4k res not viable for mobile for some time?

Just read this article from over on AnandTech and it appears to run newer games smoothly at 4k resolution we are going to need at least 4 GTX Titans in SLI. Since this power isn't available to the mobile market and even more demanding games are just around the corner, I doubt that we will be seeing 4k res panels in gaming laptops for a while. Just my personal take on things. Thoughts?

Source: Some Quick Gaming Numbers at 4K, Max Settings

 

4k is going to be pretty pointless on such a small screen anyway.

 

The likes of 2-3k are going to be the best options.

4k is running 4 1080p monitors pretty much so a bit overkill for mobile users really.

 

MSI is putting out a new laptop that achieves 3k res, correct? Is that the highest resolution notebook announced?

 

That does not run Mac OS, yes. Laptop screen size wise, the MBP RD beats it by just a little bit.

 

It's certainly the only one that will stand a chance of driving it during a game at native.

 

Point/Counterpoint?

First, that's what they said about HD. And second, I think you're correct, but there's more to great picture than just resolution.

Nevertheless, graphics cards are increasing in performance exponentially and I think the Big Two are ready to take on the challenge. Hopefully, by that time OLEDs will be in more use and more "juice" can be shunted to graphics.

 

We are barely at the point where "retina" resolution playability is achievable (780M maybe or top-tier SLI.) There's no way 4K native is going to be realistic for a notebook any time soon.

 

at least have to wait the manufacturing process to reach 7nm to realize 4k gaming on laptop

 

how many people even have quad SLI GTX Titan? That's your "4k" or 4 grand right there already!

 

Considering the price of a 60hz 4k display thats just the change.

Then you need a 1.5kw psu and x79 platform.

 

Another thing that's not going to happen any time soon.

 

4k is going to need a couple of the next gen chips and tweaked, 2-3k though is an improvement over what we have and would be possible.

3k only needs half the power of 4k.

 

i think they should start making 1440p the standard of gaming laptops.

 

Certainly the dual cards should be either 1920x1080 120hz or the 1440p yes.

Combining lower level cards with the higher res panel should be an option if productivity is a bit more important to you.

 

the retina display tops out at the 15 in model, correct? So at 17 inches, what is the absolute pixel density the human eye could even discern?

 

Depends on the person, lighting, panel and distance lol.

 

i know, i know but there is a certain point where it just won't make a difference. Page 3 of this study sorta points it out.
http://www.swift.ac.uk/about/files/vision.pdf

 

That would be 4k on a laptop screen. Anyway, I think you're looking for the equivalent to the audio 20hz-20,000Hz? We reached that limit a long time ago.

 

Yikes, how much cost would a 4k screen add to the cost of a high end laptop? Will we be looking at $10,000 laptops? I just saw Asus announced a 31.5 in 4k monitor for 3500!
$3,500 Asus 4K Monitor Now Up for Pre-Order | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

 

^ pfff my Galaxy S4 has the same PPI already

 

Just a question, I have the impression (maybe wrong) that 4k is actualy 39xxx resolution per something, that means 1080p = 2k (1920), so 4k is not 4x as much as 1080 but "only" twice?

 

Its twice the vertical pixel count and twice the horizontal pixel count. 2 times 2 is 4! It has 4 times the pixels of 1080 res. Usually the number on the horitzonal makes the "K" so yeah 1920 is 2K, 3840 is 4K 7680 is 8K etc

 

Still no "official" 4k standard but the industry has determined 3,840 x 2,160 to be Ultra High Definition (UHD) -- but that's for TV. The 4096 x 2160 is unofficially the cinema standard. There are many close variations.

 

From anandtech 4k article.

 

2560x1440 would have been a massive improvement this year and for the next couple all while remaining very playable with the top end GPUs . 4k sounds great though but yeah in a 15 or 17 just unnecessary in all regards till the hardware has plenty of time to catch up.

Either way we need higher resolutions but maybe not as drastic as 3-4x what we have now. Sounds great on paper though.

 

Although for TV's if they start filming in 4k watching sports would be simply incredible.

I wonder if there is a new optical disc technology in the works to support 4k res movies? I know streaming is the way to go, but they already have a hard time managing 1080p over cable, and bandwidth limitations doesn't help, imagine at 4k.

 

Yeah there is a new 4k Bluray player and they are remastering movies already for it. It might actually be for sale now . i read about it a month ago from Sony and saying it was going to go on sale before the TVs i think .

Also the PS4 will support the 4k standard as well from what i gather.

