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I'm in the market for a fancy new monitor to go with my 1060 6GB, but I really don't see how any rig out there can realistically drive them.

From benchmarks around TR and elsewhere, it looks like if you don't have a GTX1080 of some form, 4k is not something you can expect to perform well on modern games. Similarly if you run at 2560x1440 instead, the premium 144Hz monitors are unlikely to be getting much use, with games like deus ex and the witcher only just holding 60fps. So, uh, what's the point?

I realise I don't have the absolute fastest GPU out there but even so it's still comfortably in the top-end of modern hardware, and yet it seems like running much more than a bog standard 1080p monitor is unlikely to perform well.

Have I missed something? What is everyone else doing with their nice monitors? Since lower framerates seem the norm, should I just get a G-sync monitor and call it a day? Is everyone just running 4k monitors at 1080p and hoping they scale well?

Cheers

I'm pushing a 2560x1440 monitor at 144 Hz. If the frame rates drop off, that's what VESA adaptive sync is for.

Turn settings down and breathe easy. Honestly, the obsession with "MAX ULTRA KILLAH SETTINGS" is somewhat pointless and a great way to spend a lot of money.

My GTX 1080 based gaming rig runs @ 2560x1440 and that is the max resolution I'd go with for that GPU.

My VR system uses a Vega 64 and it cannot maintain max FPS in iRacing for many tracks unless I lower the quality settings.

The next gen GPUs have to be mighty indeed especially when it comes to next gen VR hardware.

Waco wrote:

Turn settings down and breathe easy. Honestly, the obsession with "MAX ULTRA KILLAH SETTINGS" is somewhat pointless and a great way to spend a lot of money.

Yeah that's fair. I think it seems harder than it used to be to work out what you can turn down without massive visual impact. Back in the day I'd just put everything on high and then turn down the Shadows setting until I got a high enough framerate, but the number of options available now makes it hard to tell what to disable.

The other thing is that it looks like HDR monitors are the Next Big Thing that I'd regret not having on a new piece of hardware, and of course anything new enough to have HDR is definitely going to be 4k, and before you know it you're back in the endless cycle of insufficient hardware... You're right, this is such an easy way to spend too much money!

Waco wrote:

Turn settings down and breathe easy. Honestly, the obsession with "MAX ULTRA KILLAH SETTINGS" is somewhat pointless and a great way to spend a lot of money.

The ability to maintain high settings is not a pointless endeavour. Sacrificing high settings to gain 4K is.

End User wrote:

The ability to maintain high settings is not a pointless endeavour. Sacrificing high settings to gain 4K is.

I didn't say it was pointless, I said the drive to run everything maxed out is.

"High" is relative. If you can run a game at medium settings and it still looks good to you, who cares if there's 19 more notches on the slider?

They're all arbitrary settings anyway. I'd much rather play 4K with a few details turned down than at 1080p with EVERUHTHANG MAXXXED.

Who said anything about 1080p?

Waco wrote:

End User wrote:

The ability to maintain high settings is not a pointless endeavour. Sacrificing high settings to gain 4K is.

I didn't say it was pointless, I said the drive to run everything maxed out is.

"High" is relative. If you can run a game at medium settings and it still looks good to you, who cares if there's 19 more notches on the slider?

They're all arbitrary settings anyway. I'd much rather play 4K with a few details turned down than at 1080p with EVERUHTHANG MAXXXED.

Low resolution with correct shadows, good antialiasing, nice edges and the like... even at 720p... is my preferred way of gaming. High-resolution helps, but if I notice bad shadows it really messes with my immersion. I guess low-resolution is kind of a controlled detonation. I'm used to low resolution so I've grown to accept it.

With that being said, "Uber" preset on like, the Witcher is a bit much for me and I don't really see a big difference. Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion are big, so those need to be turned up for me.

I agree with the general sentiment though. No need to run on max settings. But in my case, it means running on lower resolutions

Playing games with a 5-year lag.



