Anyone have a 4k or 8k Ultra Monitor for their PC?

Discussion in 'Geek Cave: Computers, Tablets, HT, Phones, Games' started by The Alchemist, Sep 27, 2015.

  1. cskippy

    cskippy Creamy warmpoo

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    Man I wish I could justify a CRT like the FW900. I bought a NEC CRT on craigslist to see what all the hype was about. Previously I had used a nice 32 CRT tv for movies and gaming. Nothing really compared to it. Plasma is pretty good but still not quite there and it's basically dead. OLED is good but it has it's own issues.

    The NEC was amazing for motion clarity even at 100Hz. The only issue was the limited resolution something like 1600x1200. I ended up ditching it for a Benq XL2411z which has been the best modern display for motion clarity and input lag. Of course colors are shit and the TN gamma shift is atrocious.

    Can't wait for multi layered IPS panels with indiviual controlled backlight for each pixel. This is probably the future but won't be out for ~5 years. Trying to get a perfect picture and good motion clarity is basically impossible right now. :(
     
  2. SineDave

    SineDave Friend

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    It's too bad SED died. OLED has real potential, but they still haven't' figured out how to make colors look natural out of the box on OLED, you end up struggling to calibrate them to any form of accuracy. Then as with any LED/LCD tech, you have input lag and motion handling. For gaming, I really loved my Pioneer Kuro plasma.
     
  3. briskly

    briskly Friend

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    Should've tried interlacing and 2560x1600 resolution when I had mine. What a shame. Then again, I seem to recall that the grille size/viewing area being limited even for 2304x1440 - never had the right sharpness to it.

    The observable flicker has more to do with the decay and persistence of the phosphor used, and the FW900 happens to have one of the quicker decaying ones. Using mine at any rate below 90 Hz would quickly get irritating on the eyes. The televisions weren't nearly as much of a problem to use, fine at the usual NTSC rate.
     
  4. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    OLED is the future and it's just a matter of time until it'll replace LCDs I think.

    Doesn't that (like pretty much any other TV) have more than 30ms or so input lag? I've been thinking about getting a KRP-500A for a while, but I will wait a bit. Plasma is sort of weird in that it works essentially like DSD in that it's really only a 1 bit technology.

    Hahaha, I pretty much ditched my XL2420T for the GDM-FW900.

    Since you're limited to a 400mHz pixel clock the best you can get at 2560x1600i is 129Hz, which is a bit on the low side for me, at least for interlaced. You do lose a certain clarity and sharpness when going interlaced, so for just web browsing I prefer the progressive mode, just that you will get some flicker at 80Hz. At 1600p and 69Hz the flicker gets unbearable. When using progressive I ended up settling on 1920x1200 at 96Hz.
    I don't know exactly what the actual resolution is, but you do get an improvement in sharpness even when going from 1440p to 1600p. Yes, the 1440p doesn't have perfect pixel-to-pixel sharpness to it, but it's still quite good I think. Not like 4k screens or 1440p smartphones, but certainly the sharpest CRT I've seen and I think it's better than a 1080p LCD of a similar size.
    I think the real resolution is somewhere between 2304 and 1920, but closer to 2304. In a 30 pixel long bar at the center of my screen I counted 27 or 28 pixels. Would be interesting to set it to its real "native" resolution. Also the vertical resolution limit should be much higher than 1440 or 1600 I think. Not quite sure how the aperture grille looks like.*

    Interlaced is a bit weird in that you don't really seem to lose actual sharpness, but text is less clear. It's like you lose contrast between the text and the background, without the edges getting softer, which I think is basically what it is.

    Mine also has a removed anti-glare coating, which might improve the sharpness.

    Yes, the flicker has a lot to do with the phosphor decay, but that also tells you a lot about its motion clarity. The initial phosphor decay is much faster than even 6.25ms (160Hz), so that individual frames are always clear.


    *Actually the pixel pitch gives about 2086 lines at the center (0.23mm) and 1778 at the edge (0.27mm).
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2017
  5. chakku

    chakku Friend

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    Been hearing that since 2004, they still need to iron out all the issues with OLED before it can truly take over. It's only a matter of time before better technology arises at this point.
     
  6. SineDave

    SineDave Friend

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    The input lag on the later gen units was just shy of 30ms. Once you adapt, it's really not noticeable. If you're a competitive twitch FPS player, maybe - but I find anything sub 40 acceptable.
     
  7. TMRaven

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    I thought it would be cool to get a 40" 4k HDR TV as my computer monitor for gaming, but it wasn't the best experience. The TV I picked up was actually the 800D that SineDave got. The size and resolution I didn't mind so much, but the fact that it was a VA panel with poor viewing angles compared to my preferred IPS panels. The TV was also touted to have some of the best motion handling capabilities on the market, but even then it's slow in comparison to any computer monitor. Just moving around a window with an RTings logo on it will give you yellow smearing as the screen's trying to transition from red to white. Sony does sell equivalent IPS panels, but at that point I thought to myself that the idea of 4k wasn't as tempting as the idea of ultrawide gaming and productivity.

    Witcher3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider looked great in 4k, but the jump in visual quality wasn't subjectively any better than say , going from a 1080p display to a 1440p display-- all in my opinion of course.

    That, and even though we have very powerful pascal GPUs out right now, 4k just is too high of a resolution for the average consumer to get good FPS out of the highest settings in the most demanding titles. I think my 1070 was only pushing like 30fps for Witcher3 maxed.

