Will graphics cards keep up with 4K gaming?

[steve10765]

The price of 4K tv's/monitors are dropping fast, and will most likely continue to, but can graphics cards keep up? right now its pretty hard to run games on 4k even with the best graphics cards, let alone 12k(3 screens). I don't think maxwell will be as huge performance increase relative to 4K gaming, especially since they have probably designed the "base" of the card with the idea of 1080p and a bit higher(2560p?) being the target resolution, and 1080p or a bit higher with 3 screens.

when do you think cards will be able to run 4k like we run 1080P? not exactly as we are now, but say how it was a or 2 year ago, games arent getting any easier to run so its a large difference between performance increase relative to how hard it is to run games at 4k.

What do you guys have to say about this?

 

[PP Mguire]

4k gaming for mainstream is a long ways away. The people who can't afford 2 500 dollar cards can't afford even an 800 dollar 4k screen (that isn't released yet). Simple as that. People who are building machines now for 1000 or less will still be buying 150 dollar 1080p screens 2-3 years from now. Probably not the response you're looking for in that regard, but the truth.

As far as hardware goes, people underestimated just how powerful Kepler was compared to Fermi. Nvidia released the GK104 midrange chip as a high end card summer of 2012 because AMD didn't have anything to compete with. They had GK110 ready (albeit with yield problem) but they could have still released it if they wanted to. They waited over a year to release their full blown GK110 gaming card which CAN run a single 4k screen. I don't believe Maxwell will be that big of an increase like we saw, but the affordable cards will still be able to run 4k, just not with maxed settings. If you're aiming to do that, you'll have the money for the high end stuff.