It was wall-to-wall 8K TVs at CES this year. 8K is almost certainly headed for the PC, but should we welcome it, wonders Jeremy Laird
Bigger is better. Eight is twice as big as four. Therefore 8K video must be twice as good as 4K. Not convinced? Just ask Maximum PC’s intermittently innumerate editor Alan Dexter. He’ll set you straight. Would that it were so….
8K is, of course, four times as big as 4K when it comes to the number of pixels on offer. But that isn’t the point. It doesn’t help us get at the underlying question that the very existence of 8K video raises. Is increased resolution necessarily better? More specifically, is there any upside in stepping up to 8K from 4K? After all, 4K offers over eight million individual pixels. Could 8K’s 33 million pixels be overkill?
Likewise, what’s the point of 8K if there isn’t any 8K content? Even 4K content is hardly ubiquitous. 8K content barely exists. Not that display makers seemed worried about that at CES in January. Admittedly, not many of the 8K wonders at CES were PC screens, but where HDTVs go, mainstream PCs surely follow. Thus, the PC adopted 1080p and then 4K from TVs. Next it will almost certainly be 8K. For sure, PC monitors and laptop panels are more varied than that, what with superwide monitors ever more popular on the desktop, and some laptops opting for taller 3:2-aspect displays. But what goes for HDTVs usually becomes default for the PC. Make no mistake, 8K is coming.
For the record, 8K typically refers to a pixel grid composed of 7680x4320 pixels. 8K is therefore four 4K pixel grids, just as 4K was a quadrupling of 1080p. In other words, in a relatively short space of time, the display industry has moved from the two-and-a-bit million pixels of 1080p to the 33 million of 8K. That’s a 16-fold increase in pure resolution. Staggering.
This story is from the April 2019 edition of Maximum PC.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2019 edition of Maximum PC.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
2TB Crucial T500 M.2 PCle 4.0 SSD
The best budget 4.0 drive?
Hyte Y40
Traditional design meets Hyte
Lenovo Legion Go
A handheld gaming PC, just on a larger scale
Dough Spectrum One
As stunning as Dough's original glossy display
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
1080p gaming with integrated graphics? Hell, yes
AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT
As cost-effective as an RTX 4080 Super
MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G Ventus 3X
Iterative change and 4K dominance
STATE OF THE PC INTEGRATED GRAPHICS
Can you get by without a dedicated GPU?
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super
LONG AGO, before the reign of the Supers, there was a graphics card. It was bold, gauche, and built with the blood of a Titan, with gaming in mind. Its heart was near identical to the goliath it was born from, yet it lacked the memory, spirit, absolute architectural majesty, and subsequent price tag of its Titanic kin.
THE ULTIMATE PC BUILD GUIDE
Strap in as we divulge 20 more tips on how to become the next master PC builder