 I jumped on the 8K gaming hype train as hard as anyone, especially with that early look at Nvidia's RTX 3090, the world's first 8K GPU. But have you ever realized you're riding a bandwagon that just doesn't make any sense? I mean, even now, the second, ooh, I saw this liquid-cooled RTX 4090 from MSI who sponsored this video, I thought, wow, with up to two times the performance, maybe we could do it even better this time. Except I couldn't help noticing that while 8K gaming is still a highlighted feature on Nvidia's product page, it's all the way hidden down at the bottom here. What's the deal with that? Is it that the 4090 is somehow worse for 8K than the last gen? Is it that they simply couldn't find an 8K monitor to validate it on? Or is it that 8K gaming is just really, really pointless, no matter how powerful your GPU is? The only way to know is to try it.<|tr|><|translate|> To get our 8K groove on, the first thing we're gonna need is a tricked-out gaming PC. And this one, courtesy of MSI, is an absolute doozy. At its gooey center is their RTX 4090 Supreme Liquid X. It is an absolute beast with integrated liquid cooling, 24 gigs of GDDR6X memory, over 16,000 CUDA cores, and much, much more. Expensive? Yes, but you've got an 8K display. You're not exactly hurting for cash, are you? For our testing, we'll be using the exact same unit that LG provided for our last 8K gaming video. Their signature ZX 88-inch OLED that lives here in our employee lounge for after hours Smash Bros tournaments. We're gonna start by recreating our 8K gaming experience from last time. Man, look at all those Ks. There's eight of them. Got our HD... There's eight! Got our ray tracing, DLSS, pretty much everything set to Ultra Nightmare, and we're running on our RTX 3090 so we can get a baseline. Just wait, it'll hang like this, but it'll go. It will. Yep. Oh, here it goes, here it goes. Hey, look at that. Oh, yes. Pretty smooth, eh? Actually, yeah. We're only getting like 55 FPS, but it's Ultra Nightmare for the most part. Yeah, okay. Oh, that was not smooth. It hitches. Ooh, yeah, when I do like a quick 180, that is, yeah, not a lot of frames in between there. Can I chainsaw this? Nope. You should be able to. Well. Oh, okay, whatever. I died. See you later. Cool. What was the experience you guys were getting last time? Yeah, we wanted to retest the 3090 because since then we've gotten new CPUs, new drivers, and we wanted to see, well, hey, is the 3090 an even more viable 8K gaming card than it was before? Turns out, not really. About the same as before. Yeah, it's pretty close across the board, actually. Time to upgrade. All right, and see you later, 3090 Supreme. Nice knowing you. Hello, 4090 Supreme. I gotta say, when it comes to these like 250, 350, 400 watt cards, liquid cooling just kind of starts to make sense, doesn't it? Like that is a much more reasonable sized GPU. Well, this is big, but that's not the point. The point is it doesn't look quite as ridiculous here. And the 4090 air cooled version of the Supreme is even bigger than the old 3090. Can't build a ratchet 4090 gaming system without a ratcheting screwdriver. LTT store.com. Hey, buddy. Hey, there we go. Check out settings, make sure nothing changed. Blah, blah, blah, yep. Exact same settings, cool. Oh, it says connecting this time. It's still froze. It's still froze. It's still froze. Okay, hold on. But we're getting 300 FPS right now. In the loading screen. Wow, it feels a lot more responsive. Is that a solid 90 FPS? Yeah. Size 97, but our lows are 1% lows down to like 80, 85. Wow. Is it 50? So I think it might stutter still, but like it's a much more rare. Like you started like three times with the 3090, right? Oh, stutter. Wait, I need ammo. That wasn't a bad stutter though. No, it wasn't as bad, but like it would bug me. Oh, this is totally playable though. Yeah. 100%, 100% playable. Man, if we were willing to settle for what we had last time, which is more like 60 FPS, you think we could render it 8K native? Maybe, yeah, try it. We had a lot of criticism last time. Like, yeah, you're gaming at 8K, but you're using DLSS, which is essentially just gaming at a lower resolution and then upscaling it. But maybe we don't need to upscale. DLSS isn't actually doing as much as I thought it would. You're getting a solid like 60, 65. Yeah, holy crap. You can actually game natively at