 

There is also a new encoding standard, H.265 (HEVC), which is bringing bitrate optimizations while maintaining quality.

 

There is no blu ray for 4k as of yet but it is in the investigative stage. A panell has been created to test whether there is a market for it. Even so, if it does come to the consumer market anytime soon, it looks like blu ray will be the only medium that can sustain it.

The technology is there, but not much real demand at the moment. For one, there aren't any 4k TVs yet available (for under the price of a car), not to mention no 4k content.

 

Reality Time folks
1. 4 titans run today's games at that resolution and hardly ANYONE is spending 4k on a 4k TV and 4k on 4 titans (wow..that's a lot of 4ks).
2. Those 4 titans will NOT run the upcoming games in the next few years at 4k resolution and therefore it will take much more powerful hardware to run 4k resolution. That's 4x the amount of pixels to pump out over 1080p.
3. HDTVs are just now getting 1080p into the average home (I think). There are many people with non HDTV, 1080i TVs and 720p tvs.
4. Broadcasting in HDTV I believe is in 720p and not even 1080p at this point so it makes no sense that there will be any plan to change that in the near future.

This is a resolution, that while possible, is not even on the radar of concern from a gaming perspective. Higher resolution will come and even a bump to say 1600p will require quite a bit of power to run with those pixels. It's a sizable bump over 1080p. Honestly, Maxwell and the following GPUs will be required to play games in 2014-2016 at that resolution. 1080p is a fine resolution to play and quite honestly, consoles have shown that 720p looks very well too.

John Carmack was quoted years ago, along with others, saying that each successive generation of games will have visual fidelity improvements that are smaller and smaller to the human eye. The closer we get to life-life graphics (and I believe there is an equation that shows what is needed for life-like visuals), the harder it will be to see. This is evident in the new consoles coming out. However, the hardware needed to power the subtle differences will be significant and that is already evident in the use of tessellation. How many gamers have stated that they turn off the tessellation for increased FPS and minimal reduction in visual fidelity?

With that, I am absolutely fine with playing games at native resolution (1080p in my case) as there are games out now and certainly coming out in the next few years that will push 780m SLI solutions to the max. Resolution bumps are indeed nice, but people have to understand the power that will be needed to play at that resolution is just not even viable to consider at this point. Many people were suckered into buying 1080p TVs for their HD cable boxes and video game consoles, yet didn't realize that 720p was the supported display. The ONLY reason to have a 1080p TV, outside of very few PC gamers who use their HDTV as a monitor, is to watch Blu-Ray. That's it.

So I don't really see any point in 4k TV right now and DEFINITELY ZERO reason to buy a 4k TV right now. No broadcasts support the resolution, Blu-Ray is just hitting critical mass and doesn't support 4k, and gamers need 4k in videocards to barely play TODAY'S games at the resolution. So I just don't get this 4k hype. 1600p would be where I could see being the new "high def" for PC gamers as it is mainly an enthusiast set up right now from the desktop side of things.

That's my take.

 

Sony BDP-S790 4K and 3D Blu-ray Disc Player BDPS790 B&H Photo

http://www.amazon.com/Ghostbusters-Mastered-Single-Disc-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B00BPA2PBG

That was 5 seconds of searching.

So no 4k Bluray movies or players huh ?

$5000 for the TV. Not really the cost of a car. Seen people blow more on a laptop and that laptop won't be lasting then 6-10 years like a TV will.

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&identifier=S_4KTV

 

Even if a GPU DOES support 4k that doesn't mean squat about the fidelity of the game graphics. They'll still be limited to the current triangle and pixel pushing technology that's been there since 3D gaming inception. It will take a paradigm shift in the way GPU's handle graphics before we will get really "life-like" images. Like real-time ray tracing or something like it. Pixels can only do so much and as we've seen do not scale well visually to lower resolutions.

The MSI 3k screen is an anomaly and it will even struggle with many modern games with max detail. It will take several generations and a change in thinking in the way graphics are processed before we can even consider 4k gaming.

 

Yeah that is why we need a happy medium bump like 2560x1440. We will not see 2560x1600 because that is 16:10 and as much as i would LOVE to have that aspect ratio again on all my machines i dont see it happening .

Using a Retina Macbook Pro i was so insanely spoiled by the resolution and the aspect ratio. If only they could cram a 780m into one of those i would be in hog heaven. I dont need everything on ultra to enjoy gaming at all.

 

There is a lot of misleading advertising out there folks. So if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Always check the fine print. In the case of the above, the specifications.

