Battlefield 3 put to test with 4K monitor

Those crazy Germans from PCGH.de ordered an Eizo 36 inch monitor that puts two panels together to reach 4k resolution (in fact: 4096 by 2160). They played Battlefield 3 without frame drops on this monitor and a video shows the beauty of this resolution.

[Hozi]

Kinda makes watching the video pointless since my monitor isn't 4K.....

[Dasteru]

That and i doubt the camera used to record it was 4k capable.

[nveenio]

Neither matters in to game journalists.

[pandehz]

Nope its not pointless, this makes it very very sharp on a smaller monitor. The vid scales to fit the 1080p space

You dont need a 4k monitor to view 4k. Even professional video editing suites in which 4k videos from 4k pro cameras are edited dont have 4k monitor.

Try this link, set to original settings on quality choice and enjoy the vibrance and sharpness.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

On the above link, try switching between 1080p and original (4k) and observe the windows and various parts of the cityscape and overall quality.

@dasteru

That I agree, the cam and encoding used makes it pretty pointless. 4k game res and 720p video link? Fail

[abc1233]

Well the video itself is pretty pointless because of the camera quality and numerous other reasons, but you're right about viewing 4k content on a 1080p being worthwhile. This video also highlights the differences between 4k and 1080p quite well:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

The sharpness is simply amazing. Sit back and enjoy 4k content people.

[Christopher]

Just FYI, recording at 4k and then playing it back with a lower resolution is far from the same as generating dynamic graphics at 4k on the fly. The sharpness and contrast of the various elements aren't going to be noticeable if we're still living in an age where textures are being played back at 720p to 1080p resolutions that can be handled by the majority of GPUs. The only way the sharpness of 4k matters is if you run at 4k and have the TV downsize it to 1080p. Next gen consoles are likely going to still have issues getting all games at 1080p as it is.

Perhaps next gen.

[Kennytaur]

You don't get added vibrance and sharpness from a downscaled video. That doesn't make sense at all. The difference in your link has to do with compression, it's YouTube after all.

[ATi_Elite]

1. That camera is Not 4K
2. Your TV or Monitor is not 4K
3. It's friggin recorded OFF screen (MORONS learn to use FRAPS)
4. it's running at a CRAPPY sub 30 frames per second
5. Wow did you see the screen tear? I don't even think this is running on Ultra

BF3 PC on Ultra running on my 1600p monitor looks better than this video! I said "better than THIS VIDEO".....not real life 4K!

4K is only really worthy of TV's 50" or bigger as it provides more pixels to pump out greater detail for large screen TV's and Monitors that are used for intense video editing.

future 4K TV broadcast will be Compressed all to hell so whose to say if your getting 4K. 4K Theater Movies and Imax will see the biggest improvements.

[tubers]

The media/tech industry will still push this to consumers in mainstream levels like how 1080i/p was.

Good points still.

[GuyThatPlaysGames]

4K is just the next gimmick that they will try to convince you is so much better

[HardCover]

This is simply a resolution. If you choose to hype yourself up about it then that's your fault for being an idiot.

Or do you also think 1080p+ resolutions are "gimmicks?" Pretty laughable to think so, in my opinion.

[Rubberlegs]

That's like saying all image resolutions are gimmicks. Its the next step up from 1080p, there will always be a higher resolution over the next (8k, 12k).

The Hobbit was shown at Imax theaters (that were setup for it) in 4k resolution and that looked awesome. The movie was filmed with Red Epic cameras and those film at 4k and 5k.

[jon1234]

kinda makes it pointless to watch since I DONT SPEAK GERMAN!!

[sandman224]

Does it look better. I can't watch the video?

[pr0digyZA]

You can't tell unless you have a 4k monitor yourself, same reason a video can't give a true representation of something like a vita screen.

[FlyingFoxy]

framerate would suffer hugely anywhere near this res with even best vid cards, 1080p is the way to go

[solidt12]

For Now. But next year 4k will be easy with a single Card and with a great frame rate.

[Norrison]

If you mean 2014, yeah, that's the year maxwell is released

[poo342947294792]

not really that's why we have SLI or crossfire and highend gpus...at 1920x1200 in bf3 all maxed everything ect. I get like 100 fps on my pc and that's only a 2600k@5ghz and 2 GTX 580s OC to 950clocks

today that's 2 years old set up and newer cpu/gpu combos would ez ez rock 4k out they do it now with like eyefinity spaning 3 monitors instead of 3 its like one same thing

[pandehz]

Doable but dont think most dev's in the world will optimize such a pixel draw.

Even today most games are optimized for 720p because of consoles and anything above that is pure speculation and raw hardware pc power. Don't think the devs fully look into optimizing 1080p. Next gen they will focus on keeping 1080p as the standard I believe and 2k+ will become the speculation range as 1080p is today on consoles.

