What all do I need to upgrade for 4k gaming on my PC?

Diablo2K

Diablo2K

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Current specs in the Signature. I am thinking about doing some upgrades so I can do 4k. I currently only play Diablo 3 and Forza 4 Horizon. I don't need 4k 120hz with everything maxed out. 60hz would be good enough for me.
I am getting a 1tb M.2 SSD for sure. I am know I will need a monitor of course and for sure a new video card, not sure which for either, I am currently happy with the size of my 24" monitor. Will I need to upgrade to 32gigs of Ram? I am hoping that those 3 things are all I will need to upgrade.

Cost is a major factor and I would like to stick with an AMD video card.
 
Really the only key factors for 4K are a monitor that supports it, and a graphics card that is fast enough for it.

I encourage you to look at the Nvidia 2700 super, as it is fast enough to play the games you want, at the speed you want.

I can’t speak to AMD, and generally don’t like their graphics cards

see my specs in my sig, I game quite happily on 4K with freesync
 
Diablo is an isometric stylized "WoW" graphics game, low textures, with a locked in far zoom so it's not that demanding compared to other games with high detail textures and far view distances so you should be fine with modern gpus. RPGs tend to be partly cpu dependent as well though.

Forza is failry demanding on veryHigh+ to Ultra but afaik it doesn't support over 60fps/Hz. That 60fps/Hz would be a cap though and benchmarks list the average frame rate not the common low of the graph.

In the benchmarks below, Forza Horizon4 seems to keep a pretty tight frame rate graph since the lows are usually within 9 - 14 fps of the average. So if you wanted to stay 60fps at minimum you'd have to run around a 75fps average. It's usually recommended when using VRR that you cap the frame rate 3 to 5 fps below the max refresh rate of your monitor though in order to avoid reverting back to v-sync and added input lag on overages. That would mean using an in-game frame rate limiter when avaialble or rivatuner. Using nvidia driver's frame rate cap still adds a slight bit of input lag last I heard.

Not that it wouldn't be playable otherwise I just wanted to show that even on a 60hz max monitor or a 60fps capped game you would still get benefit running higher fps since "your fps" is actually an average. For some games you could fluctuate 20fps lower from average.. poorer ones as much as 30fps below your average which would require 80 or 90fps average respectively for a 60fps/hz minimum. Of course don't forget that you can tweak the numbers by dialing your graphics settings in/down from Ultra to something like "Very High plus" instead too.

From
https://www.techspot.com/review/1716-forza-horizon-4-gpu-benchmarks/


4K.png

Diablo_III_3840.jpg
 
Processor is super old, I wouldn't upgrade it. 4k60 on diablo is probably easy, forza it takes a bit more horsepower. If you dont mind turning the settings down on forza you could probably just use an RX 580 or something similar. Not sure the processor will get you to 60 fps.
 
I don't think anything does 4k @ 120hz yet. The new large format monitors, but... you know... $5k. Best I've seen supported in games is 60hz anyway, but I mostly play shooters.

After 3 years of 4k @ 60hz, honestly I'd go for 1440p. I play on a 40" monitor, and while it is nice for single player games, it does require a beast of a machine. If you play much MP then I would wait. With HDR & 120hz being a desire, we still need higher transfer rates on DP & HDMI. To say nothing of 4k monitors barely starting to support them, pricing and availability are painful. Not a huge market, so tech just isn't moving quickly.
 
Highest end AMD card right now is the 5700 XT (or Radeon VII but don't really recommend that) but IMHO it's not a 4k card. Good 1440P or really great 1080p card, sure. You'll probably want to pony up some more cash and go for at least a 2080 Super right now, or wait til the end of the year when Nvidia Ampere and AMD Navi 2x cards start coming out.

You don't necessarily need 32GB of RAM. I would strongly consider upgrading that FX 8350 too, Ryzen 3600 would be a killer upgrade for sure or even wait until the new Intel/AMD consumer CPUs come out to gauge.
 
Diablo2K said:
Current specs in the Signature. I am thinking about doing some upgrades so I can do 4k. I currently only play Diablo 3 and Forza 4 Horizon. I don't need 4k 120hz with everything maxed out. 60hz would be good enough for me.
I am getting a 1tb M.2 SSD for sure. I am know I will need a monitor of course and for sure a new video card, not sure which for either, I am currently happy with the size of my 24" monitor. Will I need to upgrade to 32gigs of Ram? I am hoping that those 3 things are all I will need to upgrade.