Aside from a handful that really have to be played online which have old engines anyway (Diablo III, SC2 and some fighting games), I'm mostly in it for the single player. Playing games with a 5-year lag not only makes them easier on the hardware, the games themselves are likely to be on sale and any issues at launch would have been patched out.

My GTX970 (somewhere in the same ballpark as a GTX1060) is driving a 4K TV just fine.

As Waco says, you don't have to run everything at "MAX ULTRA KILLAH SETTINGS".

Case in point, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus on my HTPC runs at 15-20fps if I crank absolutely everything up to the maximum at 4K. It also runs at the "low" preset pegged at 60fps. Careful tweaking of graphics options and I can get a fluid 4K60 experience at something approaching the "high" preset.

Seriously though, that's a demanding AAA title on a 4-year old graphics card. A lot the games I play aren't AAA titles, or they're older (I'm playing through Alien Isolation and GTA5 when I get the chance) The most fun I've had on that PC is either playing local co-op with friends in Overcooked, BroForce, or maybe Awesomenauts - and a potato would probably run those at 4K60 or 1440p/144Hz!

Also, as someone with an HDR Freesync monitor, I'm reasonably confident that HDR is a feature you can definitely skip this generation. It's in its infancy in terms of hardware and game support; Few games support HDR, fewer support it in a worthwhile way, and a maybe my TV and monitor are rubbish, but their zone-based dimming is not convincing - The monitor has 8 zones, and the TV has an estimated 120 zones, and I can tell you now that it wouldn't matter if they had 1000 zones; zone-based dimming is just a lame crutch for dynamic contrast which was and always will be rubbish. Static contrast is all that matters, which is why VA and OLED give you the most cinema-like experience and don't rely on HDR marketing bull to do so.

I have an RX480, which performs the same as your GTX1060. My monitor is the Samsung C27HG70 (1440p, 48-144Hz, HDR600). Here is my story.

Keep in mind that most reviewers only benchmark the most demanding games and quite often their game selection is pretty up-to-date. There are plenty of games that aren't nearly as demanding as the most commonly benchmarked games, and not the obvious lightweight ones like League of Legends, Dota2, Rocket League, Overwatch, Fortnite, etc. When I played Doom at 1440p and high instead of ultra settings, I had my RX480 downclocked to stock 1235MHz and was still getting 125fps (in Vulkan mode). I played Rise of the Tomb Raider a little while back, and by simply dialing a few of the settings back from max/high and 16x AA, I was able to run a respectable 70fps and enjoyed the game very much while not even "missing" any visuals.

For 1440p, a GTX1070 or Vega56 are better choices, yes, but VRR is really great for the more demanding titles. Otherwise, like I mentioned previously, there are plenty of games that an RX480/RX580/GTX1060 6GB can push well over 100fps at 1440p if you don't turn all the game settings to Ultra. Most of the time Ultra adds very little noticeable improvement over High settings, but at the cost of significantly reduced framerates. I never use ultra settings. If I'm >120fps on high settings at 1440p, I dial down my GPU clocks to save power/noise/heat.

On the HDR issue, I agree that it's not even worth enabling at this point, but I like knowing that down the road I have the ability once HDR is better/more widely implemented. I tend to keep my monitors for a good long while, so I splurged on this monitor ($450) because it was a size/resolution/feature set I don't see the need to exceed any time soon (OLED is going to make it hard, but that looks to be a long ways out for PC usage). For me, anything >27" is too big for my viewing distance and 1440p @ 27" gives a nice normal 108ppi, so I know I can stay in the mid-high tier of GPUs in the future, which keeps upgrade costs in check.

4k is fine I guess, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, especially for PC monitor (not HTPC) use;
1) Scaling - for typical desktop usage, you're gonna need it to be able to read text comfortably and scaling still isn't 100% solved yet.
2) Hardware requirement - 4k = lots of pixels = $$$ GPU. And as with the above discussion, even a GTX1080Ti struggles on more demanding games at 4k.
3) IIRC, 4k @ 120Hz is the absolute max still.

