Just recently, I was looking at a bunch of screenshots I took while playing Diablo II on Battle.net about seven years ago. Not only did they remind me of the great times I had playing hardcore mode on US-East, but they reminded me that only a few years ago, I was playing PC games on my “huge” 19-inch CRT monitor at a measly 640x480 resolution. I say measly because the screenshot looked tiny on my 24-inch 1900x1200 LCD. It made me realize just how much more screen real estate today’s PC gamers have compared to those of only seven years ago. This year, new 30-inch XHD2 LCDs will hit the market with resolutions up to 3840x2160 (more than four times the resolution of 1080p) and will make the 1900x1200 Call of Duty 4 screenshots I'm currently taking seem meager at best.
What do you get with such high resolution? Amazing image clarity and vibrant color quality, that’s what. Playing Half-Life 2 at 3840x2160 is as close to being inside City 17 as anyone will ever be.
But how can I have played at that high of resolution if the monitors aren’t available yet? That’s one of the perks of working for NVIDIA. Inside our corporate demo room, we recently set up a new demo showing our Quadro® Plex Model IV Visual Computing System powering a Barco 56-inch LC-5621 3840x2160 display.
Although it’s intended for medical visualization, air traffic control, and port and waterways management, I was morally obligated to at least try to play a few games on this massive display. After a little tweaking to the HL2 desktop shortcuts, I was playing Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 at 3840x2160 on this massive 56-inch LCD. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Below you’ll find a picture of the Dell 3007WFP-HC below the Barco LC-5621.
Although this Barco 56-inch LCD is way bigger than anything you are likely to buy for your desk in the next few years, the 3840x2160 resolution will soon make it into high-end 30-inch LCDs and will allow you to experience your favorite games at a level of realism and clarity that has never been available to gamers before.
Man all I have to say is I hope your G100 brings a 300% performance increase over your 9800GX2. Because I have that monitor and two 8800Ultras in SLi, and there's no way in hell I could run most games (mainly the newest titles like Crysis, COD4, BioShock, Oblivion, HL2:E2, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, World in Conflict, and so on and so forth) at a resolution, that’s more than twice as high as my 2560x1600 (4,096,000 Pixels) resolution, compared to 3840x2160 (8,294,400 Pixels) with any semblance of playable frame rates. And no one right now can even play Crysis maxed out, or even on High settings for that matter at 2560x1600 even with your Tri SLi and Quad Sli (x2 9800GX2’s) the best you can hope for is 1920x1200 and that’s still at best 30-40 Fps.
Now that is the most extreme side of the scale as far as a GPU killer, but it still makes me laugh that not even Three 8800 Ultra’s or two 9800GX2’s, and more than likely x3 9800GTX’s in Tri Sli can’t even run than game maxed out at 2560x1600. Witch I guess is not too bad as it is just one game and all other games I own will play fine at my native resolution but some are just borderline as is. I have seen what happens when you go from 1920x1200 to my resolution which is twice the resolution of that. And I can only imagine what’s in store for the early adopters of the new 3840x2160 monitors as I did a year or so ago when I bought the original 3007WFP and then since bought the 3007WFP-HC for the 98% color gamut. And I remember when I first got that monitor I could run very few games at 2560x1600 until I upgraded from the X1900XTX to the 8800 Ultras and Quad core CPU.
Now I love CryTek to death and always will, and I know that there is hardware coming toward the end of the year that will play Crysis maxed out on 2560x1600. That said in Crysis 2, and the third and final Crysis (which will probably be on the CryEngine 3 for the last one) will no doubt be just as hard or a little harder on the GPU for the 2nd Crysis, and the 3rd forget it at that resolution.
Now I am all for the image quality that is why I have this monitor and the rig I have. But that seems a ways off to me unless like I said either your G100 or AMD’s R700 is something along the crazy scale in performance increase over the current generation of cards toped of course by the 9800GX2. I am interested in how the game ran, mainly the frame rates when you were playing TF2 and HL2:E2 which I know scale very well with SLi and are not really too demanding.
Knowing me though I’m sure I’ll get one of the first crazy 130% color gamut, back lit LED, 30+ inch 3840x2160 resolution monsters, and only be able to enjoy a handful of games at the native res but hey I just can’t help myself. I just hope when my next upgrade comes at the end of this year, my phase changed cooled Intel Nehalem CPU @5+ GHz, 4GB of super fast DDR3, and hopefully you guys have the G100 ready by then. I’ll take 3 of those thank you very much, or 4 depending on however you guys are going to have it work with SLi and I’ll peltier cool all three or four cards. And I will pray to the Tech Gods that my new beast of a system with play all of my current and near future games at 3840x2160 with the highest possible IQ settings, plus my mods here and there that make Crysis and Oblivion look better :-).
Posted by: Jonathan | March 27, 2008 at 07:35 AM
Can we see this demo'd at the Nvision event this August? The dot pitch of an XHD2 on a 30" lcd is just goint to be amazing. But for right now when I upgrade to a 30"+ monitor it will be either 2560x1600 or a 1080p lcd hdtv. The best bang for the buck imo would be something around a 37" westinghouse.
So that my 8800GTX sli rig would still perform just as it is now.
Posted by: [TMC]Kuyaglen | February 07, 2008 at 02:05 AM