Published in Graphics

UHD monitor prices to go down in 1 to 2 years

by on28 September 2013

But GPUs will get there first

Both Raja Kodori, Vice President of Visual Computing and Matt Skynner, Vice President and general manager of AMD’s graphics business unit, see 4K/UHD as the future of gaming. This is what these big GPUs are made for and they are powerful enough to render these immensely high resolutions. This echoes recent statements fron Nvidia execs. 

Skynner told us that AMD sees that more pixels are better and that eye candy such as TressFX can make a difference. Lara Craft’s hair looks much better thanks to AMD’s proprietary engine and boasts more realistic characters, terrain and effects. This is where gaming is set to go and the key is to push for photo realism.

We had a chance to see some impressive looking 4K games and textures, and there will be some titles coming with 4K support in the near future. The big obstacle today is the price of monitors but as it was the case in the past, the prices are destined to drop from the current $3,500 for a 31.5 inch monitor to sub-$1000 and probably even less in the long run.

We see a clear trend in tablets, where even relatively cheap devices sport 2560x1600 screens and with that in mind 4K TV and monitors will go down to more acceptable price rates. The prices of these monitors will play a key role in widespread adoption of 4K gaming. Just as a decade ago 1280x1024 was a standard high resolution and it was difficult and expensive to play games at such a resolution, now even more pixels are found crammed on mainstream phones, powered by GPUs smaller than a grain of rice.

Graphics chips will continue to be faster and every processor node shrink will get us at least 30 percent more transistors, making a playable frame rate even at 4K 3840x2160 a reality. The biggest problem is that GPUs will get there a lot faster than monitors. We’re already seeing the first 4K capable cards, but the high price of 4K/UHD monitors will remain the biggest obstacle over the next couple of years.

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