what you could do with DLSS before. That's pretty wild. It's gorgeous. This is what, this is fricking ray tracing, you guys. Cannot emphasize that enough. All right, let's try some other games. At this point, you're probably wondering why we're using a 12900K CPU rather than the latest Verizon 7000 or Intel 13th gen. And the answer is that we actually wanted to use the latest CPUs, but the Ryzen 7950X ended up being so unstable that we wasted an entire day trying to get it to work. And the lab still has all of our 13th gen core chips. So 12900K. Oh, shoot, I didn't check the settings. Are they probably right? I can check them from in-game. They're probably right. 200 FPS. I'm like kind of excited now. Last time around, we got 27 FPS average with ray tracing and DLSS, which is like console playable, but not exactly a PC gaming experience. Well, holy crap, is this right? I don't know if we're on the right settings. Did you change anything? 97 FPS. Check the settings. That can't be right. Holy crap, that might be right. 8K quality, RTX on. Set to high instead of very high. Go to preset very high. I think that's the big difference, highest, yeah. My 99 lows are still 75 FPS. This is 100% playable. Dude. It's like a five-year-old game now. Yeah, but it's still a pretty game. I know. Like people ask why we test it because it's a super pretty game and it's still demanding. I mean, oops. You're dead. That's not what I meant to do. Oh my God, that... Oh my God. Oh my God. The water go squiggly. The ragdoll was just like, nope, I want more. 10K? No, no, I mean, I want to run it natively. Okay, sure. I don't want a DLSS. Maybe you don't have to. It's already dropped. Okay. Oh yeah, this is way harder. 50 is not bad. Hold on. I wonder if HDR isn't on. I wonder if that's changed things. Oh no, it's off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's probably part of some of our performance why we're getting like 100 FPS. No, let's try it. We're gonna try it. It looks like between game runs, our Windows HDR got disabled. So it is running in HDR now and rendering natively at 8K with HDR. It feels a little sloppier on the inputs. That did cost us a little. It's a little blurry. However. It's still like 45, 50 average. You're being a hater. It's a pretty damn good looking game. It looks very pretty. I'd like to see you develop a better game. I saw the game you developed and it sucked. Actually Gears 5 looks amazing. I'm not talking about Gears 5, you f*****. Okay, in fairness though, these are older games that we've looked at so far. What if we were to look at something a little bit newer? What were you getting with the 3090 in this game? Well, I wasn't in multiplayer. I was in campaign, but we're getting about 30 FPS. Really? Cause I've got 60 FPS right now and I'm just getting all these kills. I'm rendering natively in a current demanding game. This is sick. It tears those kills. Tears a little too much though. It does. Hey, is that stopping me from getting a killing spree? Ladies and gentlemen. No. What's my halo kill ratio? Infinite killing friendly. Does this game even have to do this? I thought it did. I don't care. Whatever. Okay. That was clear. It's clearly playable. I think we've made our point. 8K gaming, totally a thing. So we were sucking back 430 Watts with this bad boy, but never saw higher than about 63 degrees. Freaking impressive. Not to mention that compared to an air cooled card, this thing is actually reasonable when it comes to size and weight in the slot. In CS GO on the highest presets with no anti aliasing, no DLSS, we were getting 160 FPS average with the 3090. With our 4090, wait, this doesn't seem right. We're only getting a hundred. Oh. Eight times MSAA. Eight times anti aliasing, we're still getting 100 FPS? Yeah. And the game crashed. It'll crash for that, yeah. Holy crap. We are running at 8K native with dual Berettas and over 200 frames per second. Hitting 330 sometimes. What? And it feels like it. That's super responsive. Like this is not a problem. Wow. Berettas are a problem though. Well, yeah, for sure. But. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. How'd you reload? You had 21 bullets left. A little while to reload. Ba-bow. Ba-ba-bow. Got him. Whoa. 1% lows are like 180, 200 FPS. Totally, totally. Look, now this is not just playable. Like this is competitive playable. Yeah. Which raises the question, with 8K gaming then seemingly alive and well, why would I call it a stupid bandwagon? Because math. Let's turn our game down to 4K and see if we can tell the difference. Yeah, I'm checking like these power lines for stair stepping and stuff. Cause we're not, we're not rolling anti-aliasing. If there's anywhere we're gonna notice it, it's here. Yeah, this really does not look very different. This looks not bad at all. This looks totally fine. Maybe it's just me though. Why don't we gather up some rubes? I mean, test subjects. Sorry, I mean, colleagues. And see if we can have a bit of fun with them. We're gonna tell them they're gaming at 8K and watch them marvel at the clarity and sharpness. And then we'll reveal that actually it's just running at 4K on an 8K display. So we're using a 4090. Uh-huh. And we're gaming at 8K and it's on an 88 inch TV. How do you think it looks? I feel really far away. Even on a screen this big? Yes. What do you think about the clarity and stuff? Oh, it is very clear. I'm gonna tell you a secret. It's set to 4K right now. It's not really something I'd really be able to notice, especially for these assets. I don't think they're even in 4K themselves. So if you walk up to it, it's not like you're gonna notice anyways. So I think it's really a question of whether or not a lot of these things are intended to be played at 4K or even more so 8K, right? Okay, I'm gonna restart it, put it in 8K. See if you can even notice a difference at all. So now we're definitely in 8K. Ah. It looks the exact same, right? Yeah. Okay. Sure. This is amazing. The texture detail's incredible. That's pretty good. See on my team? Yeah, he is. Okay. Okay, I got a secret for you. Yeah. You're playing in 4K right now on an 8K display. That's diminishing returns, my friend. Right? Yeah, I could not tell. I also have not played this game in a very long time. That's fine. Take some time to like take a really close look at some stuff. Yeah. We'll swap to 8K. Okay. And we'll see if you can even tell the difference once it's in proper 8K. You're getting a lower FPS. We went from like 350, like, you know, 256, 270. No, it looks like, oh man, I can't tell the difference. Maybe the blood? No, but even that texture just doesn't look, it doesn't make, give you any benefit. There's nothing. Nice shot. Thank you. It's pretty sharp looking. Halo guys look pretty good. Yeah, those effects looked pretty sick. Yeah. So here's the trick. It's 4K right now. Okay, and it's upscaling to 8K. Hey, look, I got an achievement. Do you notice at all? No, it's pretty sharp. And this TV has a nice upscaler in it anyway, so. Okay, so now let's change it to 8K. It feels about the same. It certainly doesn't feel as fluid. But that's just feeling. How does it look? Does it look sharper? No. At all. Not really. It looks about the same. Textures look just as sharp. Should I be noticing a difference, Mr. Bluf? No, you shouldn't be. Would you pay more for an 8K TV? No, but there are lunatics out there who do. Ooh. 8K is a higher number than 4K, so it's better. Wow. You heard it here first, folks. This just in. How much would it cost me to get this experience at home? Oh my God. Everything. The card alone is like 1800 US dollars. The TV was about 30,000 when LG sent it over, I think. So either I could send my kid to college or I could buy this setup. Yeah. Obviously you should buy the setup. It looks really good. I don't have anything to compare it to, obviously sitting from here. Sure. I don't have like a 4K thing to look at, but solid. It is 4K. What? It's an 8K TV with a 4090, and we've set Halo to 4K right now. Oh. You were messing with me. Yeah. Was that on purpose? Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought I just wasn't paying attention. Now you get the true 8K experience. Obviously it's gonna sound biased now, but it looks clear. You think so? I think so, no. I'm so bad with this stuff. Looks good. This looks great. Looks amazing. I don't know, like I can tell when things are stuttery. Yeah. But I'm not great at telling like, the textures on here are so crisp. Like I just want fluidity in my game. This looks in many ways, completely identical to what I would expect it to be on a 4K television. Right? If you told me that this was 4K, I would say, yes, it is. That's exactly what it is. You guessed it. There you go. Change it to 