4K Gaming is Dumb

okay so the theoretical benefits of 4k are pretty clear part of the pun all you have to do is consult the product page for any 4k monitor and you'll be treated to the same stock imagery that has been used to sell higher resolution displays for the last handful of decades except for one small problem a human being with 20/20 vision can discern about one sixtieth of an arcsecond so that's about three thousand six hundred increments per degree of their field of view that means that you would need to be two and a half to three and a half feet away from a typical monitor before the pixels become indistinguishable from each other Apple brands this as retina now with a 4k display you could get as close as 1.7 feet for a 27-inch model but how far do people actually sit from their monitors is any of this even a benefit why don't we find out privacy keeps your money safe by creating secure virtual cards and completing checkout forms for you saving you time and money while masking your card details sign up and immediately get five dollars at the link below [Music] would you would you game at this distance it like this it's like 17 inches see it's about 22 to the laptop mmm would you leave back that far while you're gaming 21 what the hell's going on what is this ah okay well we'll get back to you on that okay so as of right now it's looking like basically everyone in our office would experience a noticeable difference between 1080p and 1440p and about half of the people in our office would experience a difference between 1440p and 4k however there is something that we're missing here and that is anti-aliasing this technology takes neighboring pixels and kind of blends them together and it can make a display seem like it's higher resolution than it actually is now physically increasing the pixel count is naturally better but good eh-eh especially in games can take things like power lines from being a blocky stayer KC mess to a smooth arc and one of the easiest ways to see the effects of AAA is with windows text so here we have a 1080p monitor and by default in Windows 10 there will be anti-aliasing on the text although if we turn it off you can see that that's bad let's go ahead and turn that back on there we go that's better but it's not even close to our 4k display over here you heard it here first folks higher resolution displays are indisputably better for creating and consuming text content but games aren't a bunch of small static black lines sitting on a white background they have motion and your eyes are often moving around as well so how much of a difference does that extra sharpness actually make to test this we grabbed three gaming monitors with the major sixteen by nine resolutions and with each of them locked to 60 Hertz with anti-alias turned on in our games we want to see if our test subjects can tell the difference go ahead test subjects now we know that our 1080p monitor is only a 24-inch er and there's a reason for that that we'll get to later it's still much lower pixel density than either of the others so it's fine for the purposes of our test this is a drug that one's fair yeah this one just died yo this one doesn't look very good yep this one looks terrible this one looks like it's a lower res than this one but high anti-aliasing which makes everything a bit blurrier this one looks like native Reds with some anti-aliasing III do think that one still looks better to me but switching back and forth to the east this one looks really good as well difference between these two is harder this one's higher res though so that was pretty much what we expected but here's the thing all three of these gaming monitors cost around five hundred dollars and that is where we finally get into the main point we're trying to make in this video it would have been easy for us to demonstrate that 4k doesn't make sense if you don't have a lot of money it's expensive end of story but we're saying that even if you could afford the gaming horsepower to run 4k 60 Hertz and a 4k monitor that's a predator monitors a gaming monitor you would be better off buying something else because there is so much more to the gaming experience than the pixel count so these 1440p and 1080p monitors cost so much because our 4k display is running at 60 Hertz 60 refreshes per second then these to run at a hundred and forty four Hertz and a stonking two hundred and forty Hertz respectively and I've been a longtime believer that refresh rate makes a way bigger difference to the gaming experience than resolution so we're gonna get doom running on all three of these and see what people prefer to play on in a fast-paced shooter this feels good you know it's a game it's looking good oh god I got it nailed it okay hold on here hold on okay this seems smoother I like this better than that perfect got the glory kill bro um I feel like that one feels better than this one yeah I don't feel like this is significantly different from the other machine same the same rail the same what fascinating what are you firing at this nothing I can okay that's that's cool I may not be the best person to ask but to me to be honest I wouldn't care that much I think this one you show me shows more heat no I don't know they are the same like this hay is motion blur on Nathan Lee if the resolutions didn't stay between the two can't tell you a goddamn thing the frame rates like kicking up on this one well we could tell you the frame rates about 180 FPS on here and what is going on you're running on a 60 Hertz monitor okay if I were going to game on something it would definitely be this just because it is lots of everything the far left one actually in the real estate but that clarity is not that great overall image quality is worse on this one but does it really matter whether things are exploding in you're just aiming at blobs so basically if you're gaming in an even remotely competitive way higher refresh rate at least to a point is hands-down the way to go those extra pixels are just not worth the response time reduction and the problem is that you can't have both every display interface has a limit to how many pixels it can push per second which is why up until very recently every 4k monitor has been capped at 60 Hertz making for an inferior gaming experience outside of some edge cases like the argument could be made for gamers who aren't frame rate snobs that that's a more pleasing experience or for certain types of games that are more about the cinematics and visuals whether it's a Red Dead Redemption 2 or a Grand Theft Auto 5 where you're not competing against anyone you could make an argument there for my part I wouldn't touch that as long as that is an option which I guess kind of leads into a side rant here in the quest to have more boxes checked off on the marketing materials page many laptop makers have even equipped their gaming models with 4k 60 Hertz panels either as an option or even by default and while a higher refresh rate can actually make you a better gamer if the benefit of more pixels is minimal on a 27-inch display even our experienced gamer test subjects hesitated being able to tell the difference it's going to be way less than that on a 15 inch or a 17 inch even if you do tend to sit a bit closer to your laptop now I'm sure there are some of you wondering well what if I had so much money that I could wear a brand-new pair of Yeezys every day could I have my cake and eat it too well there are 4k high refresh rate monitors like this one from a Seuss it runs at 120 Hertz or 144 overclocked it's got 4k resolution and the HDR support is practically a cherry on top by that point I mean it's amazing and it's better in every way than the 1440p monitor that we were just looking at but it still has a problem obtaining a computer to put next to it that can actually deliver all of those frames so this right here is pretty much what you would want for greater than 60 FPS gaming at 4k and even it struggles to get close to a hundred and forty-four Hertz in the latest most demanding titles it's got a core I $9.99 hundred K to RTX 2080 Ti is running an SLI and a bunch of other baller components like it's freaking sick this is the best gaming experience that I've ever had but as much as I'd love to recommend that everyone go and grab this set up it doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you really do money for the tower and the monitor you're looking at around six thousand dollars worth of electronics and not for you to have an excellent 1440p gaming setup with a gtx 1070 and then grab two more for your friends so they can have sick gaming setups too so I guess this is the bottom line for competitive play the higher the refresh rate the better and for the affluent enthusiasts the sweet spot is still 1440p 144 Hertz since you are still getting the high refresh rate advantages real competitive advantages along with a nice clarity bump over 1080p are you concerned about a data 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Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 5,039,548

