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WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...
94 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2022
↘ submit your questions to: [email protected]8 K gaming...?
What would be the best
and cheapest build for an
8K 60 Hz HDMI Windows 11
gaming desktop?- ShaneJohnson
MAXIMUM PC EDITOR,
JEREMY LAIRD RESPONDS:
The first question you need
to ask yourself, Shane,
concerns the notion of 8K
gaming. Are you sure that’s
what you really want?
Sure, 8K sounds sexy, but
it makes for no fewer than
33 million pixels, each of
which has to be rendered,
rasterized, and kicked
out to the display. The net
result is a truly debilitating
workload for any GPU, even
the latest and greatest.
If you are intent on the
8K prize, the best starting
point is an 8K TV. Full 8K
monitors arguably don’t
make much sense for
gaming. Dell’s 8 K monitor,
for instance, is a 32 - incher
and therefore arguably too
small to really do justice to
8K content. Just imagine a
16-inch 4K gaming monitor.
Exactly!
What you want is an
8K TV. Go for a 55-inch
model—search online
and you’ll have the choice
of LG and Samsung setsfor around $1,000. Not
exactly cheap, but far more
affordable than the $4,000
Dell. Intriguingly, a 55 -inch
8K TV has the same pixel
density as a 2 7-inch 4K
monitor, so it’s essentially
four 4K 27-inch panels
fused together.
Anyway, you’re also
going to need a graphics
card with HDMI 2. 1 support
to drive 8K and 6 0Hz. That
means either Nvidia’s RTX
30 series or AMD’s RX
6000 series. Either way, it
will have to be one of the
higher-end models which
currently cost another
$1,0 00 minimum.
Also bear in mind that,
as far as we know, all
currently available 8K
TVs have BGR rather than
RGB subpixels. In-game,
that probably doesn’t
matter, but on the Windows
desktop, it makes for fuzzy
fonts among other image
quality issues. All told,
8K gaming remains at the
early adopter stage. It’s
tempting, and if it weren’t
for current GPU supply
issues, it would actually be
reasonably cost-effective.
But as things stand, the
combination of cost and
technical niggles make a
convincing case against it.Integrated graphics
Thank you for your recent
article comparing AMD and
Intel integrated graphics.
For years, I have been
waiting for that Maximum
PC article that says that
if I get these certain
components, I can build
a rig that doesn't need a
graphics card. Apparently,
the wait continues, though
huge gains have been made.
A few years ago, I bought
No Man's Sky. The first time
I started it, I got an error
message that my graphics
card only had 1GB of VRAM
and needed more. I've seen
games that throttle down
settings for low-powered
rigs, but never one that
wouldn't work at all.
I eventually installed a
graphics card with 6 GB of
VRAM and the game worked
fine. Are there VRAM
issues with integrated
graphics? – M. HammMAXIMUM PC EDITOR,
JEREMY LAIRD RESPONDS:
It’s true that integrated
graphics is improving fast,
but there’s still a long
way to go before it gives a
good gaming experience.
Much of that is down to the
memory subsystem, but
not just VRAM quantity.Existing PC integrated
graphics rely upon a CPU-
spec controller to access
memory. That’s bad for
several reasons. First,
CPU memory controllers
offer less bandwidth, both
because they are narrower
(typically 128 -bit versus up
to 512 -bit for conventional
GPU controllers and far
more for GPUs with HBM
memory). Also because
CPU DRAM operates at
lower frequencies than
GPU VRAM.
Making matters worse,
that limited bandwidth (by
GPU standards) must be
shared between the CPU
and GPU. For example,
Intel’s latest uber CPU,
the Core i9-1 29 00K, tops
out at around 75GB/s of
bandwidth using the latest
DDR5 memory. Meanwhile,
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090
GPU enjoys 936 .2GB/s of
bandwidth. There’s no
comparison.
With a shared system,
it’s not just bandwidth
that’s under contention but
capacity too. The net result
can be inadequate memory
available to the GPU,
though adding RAM can be
a straightforward solution.
Of course, it’s not quite
as simple as fitting out