1440p, 144 Hz, and RX 460 here (maybe 40% of a 1060 6G on a very good day). I don't intentionally do a 5-year lag or anything, but most of the AAA blockbusters just aren't that compelling to me, and I'm fine with turning down settings (to 1440p/low if necessary). That graphics setup is almost never good for 144 Hz, but in most of what I'm playing it's good enough that CPU performance becomes at least as big a deal (R7 1700). There are four or five games I'm waiting until a GPU upgrade to play, but that leaves plenty of options in the meantime. No need to boot up DX:MD until I've beat DX:HR, for instance.

That said, recent AAA games handle a setup this CPU-heavy and GPU-light like absolute garbage, even when using 720p to push 15 ms 99% frametimes. Said 15 ms 99% frametimes can easily be barely playable due to latency and the shenanigans used to bring latency back down, though I'm fine with twice that in equivalently-twitchy UE3 games with OneFrameThreadLag=False.

End User wrote:

The ability to maintain high settings is not a pointless endeavour. Sacrificing high settings to gain 4K is.

dragontamer5788 wrote:

Low resolution with correct shadows, good antialiasing, nice edges and the like... even at 720p... is my preferred way of gaming. High-resolution helps, but if I notice bad shadows it really messes with my immersion. I guess low-resolution is kind of a controlled detonation. I'm used to low resolution so I've grown to accept it.

With that being said, "Uber" preset on like, the Witcher is a bit much for me and I don't really see a big difference. Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion are big, so those need to be turned up for me.

Personal preferences and all that. Sub-native resolution is the one I have a really tough time accepting, AA is no substitute, and pretty much everything else (including tearing) can be potato-grade if latency needs the help.

pizza65 wrote:

Waco wrote:

Turn settings down and breathe easy. Honestly, the obsession with "MAX ULTRA KILLAH SETTINGS" is somewhat pointless and a great way to spend a lot of money.

Yeah that's fair. I think it seems harder than it used to be to work out what you can turn down without massive visual impact. Back in the day I'd just put everything on high and then turn down the Shadows setting until I got a high enough framerate, but the number of options available now makes it hard to tell what to disable.

It does take some trial and error to find settings that are visually appealing but don't hurt performance too much. Everyone is different. For example, I don't care much about shadows. I just don't notice the difference unless I look for it actively. I also don't notice the difference between high and ultra textures or even, sometimes, medium and high textures. On the other hand, I'm profoundly bothered by a short view distance and objects popping in/out of view. I also hate aliasing.

In the end, with a RX480 and a 1440p144Hz monitor I am almost always happy with 60-80 solid fps and I haven't yet found a game that I can't balance for visual appeal/performance. I don't think I could manage the same at 4k.

Anyway, a 1060 should work just fine for almost everything in 1440p in current games. Could be limited in the near future or with HDR/VR and similar options.

jihadjoe wrote:

Playing games with a 5-year lag.



Aside from a handful that really have to be played online which have old engines anyway (Diablo III, SC2 and some fighting games), I'm mostly in it for the single player. Playing games with a 5-year lag not only makes them easier on the hardware, the games themselves are likely to be on sale and any issues at launch would have been patched out.

I only buy games in GOTY editions and at massive discounts. I still have 700+ games to play in GOG and 450 games in Steam. Obviously, these are not very stressful for my current computer

Might get Battlefield V though. That might hurt my GPU a little...

JustAnEngineer wrote:

I'm pushing a 2560x1440 monitor at 144 Hz. If the frame rates drop off, that's what VESA adaptive sync is for.

This.

Also, max game settings doesn't mean you can't get creative. For example, AA is expensive and there really isn't a need for higher levels on a 1440p 27" monitor. I use 2xAA as I notice very little difference on 4x and almost no difference between 4x and 8x. You might not even need AA on at all on smaller (~30") 4K monitor. I usually turn down shadows a bit too as most games show very little difference between "Ultra" and "High" shadows, for example.

pizza65 wrote:

I realise I don't have the absolute fastest GPU out there but even so it's still comfortably in the top-end of modern hardware, and yet it seems like running much more than a bog standard 1080p monitor is unlikely to perform well.

