What graphic card specs needed for a 4K monitor?

[lownslo 592]

On 1/10/2018 at 7:42 AM, vortex681 said:

I know it's slightly off-topic but I can never see why anyone would have lens flare selected in a flight sim. Quite apart from the small performance hit it gives, you don't see the effect as a real-world pilot - it's only visible through a camera lens so it's not realistic (unless you're watching a video taken from inside a cockpit, of course).

You’re not alone. It’s more often a sign of poor photographic technique and/or lenses. Either way, nothing to be proud of.  And yes, it’s not visible to the eye.

Returning to the regularly scheduled programming...

Greg

[Ted Striker 338]

1 hour ago, MarkW said:

lots of questions but I really don't understand this part of the hardware

Good questions and lots to consider. If you get too small of a 4k screen the menus and text will be small and harder to read. I have read that windows 10 (which you must be using with the 8700k) has a scaling function that allows you to enlarge text but I don't know if it entirely mitigates the problem and does not introduce other problems. Someone with Windows 10 will have to chime in on this.

I would suggest putting some 4k cockpit screenshots on a flash drive, taking them to a TV store, and look at the pictures on different size screens. A larger screen will allow you to place the screen further from you. You have to determine what that optimum distance for you is based on your personal preference and desk/room size. For us old farts a large screen further away allows us to push that screen far enough away that we can fly without our reading glasses and still see the gauges clearly.  Remember that when you sim with a large monitor most of the screen is in your peripheral vision and you are only focused on a small portion at any one time. Like in a real plane. The intent is not to be able to look at the entire screen at once as when watching a movie. The main advantage to me of a large 4k screen is it increases my field of view and dramatically reduces the amount of panning I need to do both vertically and horizontally. I no longer had a need for Track IR after I got my 4k monitor. That being said, that is my preference, others may want a 4k screen to increase the resolution to get as crisp an image as possible. In that case you would get a smaller screen. I am mentioning all this to keep in your mind when you go to the TV store and compare images on a 34" 4k screen and a 65" 4k screen. That is where the personal preference on screen size comes in.

A 4k screen does not seem to require as much AA for a nice image quality. I don't understand why this is because the pixel density of my 55" 4k TV is the same a my previous smaller monitor. Regardless, lower AA settings improves performance, however the 4k image itself zaps some performance so you win some, lose some. I went from a 19" single monitor to 3 19" triple monitors, then to the 4k TV. The pixel density remained the same but lower AA settings were acceptable on the 4k TV. Maybe because I didn't have my reading glasses on!

Going from a single monitor to a triple monitor setup I had about a 20% FPS loss. Doubling the pixels from the triple monitors to the 4k did not impact my fps. The impact on my GPU usage was 50% going to triple monitors and another 20% going to 4k. This all varied depending on the addons used. The more complex the addons the less the impact from the change in monitors, but the complex addons themselves versus default or simple addons had an initial performance impact.

30hz vs. 60hz. You can get away with running unlimited frames with 1080p monitor. When you add a 4k monitor and high graphics settings you may peg that GPU at 100% with unlimited FPS settings and then your fps will start to suffer. See paragraph above. Having a 30 hz capable monitor allows you to vsync your sim to your monitor at 30 fps. Your monitor will then control your FPS to a reasonable 30 FPS. The benefit of this is it drastically reduces the load on your GPU and allows you to increase your graphics settings. I only have a 3gb 780GTX and I fly around in 4k this way at 30 hz, I would have to reduce all my settings a lot to be able to fly around at 60 hz. Vsyncing your sim to the monitor refresh rate is similar to what we used to to in FSX with the 1/2 rate refresh in Nvidia inspector. The higher the FPS the more data you are feeding to your GPU to process. If you flood the GPU you need to lower the graphics settings to keep it from choking, if you fly with lower FPS you can turn up graphic settings and enjoy the wavy grass. At least that has been my experience. With your 1080ti you have a lot more capacity and resources to run higher graphic settings than I do with my old 780 GTX. 

Hope this provides more answers than confusion.

Ted

 

[MarkW 1,491]

Ted, thank you so much for the detailed information.  All makes sense now.  I actually just purchased a 65" 4K tv for my house so I can load the images from the stick on it to see what its all about.  The more I think about it I am thinking 50 or 55" is the way to go.

[odourboy 1,289]

On the question of 30Hz and 60 Hz operation, I'll add based on my experience in 4K that 60Hz is great if you use Track IR as it makes gor very smooth panning IF the scenario you're running allows your sim to maintain at least 60Hz FPS. (I can generally maintain 60 Hz in fair weather with a lighter aircraft away from more congested cities/airports).

For some reason, setting vsync on and switching my monitor to 30Hz is more efficient (lower CPU load on the primary thread) than locking FPS at 30 Hz and results in noticeably smoother scenery  motion. So for heavier aircraft and scenery settings, i get the best experience by leaving frames unlimited and locking at 30Hz with vsync and monitor at 30Hz. Note that this for P3D. In the old FSX days, this could be achieved with a 60hz monitor using 1/2 refresh vsync in NI (in full screen of course). 

So to summarize, I leave frames unlimited,  vsync on and switch my monitor refresh rate between 30 and 60Hz using Nvidia control panel (which i can do on the fly) based on the scenario I'm simming. 

[MarkW 1,491]

8 hours ago, odourboy said:

On the question of 30Hz and 60 Hz operation, I'll add based on my experience in 4K that 60Hz is great if you use Track IR as it makes gor very smooth panning IF the scenario you're running allows your sim to maintain at least 60Hz FPS. (I can generally maintain 60 Hz in fair weather with a lighter aircraft away from more congested cities/airports).