Again, there are no commercially available blu ray movies or players. That technology does not yet exist.

 

People who can afford a real 4k TV or projector will sure able to afford 4 titians. It is a niche market right now, but the same apply to sli780m.

 

There may be some 1080p broadcast programming in other countries, but within the US at least I'm not familiar with any cable providers with signals beyond 1080i resolution. The sad thing is most consumers can't even tell the difference and watch blurry or distorted 1080i, 720p or 480i signals stretched across their nice new 1080p HDTVs.

 

And that is the problem of "5 seconds of searching." As I said, the technology is there but it's pointless. Go ahead and buy the blu-ray player. No blu-rays are really supporting that resolution. it will "upscale" the content. You have to read the fine print. Also a 780m will NOT be playing games even on "high" resolution. 4k is 4X the number of pixels of 1080p. We already see how drastically the FPS count goes down on 1600p resolution. Maybe you could play Half-Life 2 and Source based games on medium/high but those are games from 2004. 4K will be viable in 2018. That's a far time away. It's best to get the technology when you actually need it and not buy into the hype of marketing that tries to get consumers to be preemptive with their purchasing. In 2018, 4k TVs will offer 80inch screens for the cost of 60inch 1080p screens of today (about 1K). Screen sizes increase in time and by 2018 there will be some awesome technology AND hardware capable of running such resolutions. If you really reference my post above, it shows the limitations of even entertaining this resolution right now.

 

I believe 1080i and 720p are supported with the majority preferring 720p as it offers better IQ in sporting events. TV's do a great job of displaying HD content in my opinion. However I do agree that most consumers who have nice HD TVs don't bother going to the HD channels (often in the 100-200 channel numbers) and just continue to click the usual 2-55 non HD channels that they are used to.

 

Yes, sadly within the US there is still a ridiculous lack of access to 1080p content unless you buy or rent a blu-ray disc. Although it is significantly compressed, Netflix does offer 1080p streams, but there should be a lot more platforms offering 1080p programming.

I'm surprised at the number of consumers who bought 1080p displays and never watch 1080p content on them.

 

Which goes back to lovely cable companies offering "high speed internet" which happen to control what tv you can watch etc in 2013.

 

That was an idiotic review done by somebody who is an MB consultant, not a GFX one.

He ran it with AA/MSAA, in effect, upsampling the picture past 4k, and then back down to 4k. There's no need for AA when running 4k, you won't see any jaggies at that high PPI.

 

Would have been interesting to see the results using FXAA or no AA at all.

 

A 30 year old movie upscaled to 4k. That's exciting stuff right there.

Look, until there's a reasonable amount of source material, it's pointless.

 

LOL. I was thinking the same thing. Get to see the Stay-Puft marshmallow man in super high definition.

 

1080p is the perfect match for laptop sized screens. 4K is just not worth the extra cost and massive performance loss in my opinion on 15" and 17" screens.

I think it would take until the next decade at the minimum before 4K screens become the standard in laptops. If they ever do.

 

That was the first thing that came up in a search and there were plenty more films. Its called an example. Not to mention most people that are video nuts enjoy classic hollywood more then the new garbage it is trying to spew out so there is that side of it. Im sure they will have My Little Pony and The Smurfs in 4k for you when the time comes .

 

Man.. that's a wild conclusion to jump to, to go from "reasonable amount of source material" to "My Little Pony and The Smurfs"

 

I thought Ghostbusters was reasonable film because it is a classic even if it is not everyone's classic film . I was not creating a presentation of all 4k films available just showing after 2 seconds of searching that there is infact films available but then told that is not real 4k lol and the cake is a lie in all regards to the 4k films available today.

The initial stuff available like players or movies are just the beginning and 2-3 years from now many things will change just like it did with Bluray and DVD and pretty much every format before it .

I find it hilarious that Htwingnut asked if players were out there so i found something that fit his question and a single movie to go along with it then people are jumping down my throat because i presented Ghostbusters as a single example and i am being told it is pointless because the movies i am looking for are not available haha.


Too darn funny indeed.

 

I think the point is that it's not money intelligently spent until there is a critical mass of content and televisions are in 2nd or 3rd generation of 4k units.

There will always be early adopters who will subsidise the initial r&d.

And, I tend to watch great old films that I've seen many times like ghostbusters and countless others when I happen across them serendipitously if they are on a premium channel or something, I never seem to watch them intentionally as there are so many films I have not seen yet.