Keywords: 4k, gaming, 1080P, 1440P, gaming resolution, high refresh rate, 144hz

Id: ehvz3iN8pp4

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/LamboDiabloSVTT]

1440p @ 144/165hz is definitely the best of both worlds for me. Perfect balance of performance and image quality.

[u/Dudeko]

As someone who bought a 4k 60hz monitor instead of a 1080p 144hz. I agree with this video title. RTX 2080 and i9 9900k and only just get 60 FPS in most games at 4k

[u/SkeleMann]

Anyone got one of those fancy 1440p144hz monitors to recommend then? Would have been lovely if the were mentioned in the video, but I suppose you chums would know for sure.

Edit: Boy these sure are spicy but expensive, are monitors always like 500+ bucks?

[u/TritiumNZlol]

I have always thought 4k monitors should be 35-42" I have no idea why they have stuck to 27".

[u/[deleted]]

So high refresh rate is better. Got it.

[u/hazetoblack]

I've had a 1440p 144hz, 4K 60Hz then a 1440p 100hz ultrawide (in that order and I much preferred the 4K to the 16:9 1440p 144hz. The clarity difference is immeditaly noticeable and most importantly for me remains noticeable throughout its life i.e games continued to wow me. Playing sea of thieves and destiny 2 on a good IPS 4K panel was amazing. My ultrawide 100hz (1440p) was a 100% noticeable step down in image quality that I noticed immediately and took about a week to get used to after using the 4K for a year. However overall the advantage of ultrawide and 100hz (and G-sync) does make it preferred for most games, whether it be competitive CSGO or the Witcher 3. That being said, you can get second hand LG IPS 4K displays for easily half the cost of the biggest and baddest ultrawides and honestly while I do prefer my ultrawide overall, unless you're going for the best of the best that price jump isn't o=worth it at all. I think my conclusion is that a nice IPS 4K panel is preferred to a 16:9 1440p 144hz panel unless you're super into competitive games. And the one linus was showing was only the same price as those high refresh 1440ps because it was a Gsync panel. a $300 IPS 4K i believe is the sweet spot. When a 32 inch 4K high refresh rate monitor becomes affordable and available I will be jumping on that immediately.

[u/YM_Industries]

Aaaargh, Linus called ClearType 'antialiasing' when it's actually subpixel rendering.

[u/DerFette88]

My opinion on 4K it only makes sense if you don't have to use the Scaling in Windows. Thats why i bought 3 42,5 Inch 4K Monitors.

​

Not primarly for gaming tough.

But for some casual Overwatch, Hots and World of Warcraft and some other older titles it works even with an GTX 1080.

[u/BeaconSlash]

Plotting a new build.

Say I wanted to run a triple monitor setup. 27" maybe unless I can find a really good triple ultrawide mount.

Say I wanted 1440p at 144Hz.

What GPU am I looking at buying?

Likely pairing with a 9600k or 9700k.