What you'll need to run 4K
We hope you got a huge tax refund
You'll need new cables
If you're like us and have been running DVI or dual-link DVI for the past—oh, we don't know, forever?—4K requires a different connection, as the Digital Visual interface tops out at 2560x1600 at 60Hz—far short of 4K’s needs. To run 4K resolution, you will need to run either DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 2.0. For those on the DisplayPort train, version 1.2 is available today and will let you run 4K at 60Hz when using a Multi-Stream Transport (MST) mode. In MST mode, the graphics card generates several signals, or "streams," which are combined over the DisplayPort cable in order to run the panel at 60Hz. If you were to use a DisplayPort cable and run the panel in Single Stream Transport (SST) mode, you would top out at 30Hz. If you're more interested in running HDMI for some reason, it’s more complicated. A single HDMI 1.4 connection is only able to hit 30Hz at 4K resolution, which is unacceptable. Some posters on our website have said "30Hz is fine for porn and web browsing," but we disagree. Just dragging a window around the screen causes it to shear and stutter in a manner similar to how it looks when you run your PC without graphics drivers installed. Some monitors and GPUs allow dual-HDMI connections to achieve the bandwidth needed, but it’s a kludge and few support it. The fix for HDMI will come with HDMI 2.0, which will easily allow 60Hz at 4K, as well as multi-channel audio, but no monitor nor any GPU we know of currently has the new interface. So, be sure to verify what your panel supports before buying; if you get a 30Hz panel, you will be very, very sorry. And forget about trying to game on that thing.
The monitors
We're still in the beginning stages of 4K monitor growth. Throughout the year, you should see 4K panels offered from all the usual suspects. The good news is that prices have already dropped from the $3,500 mark down to under $1,000, and we expect many more manufacturers to be offering panels in this lower price range. Whether or not we'll get an affordable 4K IPS panel is a different story. Although, for gaming, TN is fine. The Dell 24-inch IPS panel is relatively affordable at $1,299—just don't expect to see it hit the $500ish prices of today's 27-inch and 30-inch panels until at least 2015, if not later.
The GPUs
If you thought purchasing a 4K monitor was financially painful, you ain't seen nothing yet. That transaction was merely foreplay for the real pain and suffering that will occur when you have to buy enough graphics firepower to run that display at its native resolution on today's games. As we stated earlier, Nvidia itself recommends at least two GTX 780 cards in SLI, so that's $1,000 worth of GPU, on top of the $800 to $3,500 for the monitor. The cheapest way to get into the 4K ballgame at this point would be to buy two Radeon R9 290 cards—assuming you can even find them for sale anywhere—which will set you back $800. Or you could get two GTX 780s, which will cost you roughly $1,000. You can pretty much forget about anything less powerful than these $400 to $500 GPUs though, as we can guarantee you they won't pack enough of a punch to drive a 4K display to anywhere close to 60Hz. Even the last generation of dual-GPU boards, such as the GTX 690 and Radeon HD 7990, aren’t up to the ask on their own.
In most cases, the price of a 4K monitor will pale in comparison to the GPUs needed to game on it.
4K benchmarks
Before you look at the benchmark chart below, we recommend that you walk over to your PC and put a blanket over it. Seriously, it doesn't want to see you staring at these benchmark numbers. When you see how incompetent even the most high-end GPUs on the planet are for running 4K, it will probably make your PC seem, well, inadequate. What we mean is, look at these numbers. Even a $700 GeForce GTX 780 Ti can only hit 23fps in Unigine Heaven 4.0 with everything maxed out, and it hits only 19fps in Metro: Last Light. If there's one takeaway from this benchmark chart, it's this: Most of today's high-end GPUs are still not capable of running 4K at an acceptable level of performance. We're sorry, but that is a fact. Sure, all these games are playable—some more than others—but none of these cards, or combinations thereof, could hit 60fps in any of the games we chose for benchmarking. For this generation of GPUs, this is the reality.
Since 4K is gaining so much traction, it's very likely that whatever is coming from AMD and Nvidia will be better equipped to handle this resolution, and we certainly hope it is.
We've heard nothing about what AMD has up its sleeve, as we expect its Hawaii cards to have a long shelf life. The impending Mantle API update should give the cards a shot in the arm, so to speak. As with Nvidia, though, the current generation is barely capable of running 4K, so we can expect the next-generation cards to be much more capable. The good news is that by the time these newfangled cards arrive, we should have a whole flock of new 4K panels on offer, so it'll be glorious times for well-heeled PC gamers.
Nvidia GTX 780 Ti
Nvidia GTX 780
Nvidia GTX Titan
AMD Radeon R9 290X
AMD Radeon R9 290X Crossfire
Nvidia GTX Titan SLI
EVGA GTX 780 ACX SLI
Driver
332.21
332.21
332.21
13.12
13.12
332.21
332.21
Unigine Heaven 4.0 (fps)
23
23
21
18
17
37
30
Unigine Valley 1.0 (fps)
30
30
28
26
23
37
16
Tomb Raider (fps)
28
26
25
27
52
44
44
Metro: Last Light (fps)
19
17
17
18
29
26
26
Battlefield 4 (fps)
40
36
35
38
64
60
57
Batman: Arkham Origins (fps)
44
43
41
38
66
57
57
Hitman: Absolution (fps)
44
39
40
44
75
55
55
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows 8. Our monitor is a 32-inch Sharp PN-K321. All games are run at 3840x2160 with no AA.