Ahh, no. And that's your problem. Your GTX1060 is most decidedly pedestrian mainstream. Not top-end. You want to play in 4K you gonna want spend more for something high-end.

Pancake wrote:

pizza65 wrote:

I realise I don't have the absolute fastest GPU out there but even so it's still comfortably in the top-end of modern hardware, and yet it seems like running much more than a bog standard 1080p monitor is unlikely to perform well.

Ahh, no. And that's your problem. Your GTX1060 is most decidedly pedestrian mainstream. Not top-end. You want to play in 4K you gonna want spend more for something high-end.

No, not really. Gaming at 4K doesn't require a top end modern GPU, it just requires a few sacrifices on older cards.

My HTPC has a GTX 780 and a 4K screen. For coach gaming it's perfect with a little tweaking.

I can't say I'd encourage 4k for a GTX1060 unless you plan on playing older/less demanding games. Not to say that you can't run some less demanding games at 4k with a GTX1060, but your game selection will be limited beyond what lowering settings is going to give you.

ptsant wrote:

I'm profoundly bothered by a short view distance and objects popping in/out of view. I also hate aliasing.

Amen to that. I'll run every setting on low before I reduce draw distance from its max setting. I rarely run AA either, it's always the first thing to go if I need to improve fps with all settings at high (not ultra). If I've got some headroom, I might run 2x or 4x AA. Anything more than that and I'm downclocking GPU frequencies to save power/heat/noise.

Today's new 4K@144Hz monitors are an idiot trap: you'll have to spend gobs of money, wait years, or both to actually use that resolution and refresh rate. Most games look and play much, much better at 100+Hz, so why not align your purchase with today's GPU tech? For fast GPUs (e.g. GTX 1070+) that's 2560x1440@144Hz, while 1920x1080@144Hz is great on a 1060 or 580. You'll spend less on a sane 2K@144Hz monitor today and 4K@144Hz monitor four year from now than you would buying a 4K monitor now with similar features. In a few years when every TV is 4K@120Hz w/HDR people who spent $2,500 on today's bleeding edge monitors (with fans and teething issues) will feel very foolish.

I have a 1080Ti driving a 3440x1440 monitor at 100Hz, which is a very comfortable setup. I've used the same GPU to drive my 49" 4K TV at 60Hz, and I honestly can't see the improved resolution - but I can see the framerate stutters and slow refresh rate in Witcher 3!

One thing that is often overlooked on high-refresh monitors is their improvement to vsync gaming; If you don't have a VRR-capable combination of monitor and GPU, then even a 144Hz monitor is a huge upgrade for a GPU that can't handle high-refresh gaming at that resolution.

Lets say your 1060 runs a game you want at 1440p at about 70fps, but the performance ranges from 40-100fps depending on the moment.

On a 1440p 60Hz monitor, every time your GPU can't meet 60fps, you screen repeats a frame, meaning a jarring drop to 30fps. It's at its very worst at 45fps because the animation jerks in and out of phase with the framerate, meaning that you end up with a perceived 15fps animation judder that completely ruins the 45fps experience; Even a constant 30fps experience would be much better than 45fps with animation smoothness issues.

On a 1440p 144Hz monitor, your GPU is never going to render at 144fps, but it'll spend almost half its time above 72fps which feels pretty smooth, and when it can't handle that it'll drop to 48fps which is still reasonable. The next quantisation means that if 48fps can't be met, 36fps are displayed too. Not only are 48fps and 36fps higher numbers than the 30fps on a 60Hz monitor, you also don't get animation phasing anywhere near as obviously on a high-refresh monitor because the ratio of frametimes at different frame rates is much closer

• 30fps dropping from 60Hz is a 1:2 ratio, meaning that the animation rate is (worst-case) 1/2 of the 30fps for the 15fps 'animation judder' I described.
• 36fps dropping from 48fps is a 3:4 ratio, meaning that the animation rate is (worst-case) 3/4 of the 36fps for a much smoother 27fps animation rate.

