4K Gaming is Dumb
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,083 words · ~10 min read
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okay so the theoretical benefits of 4k
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are pretty clear pardon the pun all you have to do is
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consult the product page for any 4k monitor and you'll be treated to the
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same stock imagery that has been used to sell higher resolution displays for the
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last handful of decades except for one small problem a human
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being with 20 20 vision can discern about 1 60th of an arc second so that's
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about 3 600 increments per degree of
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their field of view that means that you would need to be two and a half to three
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and a half feet away from a typical monitor before the pixels become
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indistinguishable from each other apple brands this as retina now with a 4k
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display you could get as close as 1.7
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feet for a 27-inch model but how far do people actually sit from
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their monitors is any of this even a benefit
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would you would you game at this distance i came like this it's like 17
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inches see it's about 22 to the laptop
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would you lean back that far while you're gaming for gaming probably like
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this oh 21. what the hell is going on what is
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this ah am i okay well we'll get back to you on
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that okay so as of right now it's
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looking like basically everyone in our office would experience a noticeable
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difference between 1080p and 1440p
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and about half of the people in our office would experience a difference
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between 1440p and 4k
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however there is something that we're missing here and that is anti-aliasing this
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technology takes neighboring pixels and kind of blends them together and it can
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make a display seem like it's higher resolution than it actually is now
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physically increasing the pixel count is
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naturally better but good a a especially
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in games can take things like power lines from being a blocky stay her kc
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mess to a smooth arc and one of the easiest ways to see the effects of aa is
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with Windows text so here we have a 1080p monitor and by
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default in Windows 10 there will be anti-aliasing on the text although if we
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turn it off you can see that
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that's bad let's go ahead and turn that back on there we go that's better but
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it's not even close to our 4k display
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over here you heard it here first folks higher resolution displays are
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indisputably better for creating and consuming text content
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but games aren't a bunch of small static
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black lines sitting on a white background they have motion and your
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eyes are often moving around as well so
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how much of a difference does that extra sharpness
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actually make to test this we grabbed three gaming
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monitors with the major 16x9 resolutions
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and with each of them locked to 60 hertz
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with anti-aliasing turned on in our games we want to see if our test
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subjects can tell the difference go ahead test subjects
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now we know that our 1080p monitor is only a 24-incher and there's a reason
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for that that we'll get to later it's still much lower pixel density than
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either of the others so it's fine for the purposes of our test
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this one these are drunk that one's clear yeah this one just uh
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yo this one doesn't look very good yep this one looks terrible this one looks
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like it's a lower res than this one but high anti-aliasing which makes
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everything a bit blurrier this one looks like native reds with some
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anti-aliasing i i do think that one still looks better
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to me but switching back and forth to these this one looks
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really good as well the difference between these two is harder
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this one's higher res though so that was pretty much what we expected but here's
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the thing all three of these gaming monitors cost
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around 500 and that is where we finally get into
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the main point we're trying to make in this video
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it would have been easy for us to demonstrate that 4k doesn't make sense
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if you don't have a lot of money it's expensive
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end of story but we're saying that even if you could
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afford the gaming horsepower to run 4k
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60 hertz and a 4k monitor that's a predator monitors a gaming monitor
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you would be better off buying something else
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because there is so much more to the gaming experience than the pixel count
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so these 1440p and 1080p monitors cost so much because
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our 4k display is running at 60 hertz 60
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refreshes per second then these two run at 144 hertz and a stonking
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240 hertz respectively and i've been a
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long time believer that refresh rate makes a way bigger difference to the
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gaming experience than resolution so we're gonna get doom running on all
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three of these and see what people prefer to play on in a
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fast-paced shooter this feels good
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uh you know it's a game it's looking good uh
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oh i died got it nailed it okay hold on
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here hold on hold on okay
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this seems smoother i like this better than that perfect
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got the glory kill bro um i feel like that one
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feels better than this one
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i don't feel like this is significantly different from the other machine
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same it's the same they're all the same
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what fascinating
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dennis what are you firing at there's nothing i can find okay that's that's
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cool i might not be the best person to ask but to me to be honest
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i wouldn't care that much i think this one you show it shows more
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detail i don't know they are the same by this
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wait is motion blur on can you tell me if the resolutions are
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the same between the two can't tell you a goddamn thing the frame rate's not keeping up on this
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one well we could tell you the frame rate's about
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180 FPS on here yeah
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and what is going on
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you're running on a 60 hertz monitor ah
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okay if i were going to game on something it
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would definitely be this just because it is a lot smoother the
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far left one
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actually is really sweet but the clarity is not that great
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overall image quality is worse on this one
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but does it really matter when things are exploding and you're just aiming at
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blobs so basically
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if you're gaming in an even remotely competitive way
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higher refresh rate at least to a point is hands down the way to go those extra
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pixels are just not worth the response time reduction
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and the problem is that you can't have both every display interface has a limit
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to how many pixels it can push per second which is why up until very
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recently every 4k monitor has been capped at 60
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hertz making for an inferior gaming experience
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outside of some edge cases like the argument could be
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made for gamers who aren't frame rate snobs that
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that's a more pleasing experience or for certain types of games that are more
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about the cinematics and visuals whether it's a red dead redemption 2 or a grand
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theft auto 5 where you're not competing against anyone
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you could make an argument there for my part
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i wouldn't touch that as long as that is an option
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which i guess kind of leads into a side rant here in the quest to have more
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boxes checked off on the marketing materials
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page many laptop makers have even
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equipped their gaming models with 4k 60hz panels either as an option or even
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by default and while a higher refresh rate
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can actually make you a better gamer
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if the benefit of more pixels is minimal
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on a 27 inch display even our experienced gamer test subjects
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hesitated being able to tell the difference it's going to be way less
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than that on a 15 inch or a 17 inch one even if you do tend to sit a bit closer
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to your laptop now i'm sure there are some of you wondering well what if i had so much
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money that i could wear a brand new pair of yeezys every day
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could i have my cake and eat it too well
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there are 4k high refresh rate monitors
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like this one from ASUS it runs at 120
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hertz or 144 overclocked it's got 4k
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resolution and the HDR support is practically a cherry on top by that
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point i mean it's amazing and it's
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better in every way than the 1440p monitor that we were just looking at
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but it still has a problem obtaining a computer to put next to it
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that can actually deliver all of those frames so this right here is pretty much
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what you would want for greater than 60 FPS gaming at 4k and even it struggles
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to get close to 144 hertz in the latest
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most demanding titles it's got a core i9
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9900k two rtx 2080 ti's running an sli and a
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bunch of other baller components like it's freaking sick this is the best
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gaming experience that i've ever had but
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as much as i'd love to recommend that everyone go and grab this setup
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it doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you really do
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money for the tower and the monitor you're looking at around
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six thousand dollars worth of electronics enough for you to have an
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excellent 1440p gaming setup with a gtx 1070 and then grab two more for your
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friends so they can have sick gaming setups too
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so i guess this is the bottom line for competitive play the higher the
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refresh rate the better and for the affluent enthusiast the sweet spot is
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still 1440p 144 hertz since you are still getting
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the high refresh rate advantages real competitive advantages along with a nice
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clarity bump over 1080p
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