Whats insane is 720p is acceptable HD in my opinion and roughly 0.9Mpx(921,600pixels) when the gpu draws full hd at 1080p it is drawing roughly 2.07Mpx(2,073,600pixels) which is more than double. So all those extra pixels from 720p to 1080p on a multiplatform game is wasted gpu resources drawing unoptimized pixels which have not been thought out properly by a dev. Suddenly the resource draw is very high from the sytsem but the game only looks sharper and not too better. SO until devs actually look at 1080p in every game srsly can we be heading somewhere towards 4k in the future.

Reason being, not many ppl have sli setups or can afford them and again not many have the highest of high end cards and again not many buy them on the first half of its release year of new graphic cards.

[aceitman]

i dont think they would show it working if it wasnt working good , they had gt5 running on one and they said it looked stunning .

[Qrphe]

The base for the card they're using is already around a year old. Plus many folks were already running their games with 1600 vertical pixels while 4k has 2160. I think it's doable just like Monty mentions.

[Megaton]

Yeah, there are people out there who have tried this before and they have to SLI top cards to get it to run BF3 smooth at 4k. It costs thousands of dollars to game smoothly at 4k right now.

[Hassassin]

I'll keep my 1440p monitor until this becomes affordable... and more practical. Right now it needs two DVI-D inputs to work and treats it as two monitors side by side (so its like eyefinity without the bezel).

[isyourhouseonfire]

They should've chosen a game with better graphics... BF3 is big, which is great, but looks terrible. Why not try Call of Duty if they have a 4K screen? Idiots.

[Hassassin]

I feel bad cause I have the same amount of bubbles as this guy :S

[TekoIie]

I share your pain :3

[Reverent]

This guy has done literally nothing but troll everything that isn't Call if Duty ever since he made his account. Check his comment history. This guy needs to be banned. It's people like him that make N4G look bad.

Anyways, as my response to the troll himself, they choose BF3 because BF3 has *good* graphics. CoD doesn't. If you think otherwise, you're a fool and you need your eyes checked.

[venom06]

stupid CoD fanboy with a even stupider response... please pull your head out of your posterior...

[tee_bag242]

Obviously some troll has never seen battlefield in its fullest glory.

[Reverent]

Or even in 10% of it's glory lol.

[jjb1981]

It's like when first advertisements of color TVs were shown on black and white TVs... Silly rabbit

[urwifeminder]

No tv is transmitted in full 1080p here all 1080i or 720p i asked a tv guy he said cause of bandwith its cheaper so will they transmit 4k.

[tee_bag242]

lol. Because the TV guy said so.
Right now there are only 3 4k camera's in existence, and they are all owned by NHK Japan.

[ZoyosJD]

You are horribly misinformed or overly exaggerating.

Right now, you can buy a handheld camera that records at a 4k resolution for $5000.

http://www.avalive.com/JVC/...

Also the first part of what he said is true. No TV service provider that i know of broadcasts at 1080p (or at least not constantly) due to the increase in bandwidth that would be required. Not sure what he meant by "so will they transmit 4k." unless that was supposed to be a separate question.

[Skate-AK]

Just a quick question. Why did it jump from 1080p to 4k? Why not 2k? Or is 1080p really 2k?

[ElectricKaibutsu]

Maybe 4k is the only way you get a big enough jump in quality? Maybe the TV makers think people wouldn't upgrade to 2k.

I just checked Wikipedia and it seems 1080p is almost 2k. 1080p is 1920×1080 and 4k is 4096×2160. For some reason we refer to the vertical resolution in 1080p and the horizontal resolution in 4k... weird. Here's a nifty graphic comparing resolutions:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w...

[ZoyosJD]

That's because 4k is a film standard and 480/720/1080p is TV standard. The two groups are just merging and 4k has been around longer than "2160p". Plus, it rolls off the tongue smoother.

[3GenGames]

Think about it. If you double the width, to keep the same aspect ratio, you also need double the height. 2*2 screen gives you 4x as much space. Dunno why they chose it, but it really just means "4x 1080p."

[ElectricKaibutsu]

@3GenGames
It doesn't though. 4k is only twice the size of 1080p. The "1080" refers to the vertical resolution (1920x1080) and 4k refers to the horizontal (4096x2160).

[Npugz7]

1080p is good enough!!

[shutUpAndTakeMyMoney]

No 1920x1200 is goo enough.

[OneAboveAll]

Because i'm going to want to stop and admire the beautiful hi res flowers while i'm being shot at.

Pointless resolution.

[yeahokchief]

this isnt news. this is lame.

[Indo]

Okay lets record a game being played on a 4k tv set with a 1080p camera.

[talisker]

I actually like the second video when they play BF3 in 320x200... where Battlefield and Minecraft combine! :D

[ChipChipperson]

Uh huh... that didn't exactly make the lack luster single player more enjoyable in that video.