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Comment by larzang | Hacker News Reader

The controversial benchmarks are always at the 1080p level, and I have to wonder: who are these magical consumers who are willing to consider shelling out for an i9 and yet are still playing at 1080p.

Of course such marketing benchmarking HAS to be done at 1080p, because anything more challenging and you're entirely gpu bound with cpu differences becoming margin of error fractions of a percent.

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There are a of lot reasons to game at 1080p

* You don't really want a bigger monitor than 24" for competitive shooters, because then you can't see everything at once. There is only one 1440p monitor in that size that I know of and no 4k monitors that I know of

* You want a monitor with 144Hz (or better!) and low input latency. 1440p and 4k monitors that do this are rare or non existent

* Easier to stream

* Overall appearance of a game at 1080p with more anti aliasing vs 4k with less isn't that difference. text being an exception of course.

Dell manufactures a 4k monitor at 24'', I have one at home. They surely are not the only ones: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-24-ultra-hd-4k-mon...

cool, I think things are moving in a direction where 4k high level gaming is going to be more possible. The dell monitor is still only 60hz so isn't going to be desirable yet, but that could change soon.

the other issue is input latency which is hard to find specs for. I have an old dell 1080p monitor that is a total outlier on that end and I never want to give it up!

but yeah, with more 24" options, higher refresh rates, and the latest nvidia cards 4k, 144hz gaming is going to be viable soon.

There are a few 24" 2560x1440 panels around, I have a pair of dell ones at work, nice IPS screens and not expensive.

yeah last I looked Dell was the only 24" 1440p I could find. it is tempting!

I rather have to wonder: who are these magical consumers who are willing to consider shelling out for an i9 and yet are still playing at 60Hz?

If you want to achieve 144 fps (constantly) you often have to lower graphics to levels where you're CPU bound.

High refresh rates. I can't afford a gaming desktop right now but if I did I would definitely look either for a 1080p 144hz or at most 1440p but then you have issues with fractal scaling on linux. The fact that I want to run linux also limits me in using an AMD gpu only due to the miles ahead hassle free drivers they have.

Dual booting exists you know... I run a windows and linux dual boot setup at home. You're right with regards to AMD gpu's in that they're hassle free since kernel 4.15 (I have a Vega 56).

How is dual booting relevant to the hardware choice? Dual boot or not it's the same monitor and gpu.

If you want more than 60Hz and not compressed colors then you will have to play at 1080p. Most gamers want more than 60Hz.

I run a 1440p IPS screen with 144Hz. DP 1.4 supports up to 4K with 120Hz by default. You really are not limited to 1080p anymore.

Not by the connections, but from the benchmarks I've seen GPUs can't keep up with that for graphics-intensive games. FreeSync/G-Sync do help a bit getting at least more than 60 fps.

Which GPU benchmark source are using to back up this statement because there are plenty of cards that can drive more than 60FPS+..

E.g. here's benchmark numbers delivered by Nvidia, and even their best card doesn't hit 120 fps in all games at 4k - if you want fps over resolution, you're going to switch down, especially if you aren't on a truly top-of-line card. https://videocardz.com/77983/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-...

These benchmarks are conducted on the games "ultra" settings, which most of the time forgo any idea of resource efficiency. Games are highly configurable and often give the options to increase framerate a lot at a negligible visual impact, even just lowering the preset to "high" achieves this most of the time.

Also, with variable refresh rate, reaching exactly the maximum refresh rate of the monitor isn't very important.

The comment chain also referred to reaching "more than 60 frames on higher than 1080p resolution", there are luckily more options than 4K.

I see this said all the time and it is extremely silly. Just because there are new games that don't run at 120Hz and 4k with the highest settings on a recent card doesn't mean that "GPUs can't do 120Hz at 4k". Graphics settings, more GPUs, games that are just a few years old, and anything not game related still apply. Saying "GPUs can't do 120Hz at 4k" is nonsense.

> Most gamers want more than 60Hz.

Citation please.

gamer here. I want more than 60hz It may not be true that most do but many do, especially for competitive 3d shooters.

Indeed - it was the "Most" that rankled me, because "Most" gamers probably don't care - as evidenced by the huge numbers who play consoles which tend to cap at 30 or 60fps.

old timer here that used to play quake on a crt monitor. LCDs were a huge downgrade that we're only now digging ourselves out of.

> who are these magical consumers who are willing to consider shelling out for an i9 and yet are still playing at 1080p.

Reviewers test at 1080p because that effectively removes the GPU from the equation, at higher resolutions it's mostly all GPU limited.

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