It looks like gaming at ultra-ultra-high resolutions like 8K (7,680 x 4,320) is a long way off, with even the world's most powerful consumer graphics card, the $2,499 Nvidia Titan RTX, struggling to run Gears 5 – Microsoft's latest entry in the Gears of War franchise.
The good folks over at TweakTown gave the game a spin on a number of GPUs at a number of resolutions, and found that even with the Nvidia Titan RTX's incredible 24GB of GDDR6 memory, Gears 5 at 8K resolution is pretty much unplayable.
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That means that no GPU on the market today aimed at gamers can handle Gears 5 at 8K. While many gamers are still happily running games at 1080p or 1440p, if you were hoping that 4320p (8K) gaming hardware would be coming soon… you'll be disappointed.
8K gaming – is it possible?
Technically, it is possible to play Gear 5 at 8K resolution with reasonably playable results – but there are a lot of compromises that need to be made.
TweakTown found that Gears 5 at 8K resolution and medium graphical settings, with motion blur and vertical sync disabled, seriously challenged the mighty Titan RTX, with the GPU managing 27.4 frames per second.
While that’s not a great result, it's still playable. However, the fact that a $2,499 (around £2,000/AU$3,700) struggles to hit 30 FPS on medium settings shows you how intensive 8K gaming is.
Impressively, the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, which at $1,049 (about £837, AU$1,390) is a lot cheaper (but still very expensive) than the Titan RTX, managed 25.6 FPS in the same tests – not too far off the Titan's performance.
Meanwhile, AMD's flagship GPU, the Radeon VII, managed only 18.4 FPS for Gears 5 at 8K on medium settings.
However, whacking Gears 5 up to Ultra settings (but with motion blur and vertical sync still disabled), the Titan RTX really begins to struggle, with just 19.1 FPS – which leads to a juddery and unpleasant gaming experience.
The RTX 2080 Ti fares a little worse with 18 FPS.
So, while gaming at 8K right now is technically possible, it requires very expensive GPUs – as well as a pricey (and rare) 8K monitor – and you'll still struggle to get an enjoyable experience.
For the time being, at least, it looks like PC gamers will need to make do with 1080p or 4K gaming.
These results also cast doubt on Microsoft’s claims that its upcoming Xbox Project Scarlett console could play games at 8K and 120FPS. There’s no way a console would be able to do that while being remotely affordable. The same goes for Sony’s 8K claims with the PS5.
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