Our Brave New World of 4K Displays | Hacker News Reader

Our Brave New World of 4K Displays

blog.codinghorror.com

66 pointscocoflunchy45 comments

I wish the author commented on whether or not he can view text comfortably at 1:1 scaling. 27" seems pretty small for that resolution, probably borderline.

As soon as you start playing with scaling you begin to lose the real estate of the monitor. Sure, things will look smooth but I wouldn't want to drop $700 on a 4k monitor only to have to scale it. At 200% scaling you end up with identical real estate as a 1080p monitor.

In case anyone is wondering, Googling shows that this monitor is also SST which is a good thing. It means on the inside there's only 1 actual panel instead of 2 panels stitched together. A lot of 4k monitors still run MST (the worse alternative to SST).

i have a 4k monitor at 28" and viewing/writing text/code at 1:1 scaling is perfectly fine!

i agree that a monitor with this resolution should not be scaled, the available real estate is exactly why i purchased it.

I have a BDM4065UC [1] which is a 4k 40" display, and I scale things up almost all the time. With the same number of pixels in less area, I don't see how you could avoid doing so.

I don't scale things as far as 200%, so I get more screen real estate, but if you aren't willing to scale at all, you might be disappointed after upgrading to 4k.

[1] http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/BDM4065UC_00/brilliance-led-bac...

I use the same with no scaling. I just wish I had a lower desk.

I have a 24" UHD screen and have no trouble reading at 1:1 scaling.

If we keep improving the DPI, then just having ever more beefy graphics card isn't going to scale. People tend to forget that graphics cards are really focussed on rendering 3D games, and the vast majority of our daily computer use does not involve that at all. Rendering 2D path graphics is much, much more common.

We need hardware accelerated path rendering we want to render text at those high resolutions fast efficiently. Thankfully, there have been people working on this for a while now, like Mark Kilgard at NVIDIA:

http://www.slideshare.net/Mark_Kilgard/gtc-2014-nvidia-path-...

It's covered by patents though, so I'm not sure how open this particular solution is.

It's made by Nvidia, so there's very little chance of it being open.

Most 2D rendering paths are already accelerated, for example you have DirectWrite in windows (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd3...). There is even a linux 2D driver that uses GL to accelerate 2D drawing, and they are/were even experimenting with caching fonts in surfaces.

Since when is desktop 2D graphics rendering a performance an issue ?

I understand the mobile story - they need to conserve energy + work on low end devices - but I doubt you're driving those 4k screens with ARM/Atom CPUs, low end integrated graphics chips and 2GB ram - once you have those giant screens you can fit a desktop machine somewhere as well and those aren't lacking the horsepower to draw 2D graphics.

That 8K near the end of that post is four times as many pixels to render as 4K. It's a surface area, it scales quadratically.

On top of that, the more pixels you have, the more a high frame rate matters to make animations look smooth. Sure, that might mostly just be scrolling on a webpage, but people care about this stuff. It's also physically less tiring for the eyes.

(Don't forget that, mobile includes laptops too - I'd like a high-res screen on my next laptop without the battery draining like crazy)

Yes, doubling the screen on one side raises the pixel count by 4x... but right now 3D graphics cards have at least a couple of orders of magnitude more graphics power than they need to drive a conventional 2D display, and 3 or 4 isn't out of the question, frankly. It really isn't a problem in 2D. Compared to any modern 3D game it's still a walk in the park for them. They've been overprovisioned for 2D work for a long time now. Even non-3D cards were getting pretty powerful before it just wasn't worth shipping 2D-only cards anymore, really, and that was a long time ago, and graphics cards have gotten scarily more powerful since then.

I am not a graphics card hardware expert, but I thought that the current tail end of the pipeline (shaders) basically was a massively parallel pixel handling engine. And that the hardware for that has been getting more and more generalized because of GPU compute.

Is it that inefficient to bend modern graphics card shaders to the task of rendering obscene numbers of pixels without the front end 3d geometry calculations?

No, that's exactly what Kilgard's approach is about, and it's backwards compatible with any NVIDIA card that supports CUDA, I believe.

Problem is GPUs are build for triangle rasterisation and that part is still baked in to hardware for performance. You can use hack stuff on top of the 3D pipeline to render vector graphics but you need to transform geometry and do triangulation which isn't really efficient and can't be done on the GPU efficiently. Coupled with overhead of talking to the GPU trough drivers and you end up being CPU bound and not a lot faster than the CPU rendering.

