EVE General Discussion

Hi fellow space nerds,

since there is not much information available about running EVE on 4k monitors and I recently set up a new machine, here is my take:

After 4k@60fps IPS monitors became available for ~700€ in February 2015 I made the jump and built a new EVE machine with two of those.

The PC: i7-4790K @4.7GHz, Noctua D15, Asus Z97 Pro, 16GB PC1600-CL9, Samsung 840EVO 500GB,
2x Gigabyte GTX970 Gaming G1 @1.5GHz, Fractal Design Define R5 case, Windows 7.
The monitors are 2x Asus PB279Q (27" 4k) for playing EVE, 1x Dell U2713HM (27" 2560x1440), 1x LG E2750 (27" 1980x1080),
the latter two are my older monitors and more intended for dotlan and other OOG tools.
The very similar Dell 27" 4k IPS monitors have 50ms of input delay and I would not recommend them for gaming.
The slight overclocking did not make a clearly measurable difference on EVE frame rates, so it
can probably be ignored.

SLI is activated but the monitors are NOT configured for surround (doesn't make sense for non-uniform monitor resolutions like my 4 monitor config).
All monitors run at 60 Hz. In case of the Asus this requires setting them to Display Port 1.2 in the system menu of the monitor.
Note that for multiple HiRes monitor setups like this you better use a graphics card that has many Display Port outputs.
Some of the Nvidia GTX 9xx ones have 3xDP, 1xHDMI, 1xDVI-D (digital only), 1xDVI-I (digital and analog).
There are also many cards that have only 1 DP output, beware.

EVE runs reasonably well in 4K: adjusting the UI scaling up to 150% makes stuff small but IMHO readable, personally I even set it to 125% to get more on my overview/d-scan (no, I do not have good eyesight). Additionally you can set the context menu font size up to 13 (for whatever reason this is a separate setting). If I'm sitting directly in front of a monitor this gives me quite a bit more stuff on screen (and you know how important that is with the overloaded EVE UI) while still being readable.

Problems I noticed (all of these also apply to the Windows desktop):
* you need to increase (~double) mouse sensitivity and better have a high-resolution mouse to do so
* grabbing window borders for resizing becomes more difficult because you still have to hit those smaller pixels
* screen (frame buffer?) initialization sometimes causes some strange delays, e.g. there are a few seconds
of total blackness before the character selection screen appears. No issues during gameplay though.

BTW, Windows 7 desktop apps mostly behave well, but some do show microscopic fonts (bad) or cut off UI elements (terrible/unusable). To be honest it is better than I expected but still nowhere near OS X which is nearly perfect by now.
Not a problem for a pure gaming machine, but your priorities might differ....

settings: everything maxed, antialias disabled, dx11, brackets on
All frame rates show quite a bit of fluctuation (>10%) so take these as rough estimates.

single client @4k docked: ~100 fps
single client @4k Jita undock: ~85 fps
dual client @4k docked: ~60 fps
dual client @4k Jita undock: ~45 fps
single client @7680x2160 docked: ~56 fps
single client @7680x2160 Jita undock: ~50 fps

EVE Probe results (@4k):
Scene Status Malloc FPS
fleet1 complete 64MB 83.0
fleet2 complete 228MB 57.0
fleet3 complete 114MB 38.0
asteroid_rocks complete 50MB 103.0
indirect_lighting_small complete N/A N/A
buildEffect complete 61MB 144.0
controltower complete 232MB 30.0
festivallaunchers complete 101MB 101.0

So, overall very playable and although I had some doubts everything worked out in the end for this happy capsuleer.

No pictures of the setup?

Fun fact 2: , you listed the max for HDMI 1.4.

Fun Fact 3: HDMI 2 is just fine for 4k 60hz. It is all about the bandwidth supported.

Displayport is preferred though as it is an open standard while HDMI isn't. Unfortunately outside of computer gear Displayport is very rare while HDMI 2 will end up on all TV's, AVR's and media players.

not really hdmi still supports same resolution as display port but only at 30hz hdmi 2 will double that to 60hz, i wouldnt say hdmi is dying

I'd choose desktop real estate over "proper scaling" any day. Being able to fit so much on one work screen has significantly boosted my productivity. From 1080p video editing to smut, the experience is just amazing.

This is interesting. Please forgive me for possibly hijacking the thread...

I too have built a new rig. I have been using a 30" Sony TV as my monitor. I use HDMI. Regardless of the computers/laptops I use, I must use the "computer" resolution as opposed to 1080p digital resolution. The former is crisp while the latter causes the fonts to blur into a multi colour mash. It is readable but definitely not crisp.

Any idea why the 1080p setting does this and how it might be corrected?

There's always a bigger fish

Well that was a nice discussion about HDMI vs Displayport (I would type DP but my dirty mind).

Not to rub salt into the old 3.5gb wounds, but isn't dual 4k supposed to be run on SLI with 4gb cards?

Now I want to do this!!! Does anyone know where I can borrow a planetarium?