Issues, Workarounds & Localization

Hi all,

Hope this is the correct forum for this. I just upgraded to a 4kUHD TV which is connected as my monitor. I tried running just one client, and it was choppy as hell. I normally run three clients at 1920x1080 with no problems. Assuming I didn't change my CPU out, would adding more RAM be the best upgrade to combat the video lag, or would upgrading the video card be a better option?

CPU - AMD A10-5800K
RAM - 8GB (I forget the specifics, was the best when I bought the PC)
Video Card - Radeon R7 240 w/2GB RAM

Alternatively, I COULD continue to run three clients at 1080P, as the size of the monitor easily allows that. Oh and between rent, bills, food, and my guns and ammo, I am limited on funds, so I can't go out and buy the biggest and baddest video card. I would love that. Thanks for any advice.

Multiple clients at 4k on that card really isnt a viable option. Graphical demand increase the more pixels youre pushing and 4k is a LOT more pixels than 1080. If you want to run 4k you really need to be doing so w a current gen video card, otherwise your 4k tv should support lower resolutions so I'd start with that. Upgrading ram is gonna do nothing for you unless youre running like 5-10 clients and even then its not really tied to frame rates. No idea how much "limited funds" equates to but if I was wanting to push 4k even on a single client I'd want at least an nvidia 1070. Not top of the line but not far beneath it and a couple hundred $ cheaper.

Just for a little comparison, 4k is over 8mil pixels while 1080 is roughly 2mil. So running that 4k monitor at full res is similarly demanding as running 4 eve clients on 4 seperate1080p screens simultaneously. An r7 era card just isnt up for that unless you want to run total potatoe graphic settings. I'd personally prefer nice visuals over an overabundance of pixels any day. (Assuming you arent sitting 12 inches away from a 60 inch screen and counting pixels one by one)

Also you mention running 3 clients at 1080 in the past w no problems. Are you talking 3 monitors at 1080 each, 3 windows on a 1080 screen or alt tabbing? Cause it makes a big difference. Running multiple on a single screen is just gonna be limited by ram and cpu because the graphics card is still only pushing 1920x1080 pixels at any given moment. If 3 screens then adding that 4th screen worth of pixels is gonna slow things down but it shouldnt be a drastic difference so either your card is totally bottle necked or maybe theres an issue w the display. Really hard to say w/o more details about the setup, game settings and reported frame rates. Most likely though youre just gonna need to sell one of those guns and pony up for a nicer card. Sold my ar for my current rig, sucks but life goes on. :)

I second what Daemun Khanid said about the GPU. Getting 4K 60fps and pushing it to a TV with a native 60hz refresh rate is GPU intensive.

What 4K TV are you using?

I'm building a 50" 4k set up and will soon create my own post about the details.

In my experience trying to get the right hardware to work to get 4K UHD set up working to do games is $$$. The technology right now on a low budget, you can kinda get it to technically work, but there will be some major draw back to almost make it not a good idea. The tried and tested multi screen setup is going to have more support for getting things to work correctly.

However, with that said, if you have the $$$ to get the right combo of hardware, I believe we just entered into a world where UHD 4K gaming is doable. 2016 can do it, but I'd say 2015 stuff wont so don't bother. But even with 2017 stuff, you have to split hairs and buy the premium hardware to get it to work well enough to justify doing it.

My opinion on minimum spec:

GTX 1070 - You could get away with a 970 card, but I think the FPS on most games would be too low. Even the 1070 wont run new games high settings at 60 fps. Its close, close enough that I justified it.

Most 4K TV out there wont work or will suck enough that you should NOT use them at all. There maybe exceptions depending on what your actually wanting to do with the screen, but for gaming, nope. OLED are NOT good because of screen burn in even if they do look better.

I went with a Sony 49x900e. From a PC monitor/HDR gaming perspective, with future proofing in mind, this top end TV is great. Its got a Native Refresh rate of 120hz, there is no wire you can buy right now that can supply 4k120hz. The current high speed HDMI bandwidth is 18GB/s and only supports up to 1080p120hz. But in Jan 2017 it was announced that there will be a new HDMI wire that does 49GS/s and is said to do 10K120hz (probably 4:2:2), and will EASILY support 4K120hz hense why I went with the 49x900e. But to get 4K120hz gaming, your going to need 2 top end GPUs to push that...

So if you don't have the budget to future prof, 60hz monitors will work just fine, but you need to be sure its a 60hz and not a 30hz that the TV tricks into 60hz or your going to have a bad gaming experience. Not just any 60hz will do either, details aside as this is turning into a wall of text, you get what you pay for, and the budget friendly off the shelf 4K TVs just are not good gaming monitors just yet. Got the $$$ then its absolutely (on paper) doable! I'm still waiting delivery of my hardware, and like I mentioned, will have a post about my setup. So I will let the interested Eve Community know about my experiences, trials and tribulations getting this to work to boner level satisfaction!