There are some steps you can take to increase performance, though. Just bear in mind that its famous VRAM issues do begin to have an effect when gaming at 4K-resulting in a larger frame-time variance and thus the dreaded microstutter-thanks to the far larger textures being loaded into memory. A pair of GTX 970s will net you similar performance for around £530, and with only a 165W TDP per card. As a proud owner of a Titan X and a 4K monitor, I've experienced drops down as low as 30 FPS during gameplay.Įnlarge / AMD's R9 295X2 with its two GPUs is ideal for 4K gaming.Īt around £500 (~$620), AMD's R9 295X2 (which combines two R9 290Xs onto a single card) is the cheapest dual-GPU option, and it works wonders in 4K for games that are Crossfire-optimized, although you'll have to make room for its 30.7cm length and 120mm watercooling radiator, as well as adhere to strict power supply requirements for its monster 500W TDP. The folks over at Digital Foundry tested high-end single-card solutions with a range of games at high and ultra settings, with only the $1000 Titan X managing to push an average frame rate of over 60 FPS in some games. For a solid 60 FPS, an SLI or Crossfire setup is the way to go. While budget GPUs like Nvidia's GTX 750 Ti do an admirable job of 1080p60 in many games, even high-end cards like the GTX 980 can struggle with 4K at 60 FPS.
Best 4k graphics card 2015 Pc#
Hitting the magical 4K at 60Hzįor a lot of people, myself included, part of the joy of playing games on a PC is a smooth 60 FPS-or-higher frame rate, something that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have famously had a hard time hitting at just 1080p. That's not to say you can't play in 4K with a mid-range card, but it all depends on the sacrifices you're willing to make to rendering quality and frame rate in exchange for all those extra pixels. Despite huge advances in GPU technology, 4K is still very much the realm of the enthusiast, where £500 (~$700) graphics cards are all but required to play the latest games.
While you can technically play almost any PC game at 4K, doing so is an enormous strain on resources. These days, adding a decent 60Hz 3840×2160 monitor to your gaming setup can cost as little as £350 (~$500), provided you can deal with lesser TN panels over their mostly superior, but far pricier IPS and IGZO counterparts.Īside from the benefits of a larger workspace, or increased sharpness with desktop scaling, the PC-and not the console-is the only place where you can game at native 4K, and at a distance where such a high resolution makes a visible difference. 4K, or UHD as it's otherwise known, has come a long way since the Asus PQ321 monitor launched at an eye-watering $3500 (~£2300) back in 2013.