about all
this, 8K is what is needed!!!’. But right now, staring at my 4K screen, the one thing
I DON’T think is ‘the resolution needs to be higher’. It’s instead that I’d
crave higher framerates. Or HDR support. Once we get all this sorted, and systems able to
handle it in all current games, THEN we can consider jumping to 8K.
And this is coming from me, somebody who advocated for 4K support for years! I can’t remember
exactly when it was now. Probably between, like, 2010 and 2015, when everybody had 1080p
monitors. It was like a universal standard that was commonly accepted on PCs and TVs
alike. We were running console games at far higher framerates and resolutions, and our
PCs still weren’t struggling. And then I looked around and Youtube supported 4K and
8K. There were phones coming out with higher resolution screens than our monitors and I
was thinking to myself ‘this is crazy, my monitor needs a resolution boost before a
tiny little phone does!’. 1080p was a great standard but it felt like it was the only
thing holding back graphical progress at the time. And that’s why I liked -and pushed
for 4K- it seemed like the answer to all the excess power that PCs had at the time.
The reason I don’t think 8K’s as important is because 4K still hasn’t become the commonly
used resolution. People are still on 1440p because that seems to be the most flexible
and cost-effective ‘good’ resolution you can get at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong. I love new technology and higher standards. I was one of the first
to adopt 4K because I saw the value in the greater quality it enabled. But right now,
8K comes with too many compromises. 4K is NOT a low resolution. You’re better off
getting a decent 4K monitor instead, and running games at lower resolutions but higher quality
settings. And the Geforce 3080’s capabilities reflect that.