8K now though. And let's see if we can notice like much of a difference. I was really surprised at the FPS. I was like, there's no way it's getting that many FPSs. This is exactly the same experience. You got some DLSS going on here for sure. There's no way I'm getting 200 FPS right now. It's a 4090, water cooled. With DLSS, right? Maybe. Maybe, is that the challenge? This is definitely, I'm not- How does 8K look? Forget about the frames per second. I'm so far away. What do you mean? It looks great. It's nice and sharp, but I'm really far away. So I don't know. We're in 4K. That's why we're getting like 200 frames per second. So I knew I was being bamboozled in some capacity. Some way, yeah. Hit cancel. No, hit cancel. You gotta change it to 8K now. Cause now you gotta really try 8K. Wow. The detail in those trees. Look at the trees, man. That's a lot of pixels, brother. Okay, I'm gonna switch it to 4K. I'm not gonna lie. Doesn't look as different as I was expecting. Can we go back one more time? Okay, there's definitely a lot more detail, sure. But man, it's, 8K is stupid. You can really see the pores in the stone. In the concrete. I feel like my Series X looks like this. Dang. Like it doesn't look that good. This could be four, I guess. It is. Oh, wow. See, I'm a gamer. I know my halo. When I saw my Master Chief, I knew. This ain't no 8K Master Chief. Now let's change it to 4K or to 8K and see if you can even like see any kind of improvement. Okay, look at those bullets. Those look awful. But do you think this looks like better than the 4K image you were just looking at? Absolutely not. I feel like I'm being pranked and it's still 4K. Like it does not look, it's a little more terry, I guess. Cause we're lower FPS. Yeah, but no. The issue is that from a natural, comfortable viewing distance, 8K is not necessarily going to increase the perceived clarity or resolution of the image. There's actually a pretty simple formula for when the individual pixels on a display become indiscernible from each other. And at 88 diagonal inches here, we would have to be closer than 69 inches. Nice. In order to make out the individual pixels. And that assumes that we have perfect vision. But Linus, you might say, it's a little more complicated than that. And 8K is a forward looking technology. It's intended for much larger TVs and projectors. And those are good points. There are times when we can see a little bit of texture shimmer or a little bit of stair stepping in something like a power line traveling across the blue sky. But that could easily be solved with a little bit of multi-sample anti-aliasing for a much smaller performance hit. And as far as larger displays go, the thing is, is that as they get larger, you're going to want to sit even farther away from them. We did a full video on this a while back, but THX actually publishes guidelines for how much of your field of view should be optimally occupied by an image before you begin to experience eye fatigue or motion sickness. And it's about 40 degrees maximum. Meaning that no matter what screen size you plug into their calculator, 4K and 8K are going to spit out the exact same recommended viewing distance, which is well outside of Retina. So the good news is that 8K gaming is for reals here with the 4090 and who knows, may even be affordable in another generation or two. But the other good news is that you don't need to care about that at all, which might explain why MSI actually sent over their Optix MPG321UR-QD 144 Hertz 4K monitor when we pitched them doing an 8K demo video to show off their RTX 4090. That particular monitor is designed for gaming and content creation. It's quantum dot to enhance color accuracy, color saturation and contrast. And of course is 144 Hertz with a one millisecond response time and Nvidia G-Sync for faster, smoother frames. It works for both PC and console gaming. And to learn more about MSI's monitors and of course, GPUs, you can follow the link in the video description. Now one use case for this kind of gaming horsepower at higher than 4K resolutions is VR. But whatever the Zuck might think, those headsets aren't going mainstream anytime soon. So it's not something that we have to worry about. Thanks for watching. If you liked this video or maybe if you hated it, take a look at the last time we did this with an RTX 3090 to see just how far we've come.