27fps doesn't sound great, but that's the worst case scenario and it's an 80% improvement in perceived smoothness, something you'll definitely notice. It basically means you can enjoy smoother gaming without tearing, like a partial VRR; Sure - it's not as smooth and analogue as G-Sync or Freesync, but you have adequate smoothness at an easier-to-drive 36, 48, 72Hz, rather than just a single 60Hz option which results in a bad experience if 60Hz cannot be met.

GPU requirements for games are grossly overblown and overstated all the damn time. It's just not that hard to run games.

I used to play stuff at >100 FPS in 4K reso on a 4K60 monitor, and also in 3840x2160 @ 120Hz using Nvidia DSR on a 1920x1080 @ 144Hz monitor, which is MORE demanding than native 4K. That was with a GTX1080Ti. Now I have an RX 580 8GB and it actually plays tons of games just fine in 4K resolution. Lately I've been playing a lot of 20XX with RAGEPRO in co-op, and I play at 120 FPS using Radeon Enhanced Sync in 4K resolution using AMD VSR.

Just don't worry about it. You don't need SLI 1080s to play in 4K. It's just dumb the way people talk about this stuff. ( 一一)

I wonder why people are still "afraid" of 4Ks hardware cost. I mean, sure right now weaker and mid tier GPUs struggle but a display lasts far longer than a GPU.
Your next card can be midrange and will be able to drive 4K no problemo.

Should you really limit yourself to some intermediary 1440p resolution?

If you want a higher refresh rate you are out of luck, 4K HiRefresh will be quite expensive for some time, I do not expect the non-FALD displays that are coming end of 2018/early 2019 to be that much cheaper, maybe around 1.5K - 1.2K.

If not, the question is, whether 4K is worth it in terms of actual practical use. At 27" I do not think so. Scaling is yuck on many programs.
Line gets a bit blurrier if you go to 32" and take aggressive scaling out of the equation, 1440p would have the same PPI as a 24" 1080p screen and, to be honest that doesn't look so hot close up.
UHD movie playback still seems to be quite a PITA, needing at least a KabyLake system for SGX capability. (Yeah lol, I'm not going to build a new system only to watch a few movies, stupid industry.)

I bet 4K is awesome for productive work, esp CAD because, lets face it, you can never have enough real estate in CAD.

I play at 2560x1440 on an Asus PG279Q G-Sync monitor and everything is gorgeous with a GTX1070. However, I'm not playing any of the most recent games out there.

Chrispy_ wrote:

One thing that is often overlooked on high-refresh monitors is their improvement to vsync gaming; If you don't have a VRR-capable combination of monitor and GPU, then even a 144Hz monitor is a huge upgrade for a GPU that can't handle high-refresh gaming at that resolution.

Lets say your 1060 runs a game you want at 1440p at about 70fps, but the performance ranges from 40-100fps depending on the moment.

On a 1440p 60Hz monitor, every time your GPU can't meet 60fps, you screen repeats a frame, meaning a jarring drop to 30fps. It's at its very worst at 45fps because the animation jerks in and out of phase with the framerate, meaning that you end up with a perceived 15fps animation judder that completely ruins the 45fps experience; Even a constant 30fps experience would be much better than 45fps with animation smoothness issues.

On a 1440p 144Hz monitor, your GPU is never going to render at 144fps, but it'll spend almost half its time above 72fps which feels pretty smooth, and when it can't handle that it'll drop to 48fps which is still reasonable. The next quantisation means that if 48fps can't be met, 36fps are displayed too. Not only are 48fps and 36fps higher numbers than the 30fps on a 60Hz monitor, you also don't get animation phasing anywhere near as obviously on a high-refresh monitor because the ratio of frametimes at different frame rates is much closer

• 30fps dropping from 60Hz is a 1:2 ratio, meaning that the animation rate is (worst-case) 1/2 of the 30fps for the 15fps 'animation judder' I described.
• 36fps dropping from 48fps is a 3:4 ratio, meaning that the animation rate is (worst-case) 3/4 of the 36fps for a much smoother 27fps animation rate.