The equation changes when you increase screen resolution as the cost of setting up GPU to render is determined by geometry not by resolution and GPU rasterization is practically free compared to CPU which gets slower as you increase the resolution - so at the high enough resolution the driver overhead might matter less.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Displayport 1.2 can only provide 4K@60Hz via MST, which is something like simulating two vertical displays as one? I've heard this approach causes problems with some apps/OSes. Why can't they just start making displays and graphic cards with Displayport 1.3?

Displayport 1.2 can handle 4k@60hz without MST.

MST is, to my understanding, a cost savings on the panel manufacturer side.

Driving a display over a line is a matter of bandwidth. An MST monitor and a single panel monitor both have the same number of pixels.

I went for 4K recently, however, I went for real 4K, as in 4096 pixels across rather than a mere 3840. So that is resolution dialed up 'to 11'. I also went for 31" rather than anything larger as I didn't want to 'crane my neck' to see the top of the see of pixels.

For me it is actually important to see individual pixels, this I can do on my 4K mega-screen. For me 31" was the 'sweet spot', 27" or 24" would just not be practical.

I also stayed with the one screen, for me I get 4 'HD laptop screens' which is what I want, to have the equivalent of 12 - not sure I would be that productive with a gazillion of windows open.

What surprised me was how well different devices do. I plugged in my Chromebook on the HDMI input and it just worked. My Chromebook is lowest of the low, designed for an 8 year old, I am not even sure it has things like a CPU or memory, but it just works on 4K, very nicely.

Obviously I have a real PC with linux to drive the screen, I did need to create the 4096 modes as it would only do regular 3840 out the box.

One feature these monitors have is the ability to run more than one input with two inputs driving the screen side by side. So you can get your refresh rates even with lame hardware if you don't mind using two cables. (These can go to the same graphics card or two PC's).

If you are a developer where the bottleneck is the speed of your own brain (rather than the graphics card) then I highly recommend going 4K. Big is good but there is a limit to how big which is tied in to the vertical height - you don't want to be staring at the ceiling.

With the number of Amazon affiliate links this post has, how come it doesn't get flagged as spam? Is it the authors celebrity?

> Is it the authors celebrity?

Kinda, yes. The author is Jeff Atwood, founder of StackOverflow (you probably don't need a link) and Discourse ([1], ruby-based modern open forum software). He's also a hardware "enthusiast", to say the least, such posts where he's all excited about his new shiny shiny thingie are not uncommon on his blog. As such (and because he's probably already full of $$$), I wouldn't say the affiliate money is his primary motivation to blog this, I think he writes a geek post then puts Amazon affiliated links because he can, but maybe I'm naive.

[1] http://www.discourse.org/

Say we're looking at $500 per sale @ 10% Amazon commish = $50 a sale for just the monitors/graphics cards he's pimping. But it's a 30 day cookie and many here have Amazon prime, so we'll call it $100.

Say the number 1 spot on HN gets him 10,000 views. 1% buy rate:

10,000 views * 0.01 buy rate * $100 commish per user = $10,000

Dudes expected to bank 10k from this single post.

Guess that explains why he doesn't write about USB sticks.

Aliens cause global warming...

Well, actually...

http://blog.codinghorror.com/a-ssd-in-your-pocket/

But it's a 30 day cookie and many here have Amazon prime, so we'll call it $100.

Last time I checked an Amazon cookie lasts about 24 hours. Also, honestly what is your problem with his Amazon affiliate ? It is not like you are forced to buy a monitor if you follow his link. I'm more interested in what he has to say than in actually buying a display now.

I was wondering when I would be rich enough to be able to afford such a set-up. Turns out, it's when I write a tech blog popular enough to make affiliate links worthwhile.

If you build a Gaming computer with NVIDIA cards isn't it basically equivalent to a inexpensive deep learning setup?

27 is an annoying size for coding with multi monitors IMO. In landscape mode you've got a lot of width but not enough height to fill your field of view. But turning it vertically gives you way too much height and you crick your neck.

The right height IMO is 22-24 in portrait or 30 inch 16:10 or 32 inch 16:9 or larger in landscape. If you're going to maximize your screen area, maximize in both directions.

This is why I totally prefer the Chromebook Pixel aspect ratio for coding. I wish you could get 3:2 240dpi+ 27-30" monitors. Being stuck using 16:9 for anything other than watching a movie or show sucks.

Or the 1:1 ratio (=square) screen Eizo had / has; I wouldn't mind that. But ATM with my 16:9 and 16:10 screens (work / home), I don't actually need more vertical real estate.