For some reason, setting vsync on and switching my monitor to 30Hz is more efficient (lower CPU load on the primary thread) than locking FPS at 30 Hz and results in noticeably smoother scenery  motion. So for heavier aircraft and scenery settings, i get the best experience by leaving frames unlimited and locking at 30Hz with vsync and monitor at 30Hz. Note that this for P3D. In the old FSX days, this could be achieved with a 60hz monitor using 1/2 refresh vsync in NI (in full screen of course). 

So to summarize, I leave frames unlimited,  vsync on and switch my monitor refresh rate between 30 and 60Hz using Nvidia control panel (which i can do on the fly) based on the scenario I'm simming. 

How can you determine if the 4K tv supports 30hz?  When I look at these Tv's online they mostly say 60hz and even in the detailed specs make no reference to 30. 

[odourboy 1,289]

1 hour ago, MarkW said:

How can you determine if the 4K tv supports 30hz?  When I look at these Tv's online they mostly say 60hz and even in the detailed specs make no reference to 30. 

Gosh. I'm not sure. I got lucky because I was still on FSX when I bought my monitor and didn't need 30 Hz. If it's not in the specs, ask here?

[MarkW 1,491]

On 1/12/2018 at 6:13 PM, odourboy said:

Gosh. I'm not sure. I got lucky because I was still on FSX when I bought my monitor and didn't need 30 Hz. If it's not in the specs, ask here?

Well here is another question, if you buy a 60Hz 4K TV, can you run it at 30 using some Nvidia 1/2 refresh rate trick?

[EmpireKicking 8]

All tech guys and those from YouTube say you need an 1080 or 1080TI. I wish they made an 4K screen that can able to run on more cards rather then spending $800 on a new card before spending an $1k 4k moniter

Sucks, since I'm using an 680 card

[odourboy 1,289]

41 minutes ago, MarkW said:

Well here is another question, if you buy a 60Hz 4K TV, can you run it at 30 using some Nvidia 1/2 refresh rate trick?

Not for P3D. It's not true full screen so the 1/2 refresh rate setting doesn't work. (Works fine for FSX or XPlane though.)

[Guest]

2 hours ago, MarkW said:

Well here is another question, if you buy a 60Hz 4K TV

I’d be really surprised if a HDMI 2.0 based 4K “TV” didn’t support 30HZ.  However, it is more likely a DisplayPort 1.x 4K “monitor” would NOT support 4K at 30HZ.  

Cheers Rob

[Ted Striker 338]

On 1/12/2018 at 3:02 PM, MarkW said:

How can you determine if the 4K tv supports 30hz?

Mark, I used this site when picking selecting a 4k TV. If you select a TV you are interested in you can scroll down to a section called "supported resolutions" and it will tell you if it supports 30 hz and at what resolution and color specification.

By the way, contrary to what I've read was possible, I have been able to use my new Concorde-X with 4k in P3Dv3. However I've got no addons and the default medium P3D settings.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews

Ted

Edited January 16, 2018 by Ted Striker
Forgot to add link

[MarkW 1,491]

8 minutes ago, Ted Striker said:

 

By the way, contrary to what I've read was possible, I have been able to use my new Concorde-X with 4k in P3Dv3. However I've got no addons and the default medium P3D settings.

Ted

Concorde-X in P3D v4 ----  Surely you can't be serious (see what I did there) ?  With the CIVA INS as well?

Also - You said "this site" but no site came up on your post, not sure if Avsim blocked it or not.  Can you resend.  thanks.

[MarkW 1,491]

3 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I’d be really surprised if a HDMI 2.0 based 4K “TV” didn’t support 30HZ.  However, it is more likely a DisplayPort 1.x 4K “monitor” would NOT support 4K at 30HZ.  

Cheers Rob

OK cool!

[Ted Striker 338]

4 hours ago, EmpireKicking said:

All tech guys and those from YouTube say you need an 1080 or 1080TI. I wish they made an 4K screen that can able to run on more cards rather then spending $800 on a new card before spending an $1k 4k moniter

Sucks, since I'm using an 680 card

I'm still using a 780GTX card with a 4k monitor due to the current low availability and high prices of a 1080ti. My 780 GTX with only 3gb VRAM works fine, you just need to reduce a lot of the graphics settings, especially in stormy weather. FSX, P3dv3, and P3dv4 all run fine and look better than they did on my previous lower resolution monitor. I will eventually get a 1080ti so I can turn up the graphics settings but I am pleased with the performance and image quality now and don't feel the need to pay the current inflated prices for a 1080ti.

Ted

[Ted Striker 338]

5 minutes ago, MarkW said:

Concorde-X in P3D v4 ----  Surely you can't be serious (see what I did there) ?  With the CIVA INS as well?

Also - You said "this site" but no site came up on your post, not sure if Avsim blocked it or not.  Can you resend.  thanks.

Sorry Mark, I edited the post and added the link. I see what you did there

And yes, with the CIVA. I do not have the spotlights installed though. I am just learning to fly it so I am saving and restarting the Concorde a lot which reduces the VAS. I don't know yet whether it will make it across the pond in one flight. Some reports I read said it would crash as soon as you tried to load it in 4k. I bought it almost 2 years ago and never installed it because of the 4k issues I read about. I was just going to wait for the P3Dv4 version but as you know this may not be developed. So I am very pleased that I can use it with P3Dv3 in 4k.

Ted