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Cheap 4K Gpu?

S

spaceman

[H]F Junkie
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I need one for the TV. I run bigpicture if I want to game via steam on my main rig. I need it to be low power as it is an i3 rig with a really crappy psu. 750 or 950? Thanks
 
IMO cheap and reasonable performance 4k, I do not think exists currently, period.

There are thing to keep in mind like having proper HDMI or display port spec available on monitor/tv as well as the graphics card. 4k level of acceptable performance at this time is recommended to not be below GTX 970 or better or Radeon 290/390 or better and even then at this point, most people would consider as always to shoot for 60FPS and wanting to crank bells and whistles on their game up so SLI/CF comes into play.

Just basic display purposes, well any onboard should be able to do it, but YMMV on what you deem your wants and needs are, but you already did say game, there are no "cheap" options for 4k gaming currently that I know of, you might have to hold out till mid summer area for new releases, then we might have a low power 4k capable(with reasonable performance) at around the $250 mark, we currently do not at all have this level, and I have a feeling that an i3 simply could not drive it well enough in some cases any way, but that is just me.

Not knowing the exact PSU wattage levels etc will do no one any favors, a "crappy" psu with an i3 I picture say 450w(be good enough for 1080p level, probably ok for some top ed stuff like Fury Nano)
good 650w can power a single or X2 style GPU system no problem provided you don't push it like an idiot :D.

More info is needed on your end, and your expectations, I think PSU upgrade probably, i3 is def going to hold things back, proper amount of system memory etc.
 
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Sure a 950 will work, assuming you're only playing videos. There are no current onboard gpus that support HDMI 2.0, which you will need for 60fps if you care about that. For gaming? You honestly need a GTX 980 TI (most people are using multiple cards for 4K) at least and then you'd be better off with at least an i5.
 
Bottom line....there ain't one for 4K gaming.
 
Maybe a used 295x2. There was a brief time where they were selling for around $629, but as far as I know they've since been discontinued.
 
Might as well go for the 950.

Or whichever is cheaper really. 20w or so either way doesn't make much of a difference.

Both should stream 4k with bigpicture.
 
i think a lot of people are simply reading the title and commenting...

anyway: my surface pro 2 did 1920x1080 decently well for streaming the one time I tried it. I think both of your choices would probably handle it well.
 
For 4K content, I would go AMD for the video quality. Then now you have an issue with outputs from the card to the 4K making Nvidia look better. Performance wise for games it depends what game you play. Older games will probably run well even on a medium level card, that is if the game supports 4K in the first place. Newer and more demanding games, that would look awesome in 4K which is probably reason why someone went with 4K for the image quality; those gpus do not exist yet.
 
Yeah. I should have made the title more descriptive. I just need it to stream the big rigs output. Not even sure if steam bigpicture can stream 4K. I will google that now. Nope. Caps out at 1080P. Crap.
 
Well Steam can stream 4k, but the requirement is that the host computer has the same or greater display resolution as the target, so you will need a 4k monitor attached to your main rig. Also you will for sure need the setup hardwired. As for display on your tv really all you need is h264 decoding and rendering at I would assume 4k60, so HDMI 2.0. Easy answer is a gtx 900 series card, but you might also be able to get away with an active display port 1.2 to hdmi 2.0 adapter ( I guess they are out??), so if you went that route, really any integrated igpu with display port out on the motherboard would work.

Another problem too is input to display lag (all assuming your main rig can actually render at 4k to begin with), because in essence you are rendering the 4k, then encoding it pseudo real-time to h264 then decoding it on your target machine. I am not sure if steam stream can do h265 yet but it might be a way more efficient container in the future.

I am not a huge fan of Linus but he did a video demonstrating 4k streaming if you look.
 
A 780 Ti will do you just fine for native 4K gaming. Sure you won't get ultra quality, but you will get Medium or better.

You can get Displayport 1.2 to HDMI 2 adapters.
 
Yeah. Just going to skip the 4K gaming bit. It does do games like Mad Max at 1080P just fine as is atm. I almost never use the tv for gaming anyway. Much more HTPC use.
 
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