Graphics card for 4k?

facade

I had a look at the Tv guarantee, and my 5 years are up :eek:
So a huge bang is imminent

Quite fancy an upgrade to 4k. Assuming I can get a 3840x2160 @60Hz single palette from Samsung, what on Earth can I watch on it?

I can get 4k video onto the PC alright, but HD is about the limit for my graphics card.

So what I need is a cheap low power card that can output 4k.

A GT730 is about £80 (about £50 too much ) and takes 300W!

I don't want to play games and draw fancy 3d polygons, I want to shift MP4 AVC@5.1 onto the TV.

Any suggestions?


What I haven't looked into is if I can just stream 4k across the ethernet using trusty serviio, but I'd have thought I'd run out of bandwidth, actually, I'd likely need an SSD I bet a hard drive isn't fast enough- I wonder how Netflix can send 4k video?

jshm2

Well the PHILIPS 40PUT6400 is 4k and comes in at around £400 Samsung have the SAMSUNG UE48JS8500 which comes in at around £1000

But content is still catching up to HD - let alone 4k. In fact there are only 2 or 3 channels that even do 4k content!

In cards a Radeon R9 380 has a good price/performance ratio and it can do 4k. But the thing about cards is you need a decent PSU regardless of what you buy. If you have a crap PSU then you're wasting your money getting a 4k capable card.

But if you want it for the processing rather than gaming then maybe look at the Nvidia Quadro. OK the go all the way up to £4,500 but I doubt you're looking to make Hollywood movies. Maybe go for the Quadro K4000

paddyrg

If you're asking how broadcasters do it, the answer is heavy compression. More dots does not necessarily mean a better picture, as they compress hugely.

Indeed, for most people, the eye cannot actually resolve the added resolution at normal viewing distances, bit of a sales gimmick like 3D was. Most cinema is projected at 4k (or even 2k). On a 40' screen. The most commonly used professional cine camera (Arri Alexa) is natively 2k, they've just pushed into 3.5k (upscaled for 4k). 35mm film resolved to roughly 3k. Most 4k TV sets are displaying information that doesn't truly exist in the first place. Not saying don't get one, just you're into vastly diminishing returns, so let the old one die before rushing in

And the standards are being pushed for 8k TV :-$

facade

Thanks,
that card seems a bit expensive though.

just thinking out loud really, looks like the xbox one S would be an option, if I upgraded my ethernet to gigabit, might have to install windows 10 to get it working though, although a smart tv ought to be able to play 4K over the ethernet anyway with my current setup.



My current 3D HD Smart TV was a bit of a dead end, there was quite a lot of 3D content when I bought it, then the BBC said 3D was too expensive and the content dried up.

I'll have to take a trip somewhere that can show me 4k streamed content from Netflix to see how good it is in real life.
At the moment I can get a subjectively quite good picture at 1920x1080 with only 10.3 Mb/s average, so a 4k picture is going to need 40Mb/s, and that is if the background keeps still.

facade

paddyrg wrote: »

If you're asking how broadcasters do it, the answer is heavy compression. More dots does not necessarily mean a better picture, as they compress hugely.

Indeed, for most people, the eye cannot actually resolve the added resolution at normal viewing distances, bit of a sales gimmick like 3D was.

Yes, from the settee even the freeview SD channels "look" ok, just as long as you don't go near the TV or try to read the small print on the adverts (and everybody moves very slowly)

The HD channels "look" about as good as you remember the old analogue pictures, but there might be a bit of gazing back through rose tinted spectacles there

I'm not rushing out to buy one, but now the guarantee is up I'm on borrowed time with the lead free solder and cheap pirated capacitors :D (I actually did get a new LCD panel after 2 years, this one has lasted 50% longer)
When I replace it, odds are it will be with a 4k set, so it would be nice if I was prepared for it:cool:

jshm2

facade wrote: »

Thanks,
that card seems a bit expensive though.

just thinking out loud really, looks like the xbox one S would be an option, if I upgraded my ethernet to gigabit, might have to install windows 10 to get it working though, although a smart tv ought to be able to play 4K over the ethernet anyway with my current setup.



My current 3D HD Smart TV was a bit of a dead end, there was quite a lot of 3D content when I bought it, then the BBC said 3D was too expensive and the content dried up.

I'll have to take a trip somewhere that can show me 4k streamed content from Netflix to see how good it is in real life.
At the moment I can get a subjectively quite good picture at 1920x1080 with only 10.3 Mb/s average, so a 4k picture is going to need 40Mb/s, and that is if the background keeps still.

The Xbox is looking to join Playstation in getting onto the PC platform, over time we may see things move onto fully cloud systems anyway. But if you buy an Xbox now you don't need gigabit for streaming. The 4k isn't really that important right now as there isn't much content.

The real upgrade is the newer SMART TV and it's OS will practically be your new console/computer as well. Buy yourself a wireless touchpad keyboard and you'll be able to use it as an AIO PC.

Netflix do not do 4k content. In fact most of their content isn't even HD! To get the real HD (what they call "Super HD" i.e. 1080p) you need to pay an extra price.

Cisco001

Are you just using the PC for streaming video?

GT730 do not use 300W! Depends on which version you are getting, it only take 50W.
It require 300W PSU for the whole system.

Forgot to say, you can get 2nd hand GT730 for about £20 at CEX.

stator

Don't worry about the power usage of the GFX Card, it's only the maximum usage. If you're just playing solitair it won't be using the max, they all have advanced power management these days and fans that speed up and slow down automatically with the temperature.
If you are thinking about 4K video then I would look carefully at the hardware specs of the chip.
I've got a 4K monitor and a couple of old GFX cards in crossfire (HD 7770 and R7 250X) wihch works very well for games etc but if I try and stream a 4k video on youtube on chrome it's slow and choppy. I believe this is because google serves up a different codec to chrome. But it works fine on firefox. It still uses up a lot of CPU time though. If you had a new graphics chip that supports hardware decode then it will use less CPU.
The problem is that many manufacturers recycle their old chips, so buying a new graphics card doesn't guarantee the latest chip. My R7 250X is the same as my HD 7770 despite being bought several years later, AMD just repackaged it and sold it again. This would good news for me because I could crossfire them, but bad news because it doesn't support HDMI 2.0 etc

If buying a new GFX card for 4k media I would want to make sure it had H265 decoding built in and HDMI 2.0 built in.