Cost is a major factor and I would like to stick with an AMD video card.
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Simply put, your motherboard, CPU and memory are insufficient for the task of 4K gaming. Diablo 3 probably isn't a problem and I'm not sure about Forza, but I believe the graphics are probably demanding enough to push some systems at 4K. People ignore CPU's when pursuing 4K gaming and shouldn't. I've beaten the topic to death in many threads. The short version is that minimum frame rates suffer if your CPU isn't powerful enough. It's not about core count so much as IPC and clock speed. In Destiny 2, a 9900K @ 4.0GHz can achieve a minimum of 56FPS at 4K and a Threadripper 2920X can only hit 36FPS. Both are relatively modern CPU's. One makes for a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience while the other suffers frequently. You can get by with it, but its far from ideal.

You do not need 32GB of RAM. However, if you replace your motherboard and CPU you will need new RAM because you are on DDR3. All the newer stuff uses DDR4.

Lastly, AMD doesn't have a video card that's good enough for 4K gaming. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is the only real option out there to do it well. Even then, it struggles to provide a good experience in some games at 4K. The RTX 2080 Super works surprisingly well, but you'll have to turn down the settings in a lot of games to get by with it. Both of these cards are considerably faster than AMD's 5700XT.
 
Thanks for the replies. I been playing FH4 for a couple weeks now at 1080p on a 24" Monitor. I have the graphics setting at Ultra and get 60fps most of the time. I been paying alot of attention to graphic quality the last couple days and got to say I think I will be happy with what I got.

You can call me an ATI/AMD Fan boy if you want. My last non ATI Video card was a GeForce 4ti, My last non AMD CPU was an Intel Celeron 333a. I know I am fighting an uphill battle but I got to say I think that the cost for performance has been good so far. I would love to upgrade to a Ryzen CPU and I will consider Nvidia for my next video card, but the money just ain't there right now. But I refuse to have a closed mind and stick with ATI/AMD if they just don't have viable options.
 
As others have mentioned, you would want to upgrade your CPU, GPU, RAM and Mobo for 4k. You'd want to consider something like this at minimum:

Ryzen 3600
16GB DDR4 3000
Nvidia 2070 Super or AMD 5700 XT

As for the GPU, either a 2070 Super or AMD 5700 XT (or a used 1080 ti) will be more than enough at 4k for the games you're playing. A 2080 ti would be great, but it's still crazy money and you certainly do NOT need one for D3 and Forza). I play at 4k with a 2080 Super, mostly highest settings in games just fine. That said, I'm not an FPS diehard and am fine playing with minimum frames at 40-50 FPS (I play mostly single-player RTSs and RPGs e.g. Total War, Assassin's Creeds, Pillars of Eternity etc).
 
Frraksurred said:
I don't think anything does 4k @ 120hz yet. The new large format monitors, but... you know... $5k. Best I've seen supported in games is 60hz anyway, but I mostly play shooters.

After 3 years of 4k @ 60hz, honestly I'd go for 1440p. I play on a 40" monitor, and while it is nice for single player games, it does require a beast of a machine. If you play much MP then I would wait. With HDR & 120hz being a desire, we still need higher transfer rates on DP & HDMI. To say nothing of 4k monitors barely starting to support them, pricing and availability are painful. Not a huge market, so tech just isn't moving quickly.
Click to expand...

Lot's of things do 4k 144hz (120 as well) right now. You have a few classes though.

Large format monitors. But yea 5k+
Premium 27 4k monitors, roughly 1500-2000
Less premium 27 4k monitors (you're giving up some HDR, FALD, color coverage, gsync premium for freesync/adaptivesync), can be had for 800-1000 bucks

There are 27in sub 800 buck options coming out as well if all you care about is the res and refresh, hell monoprice has one in the pipe.


There's a larger issue though. All the "premium" monitors are IPS or VA panels and they are shooting for image quality (cause 4k) which means that the input lag is WORSE than other IPS/VA gaming monitors that clock 144hz to say nothing of the gaming monitors that use TN/NANO IPS/VA (whatever magic samsung cranked out). If your goal is single player games or MMO RPGs this isn't really an issue, but if you're playing FPS games or Fighters than even if you can hit 144/144 (or 120/120) at 4k it's still a non starter because the input lag ruins it. And if you're going to downgrade to one of the cheaper panels in the pipe that has a 1ms delay and ditch all the points of contrast, hdr, color, than why bother with 4k to start with when you could do 240hz at 1080p.

4k is just in a really weird place right now.
 
I'm running a 1080 TI with a 7820x, 32 Gig of RAM with a 43" 4K monitor. I run all my games on high or ultra and I have no issues. Game play is smooth with no hiccups. Quite satisfied with it. Would getting a 2080 TI improve my FPS, no doubt, but my games already run at or cover 60FPS.
 
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