    Fast-forward, now I have a 34" 1440p Ultrawide, and I find it to be just as good for desktop productivity, and even better for gaming. Most games will have native support for the 21:9 format, and give a more expansive field of view to boot. It's also just the right size to where I don't have to tilt m yhead up and down to look at the top of the screen.

    I think 4k will eventually have a purpose, but not right now. Windows scaling sucks with it, gpus can't handle it, and games don't benefit from it all that much. 1440p is the current sweet-spot, whether it's at 16:9 or 21:9. My friend keeps telling me how impressive his PS4 Pro at 4k is, but he's not had the pleasure of playing games on PC, and doesn't realize his pro isn't outputting native 4k content and definitely not with high graphics settings and decent framerates.

    I do think OLED is the future as well. It has near perfect viewing angles and perfect pixel response times, perfect blacks, and is impossibly thin. It doesn't rely on LED backlights with very poor cyan and deep-red color reproduction (although quantum dots are making this less of an issue). Color accuracy can be mostly alleviated with calibration out of the factory, so I don't think that's much of an issue with the technology itself, merely the people behind it. Right now their biggest problems are longevity and burn-in, which I'm sure can be worked out eventually.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2017
  8. Grahad2

    Grahad2 Red eyes from too much anime

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    4K is I think, brilliant for office work if you have a large-ish (but not huge) monitor, say, 32". For everything else I think ultrawides have the better deal.
     
  9. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    Well, I went out and grabbed a 1070 to see how well it pushes pixels. Much to my dismay, I still can't fully max out some games at 1080P and still get 60fps. Rise of Tomb Raider drops to about 45fps with everything fully maxxed. Haven't tried Witcher 3 yet. So stepping up to 1440P will require some compromises, never mind 4K. I'm a little disappointed. Maybe jumping up in resolution will be cool enough that dropping some maxxed settings will be fine or even unnoticeable, so my disappointment might be a litle premature. 4K is definitely out for now. You guys pimping the ultrawides have got me considering those now. Are you ultrawide guys using curved screens?
     
  10. Daveheart

    Daveheart Friend

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    My ultra-wide is curved, yes. The curve radius varies quite a bit between models and manufacturers though. I use a G-Sync Acer X34 that has a relatively mild curve.
     
  11. TMRaven

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    I use the PG348Q which is just Asus's version of the Predator X34-- same panel and all. They both have a very mild curve. Tbh I probably wouldn't like anything much more curved, definitely not that Samsung one.


    I have an i5 6500 with an Asus Strix 1070 OC and get around 35-55fps in Rise of the Tomb Raider (average around 45fps mostly) with maxed out settings and running a resolution of 3440x1440. One thing important to note about Rise of the Tomb Raider is its different forms of anti-aliasing though-- they drastically impact performance. I run with SMAA. If you use SSAAx2 or SSAAx4, you're basically rendering the game at much higher resolutions. For example, my FPS tanks from 45 on average to 13 on average when I switch from SMAA to SSAAx4.

    When I use the highest graphic presets and SMAA and switch my resolution to 1920x1080, I average around 95fps.



    Long story short, unless you're running SSAAx2 or SSAAx4, your 1070 should be maxing ROtTR with 60+ FPS easily. In fact, it should be able to handle any modern, demanding game at 1440p with close to 60fps and maxed out graphics.
     
  12. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    Yep, it was the SSAA that crippled it. Anything other than that and it was 60 (limited by my current monitor).

    Thanks to everyone for the input. I think a 1440P ultrawide is the next upgrade once I get my cooling and system spl where I want them.
     
  13. Grahad2

    Grahad2 Red eyes from too much anime

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    The latest LGs and Samsungs have a lot more aggressive curves. 1600R is the most aggressive I believe.
     
  14. Warrior

    Warrior RIP 2021

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    I recently purchased a curved Sammy. Beautiful screen. For fun, I have 2 external monitors running. Here's my current setup.
     

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  15. barelyincollege

    barelyincollege Nice Pit Bull

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    Nice screen, @Warrior - looks like you'll need a new desk pretty soon :)

    I'm running a curved 4K Sammy TV as a desktop monitor myself. I had a 34" LG ultrawide 1440p monitor before, but didn't like it as much because its 21:9 aspect ratio resulted in black bars for virtually all media, and there weren't enough benefits from a productivity standpoint, either.

    I like the 4K TV much better, no black bars for media and there's enough real estate to spread multiple windows out without everything looking scrunched up.
     
  16. Warrior

    Warrior RIP 2021

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    Yes I'm out of desk space. Using my file cabinet for the 3rd screen. Lol. I prefer the Sammy curved over the lg one as well. I gave the LG to one of my employees.
     
  17. TMRaven

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    How's the gamma and saturation shift on that Samsung curved ultrawide? I don't like large VA panels specifically because of that, but I'm guessing such aggressive curvature does mitigate that issue to a certain extent.
     
  18. jdmasters

    jdmasters New

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    I've got a 40" 4k wasabi mango on my main rig and a 1440p on the second screen. I can't wait for 4k HDR G sync monitors to hit the market.
     
  19. Lenroot77

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    Have this TV as well... I'm very happy with it especially for its price point. I've been using it with a ps4 pro. Thinking I may go with a 1080 ti in the near future. For Destiny 2... haters goinna hate!

    Is a 4k monitor a huge upgrade from a 4k TV? I'm pretty new to PC's so my knowledge is very limited.
     
  20. Giant Ass Panda

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    What makes PC monitors great for gaming vs TVs is generally lower input lag, higher refresh rates (TVs are stuck with 60Hz panels) and Freesync (AMD)/G-Sync (Nvidia) for tear and stutter free gaming.
     

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