27fps doesn't sound great, but that's the worst case scenario and it's an 80% improvement in perceived smoothness, something you'll definitely notice. It basically means you can enjoy smoother gaming without tearing, like a partial VRR; Sure - it's not as smooth and analogue as G-Sync or Freesync, but you have adequate smoothness at an easier-to-drive 36, 48, 72Hz, rather than just a single 60Hz option which results in a bad experience if 60Hz cannot be met.

I have the new(er) Sammy 27in 144Hz VA monitor, and the vsync situation described here is accurate. I would also argue as resolution goes up, the need for AA goes away. 2K seems to be about the tipping point for me; I don't think I need any form of anti-alias turned on at 2K+ to have a really good looking image. I'll take the higher MINIMUM frame rate (with AA turned off) all day, every day to get the game smoothness.

roncat wrote:

I would also argue as resolution goes up, the need for AA goes away.

I'd say the real determinant here is pixel density rather than absolute resolution. Turning off AA at 1440 for example could look great on a 27" monitor, but put it on a 72" TV and the jaggies would be much more noticeable.

auxy wrote:

GPU requirements for games are grossly overblown and overstated all the damn time. It's just not that hard to run games.

I used to play stuff at >100 FPS in 4K reso on a 4K60 monitor, and also in 3840x2160 @ 120Hz using Nvidia DSR on a 1920x1080 @ 144Hz monitor, which is MORE demanding than native 4K. That was with a GTX1080Ti. Now I have an RX 580 8GB and it actually plays tons of games just fine in 4K resolution. Lately I've been playing a lot of 20XX with RAGEPRO in co-op, and I play at 120 FPS using Radeon Enhanced Sync in 4K resolution using AMD VSR.

Just don't worry about it. You don't need SLI 1080s to play in 4K. It's just dumb the way people talk about this stuff. ( 一一)

I also own a 1080Ti and your performance numbers don't add up to my own experiences (or every site's benchmarking) unless you're turning your settings wayyyyy down - let alone a 580@4K resolutionLOL. Most people think it's "dumb" to up the resolution while turning off all the features, dialing down the textures, etc. Sure you can "run" titles at 4K, but most people are trying to optimize the subjective quality while maintaining a smooth frame rate.

Waco wrote:

Pancake wrote:

pizza65 wrote:

I realise I don't have the absolute fastest GPU out there but even so it's still comfortably in the top-end of modern hardware, and yet it seems like running much more than a bog standard 1080p monitor is unlikely to perform well.

Ahh, no. And that's your problem. Your GTX1060 is most decidedly pedestrian mainstream. Not top-end. You want to play in 4K you gonna want spend more for something high-end.

No, not really. Gaming at 4K doesn't require a top end modern GPU, it just requires a few sacrifices on older cards.

My HTPC has a GTX 780 and a 4K screen. For coach gaming it's perfect with a little tweaking.

I think we differ on the definition of "perfect". A 1060 is solid mainstream. It's not a 1080 or even a 1070. Neither is it poverty spec budget gaming. But let's not pretend it's high-end. Anything else is self-delusion. Like driving a Mustang and pretending it's in the same class as a Ferrari.

If you wanna game at all, you wanna game with da fruits. The quality levels dialled up all nice and high. Otherwise why bother? Sorry, your GTX780 is decidedly low-spec for modern games.

Pancake wrote:

If you wanna game at all, you wanna game with da fruits. The quality levels dialled up all nice and high. Otherwise why bother?

Because the eye candy isn't actually why I'm here. If it isn't still fun without the eye candy, it isn't actually a good game.

synthtel2 wrote:

Pancake wrote:

If you wanna game at all, you wanna game with da fruits. The quality levels dialled up all nice and high. Otherwise why bother?

Because the eye candy isn't actually why I'm here. If it isn't still fun without the eye candy, it isn't actually a good game.

The point is: the game is usually more fun WITH all the eye candy, esp with eye candy AND nice FPS which is why we buy monsters of GPUs that barely fit into our cases.

I know progamerz disable it all so they can see through now invisible bushes and have 999FPS but that is not really why the majority wants to play a video game.

Of course I totally agree on the "good GFX can't compensate for crap gameplay/controls".