...and if games stop being hopeless console ports, you could be waiting longer.
It's also worth keeping in mind that current PC games are ports designed for hardware from 2006 but that's not going to be the case for much longer. It could end up pushing affordable 4K gaming further away than expected.
Last edited by Btcc22; October 24th, 2013 at 01:53 PM.
I stand corrected.Originally Posted by Btcc22
Interesting... A card that will be able to utilize PCi-e 3.0... AMD has gotten me interested
Yeah, I don't expect it any time soon, but 3 years is a bit much, imo. When a reasonably priced 4k-monitor comes out I'll pick one up, it shouldn't be too long (im' thinking a max of a year or so before we see one in the sub-$800 range. which means the 2560x1440 or whatnot will eventually be at the $300-250 range. What I look forward to more than that, is a monitor that's ~22" at 2560x1440, which is about the same ratio as the Retina displays on iPads. No point in buying a beast of a monitor if it's got worse pixel density, no matter how large it is.
It depends- 4k monitors have commercial viability outside of gaming as well, especially in the larger enthusiast HD-TV market.
That's not what the test data suggested. If you've only got one, sure, maybe. If you've got two, you're fine.
This is not quite an accurate conclusion to draw. Consoles in 2005/2006 were dead-even with all but the most bleeding-edge PCs as far as performance went. These new consoles are barely middle of the road when compared with PCs, and anything with an FX-8000 series or Core i5 CPU is already beating the crap out of it with regards to basic computing horsepower, since they are equipped with 8-core AMD equivalents to the Intel Atom processor. The GPU inside each is not even as good as an HD 7870, which is a third-tier GPU, and this is before touching on the reduced clock speeds.
What does this mean? This means that all of those optimization techniques that have made PC games run like a dream today (thank you consoles) will still be applied and will result in PCs using the best we had in January remaining competitive in the future. These consoles can't do 2160p. They will barely be doing 1080p when they finally start looking next-gen. Me? I'm going to be sitting here comfortable with my 1440p monitor, still playing games at their highest settings in 4 years. This is why you never buy mid-tier: it's a shit investment and harder on the wallet than just going all-in to begin with.
Last edited by Warsaw; October 24th, 2013 at 11:18 PM.
Except if AMD holds to its promise with Mantle we may see games being handled at higher resolutions than before.
BF4 will be supporting Mantle and the 7xxx range AMD cards have support by default.
If AMD is true to its words about 9X the drawcall performance over DX11 then one could guess that games using Mantle may be more easily handled at higher resolutions even if their fidelity is par with DX11.
AMD isn't in a position to really provide that figure. Drawing passes vary per engine, so the most they could do would provide a time in milliseconds to perform specific tasks.
The 9xDP figure came from DICE, so that's probably just scratching the surface against what it can do.
I shudder to think what some true optimization in rendering could do with Mantle (cue Crytek).
I figured somebody would point that out but I still believe it's a valid point. Like with any console generation, it'll likely be a while before developers start to get the most from the hardware.
But the potential isn't there, and that is really what counts. They can squeeze it, but the improvement to PC optimization is at about 90% (eyeballed) of whatever the optimization they get out of consoles, so it's basically lock-step. Anybody with an HD 7870 or better and an i5-class CPU will be just as well off playing games at the same quality settings as the new consoles, probably better.
All I was trying to say is that the new generation of consoles will most likely push 4K gaming further into the future than many expect, especially given that many haven't even considered the point. Whether it's only by a year or several years, the point stands.
It's still a good step-up in hardware over the last generation and running games that have been optimised specifically for the console hardware, even if you believe most optimisations have already been taken advantage of, at several times the resolution is still going to take a beefy rig.
You could also argue that with the change in architecture, we could see more games being able to 'scale' in order to take advantage of the extra power in PCs (or inversely, downscaling, to make them run on consoles), making it all the harder to run them at higher resolutions with everything cranked up.
On another point, at what stage do we decide that there's no need to go to aim for a higher resolution with PC monitors and gaming? At what point is it better for the extra power to be put towards making visuals better rather than simply running it at a higher resolution?
Anyway, wake me up when we can have 120hz 4K monitors.
Last edited by Btcc22; October 25th, 2013 at 10:34 PM.
Honestly, pure resolution is meaningless to me. 4K is a gimmick, and not a particularly useful one because it's just another 16:9 ratio. I'll be impressed when we get TVs and desktop monitors with pixel densities in excess of 300ppi and, as a bonus, are in some ration greater than 21:9 with a curvature. At that point, I think we'll be able to focus less on pushing more pixels and more on improving the details in the content being rendered.
Now I'm curious to see how G-SYNC impacts this 290X = Titan at half the price debacle.
Gonna be funny to see a 780/Titan running a game at 60 FPS look smoother than Crossfire 290X's running it at 100+...
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