Im curious for more in depth detail about the differences between 1440p at native scale or 4k at 2x scale, does the loss of effective screen space not negate any gains in crispness? I've only recently upgraded from two 1080p screens to a single 2560x1440 screen and I'm finding the extra space incredibly useful. That being said I absolutely love the fine text on my retina macbook.

I just don't see the point, I have a 2015 Retina Macbook Pro and a 1080p 24" Dell monitor and can hardly feel any difference. It might have to do with the scaling though.

I wish they stopped with the pixel race or at least made it easy for the user to opt-out. 1080p is still pretty great for any mid size laptop and maybe then I'd be able to run Mission Control at more than 5fps.

Stop with the pixel race? Seriously? Monitors have been stagnant for a decade. Look at how many laptop screens are stuck STILL at 1366X768. What pixel race are you talking about?

I have to agree here. Even today when (as the blog claims) 4K is "here", I had to specifically request even a 2560x1440 display at work for the modest amount of video and photo editing I do here. I spoiled myself at home with a similar display (one of the barebones 2560x1440 models they used to sell at Microcenter) and going to 1920x1080 at work was killing me.

I'm sure that a lot of it depends on usage (when doesn't it?) and even web browsing involved a lot of CTRL-scrolling the first time I visit a page to scale the text and images up. Still, being able to work on plain old 1080p video with room for a timeline and tools is incredibly useful and moving from a TN panel to IPS made it easier to get more accurate colors.

On one hand, the number of cheap 1920x1080 TN panels that have trickled down to even cheap notebook and desktop displays is a good thing but it seems like we're just starting to see better than that now that 4K and 5K are hitting the high end. Outside of watching movies, I can't think of anywhere that 1920x1080 would be all you'd want.

I think that manufacturers have been busy pushing small screen pixel density for tablets & phones. So there has been a race just not the forefront at the large display or laptop markets.

Agreed, however, the context wasn't tablets & phones.

It is not the context, but that context could help explain the lack of R&D at those segments.

Sounds like something might be wrong with your MacBook Pro, I would get it checked out. My 2015 13" MacBook Pro pretty consistently shows between 20-35 fps (measured with Quartz Debug Framerate) when using Mission Control.

You should get your eyes looked at. Most people have trouble going back to 1080p after using a Retina. The difference is incredible.

There is a massive difference in text sharpness when comparing a rMBP 15" (900p in 2x) screen vs. 1080p 24" monitor, there are absolutely no doubts about this. If you have perfect eyesight or exceed it, you would be affected less than the average users who will notice the difference.

Are you sure you're not referring to the usable workspace? The usable workspace is half the native resolution when using the default 2x setting on OS X, in your case it is 1440x900 resolution or 900p on your 15" rMBP. The text should be very easy for your eyes to read for several hours compared to your 24" screen.

For me, as I use the computer for more than 8-10 hours every day for work, Retina/Hi-DPI has helped with tired eyes at the end of the day. Eyestrain issues are like nonexistant with retina displays for me.

Is there any fully featured software to handle chopping these up into 4 virtual monitors, or basically just highly efficient window management so one's not constantly fritzing around resizing things?

AMD ha(s)/(d) HydraVision [1]. Last time I used it was I think in 2010, but you could partition your display to create multiple ones.

[1] http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/HYDRAVISION-F...

on OSX I use Spectacle, a simple window management tool, which would allow you to put a window in the top left, right, etc corners. Ubuntu - IIRC - has it by default, but it may depend on packages / window managers. Windows probably has something similar too; windows+left/right does a thing at least in windows 7, that much I remember.

I never really bother though, too much effort. I like things to stay front and center. With XCode, even a 27 inch cinema display doesn't give you enough screen real estate (assistant editor, all sidebars, etc)

Divvy? http://alternativeto.net/software/divvy/

Does anyone have experience coding on 21:9 screens like the Acer XR341CK?

I have a 21:9 display, the LG 34UM95. Overall I like it, but I wish I had gotten the curved version (I think). It's so wide that I find the edges a little bit unusable for full-time stuff. It's nice to keep notes and things off to the sides.

I went this route because I didn't want a 3-monitor setup, and a 2-monitor has the bezels in your direct view, or one monitor off to the side. My current setup is the 34UM95, and a 24" Apple Cinema display (on a different machine) directly above the 21:9 display.

The curved version has come down a bit in price, I may try swapping to that.

Yes. I like it much more than a dual monitor setup. I also tried 4K monitors and at 27" it's just too small for my eyes. I need to scale up everything anyways so I am essentially getting a 27" 1440p with smoother fonts and more image retention issues. More screen space on the other hand is real and useful right away.

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