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Comment by Novosell | Hacker News Reader

Gaming at 2160p is just too expensive still, imo. You gotta pay more for your monitor, GPU and PSU. Then if you want side monitors that match in resolution, you're paying more for those as well.

You say PC gamers at the start of your comment and gaming PC enthusiasts at the end. These groups are not the same and I'd say the latter is largely doing ultrawide, 4k monitor or even 4k TV.

According to steam, 56% are on 1080p, 20% on 1440p and 4% on 2160p.

So gamers as a whole are still settled on 1080p, actually. Not everyone is rich.

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The major drawback for PC gaming at 4k that I never see mentioned is how much heat the panels generate. Many of them generate so much heat that rely on active cooling! I bought a pair of high refresh 4k displays and combined with the PC, they raised my room to an uncomfortable temperature. I returned them for other reasons (hard to justify not returning them when I got laid off a week after purchasing them), but I've since made note of the wattage when scouting monitors.

>hard to justify not returning them when I got laid off a week after purchasing them

Ouch, had something similar happen to me before when I bought a VR headset and had to return it. Wishing you the best on your job search!

That was earlier this year. I found a new job with a pay raise so it turned out alright. Still miss my old team though.. we've been scattered like straws in the wind.

I'm still using a 50" 1080p (plasma!) television in my living room. It's close to 15 years old now. I've seen newer and bigger TVs many times at my friends house, but it's just not better enough that I can be bothered to upgrade.

Doesn't plasma have deep blacks and color reproduction similar to OLED? They're still very good displays, and being 15 years old means it probably pre-dates the SmartTV era.

Yes exactly, the color is really good and it's just a stupid monitor that has an old basic Chromecast and a Nintendo Switch plugged in.

It does have HDMI-CEC, so I haven't even used the remote control in several years.

Classic Plasma TVs are no joke. I’ve got a 720p Plasma TV that still gets the job done.

If you’re ok with the resolution, then the only downside is significant power consumption and lack of HDR support.

I recently recently upgraded my main monitor from 1440p x 144hz to 4K x 144hz (with lots of caveats) and I agree with your assessment. If I had not made significant compromises, it would have cost at least $500 to get a decent monitor, which most people are not willing to spend.

Even with this monitor, I'm barely able to run it with my (expensive, though older) graphics card, and the screen alarmingly flashes whenever I change any settings. It's stable, but this is not a simple plug-and-play configuration (mine requires two DP cables and fiddling with the menu + NVIDIA control panel).

Why do you need two DP cables? Is there not enough bandwidth in a single one? I use a 4k@60 display, which is the maximum my cheap Anker USB-C Hub can manage.

I'm not sure, but there's an in-depth exploration of the monitor here: https://tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_nitro_xv273k.htm

Reddit also seems to have some people who have managed to get 144 with FreeSync, but I've only managed 120.

Funnily enough while I was typing this Netflix caused both my monitors to blackscreen (some sort of NVIDIA reset I think) and then come back. It's not totally stable!

This is likely a cable issue. Certain cable types can't handle 4k. I had to switch from DisplayPort to HDMI with a properly rated cable to get past this in the past.

It works up until too many pixels change, basically.

Had the same issue at 4k 60fps, it mostly worked but the screen flashed black from time to time. I used the thickest cable I had lying around and it has worked fine since.

If you're on an Nvidia 4000 series DisplayPort is limited to 1.4, ~26 Gigabit/s.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/729232-guide-to-display-cabl... is a calculator for bandwidth 4K@144 HDR is ~40 Gigabit/s. You can do better with compression, but I find Nvidia cards have an issue with compression enabled.

Interesting. I've been running my 4K monitor at 240Hz with HDR enabled for months and haven't had any issues with Display Stream Compression on my 4080.

For me it's a small issue with full screen (including borderless iirc) games causing the display to black out for a few seconds.

I don't think it's an issue until you notice. I only noticed because I toggle HDR for some games and at 1440p240hz, the difference is just enough to not need DSC

I don’t think that’s true anymore. I routinely find 4K/27” monitors for under $100 on Craigslist, and a 3080-equivalent is still good enough to play most games on med-high settings at 4K and ~90Hz, especially if DLSS is available.

Your hypothetical person has a 3080 but needs to crawl craigslist for a sub-100$ monitor? U guess those people exist, but idk why you'd bother with a 3080 to then buy a low refreh rate, high input latency, probably TN, low color accuracy craigslist runoff.

Could just get a 3060 and a nice 1440p monitor.

3080-equivalent performance can be had for a few hundred bucks these days, no?

Not rich. Well within reach for Americans with expendable income. Mid range 16" macbook pros are in the same price ballpark as 4k gaming rigs. Or put another way costs less than a vacation for two to a popular destination.

> You say PC gamers at the start of your comment and gaming PC enthusiasts at the end. These groups are not the same

Prove to me those aren't synonyms.

Prove to me they are.

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