Is 4K gaming viable on anything less than a 1060 6GB? What about an RX 460 4GB? Skyrim 4K?

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I'm kind of in a bind here, slightly.

I went a little crazy the last week (well, it's pre-BF). I ordered a i5-6400, for my B150 K4/Hyper board (so I can BCLK OC it to 4.5Ghz, hopefully), and then Newegg had a cheap 4K 40" UHD with HDMI 2.0 and HDR TV, for like $220. So, I overextended my monthly budget and snagged one.

So, now I'm challenged with "moving up to 4K", on a severe budget. I don't have enough budget for a "real 4K gaming card".

I'm wondering if I can get by with an RX 460 4GB (It's a Sapphire Nitro, I think it's factory OCed slightly), or a GTX950 2GB OC (MSI).

The only Steam game I own is Skyrim. I'm wondering if I'll be able to play that at 4K, with one of those cards?

First of all, does it even allow 4K res setting, and second, would either of those GPUs handle the game, even at "low"?

I've played it at maybe 30FPS on a 1080P monitor at low, on an i3-6100 and the iGPU.

Should I think about budgeting for a 6GB 1060 card next month, or an 8GB RX 480 (if prices drop further, if NV releases 1080ti and their prices slide down a notch, causing AMD to lower their prices too)?

Edit: If I were truthful about it, I only dabble in PC gaming these days. I mostly got the 4K 40" TV just to use as a desktop monitor, for more desktop space in Windows. So, truthfully, either of those cards should be fine (both support HDMI2.0, HEVC decode, and I think, HDR).

But it would be cool to try out some "immersive 4K gaming".

Edit: RS, feel free to grace this thread with some "charts and graphs", showing either that these cards are OK, or are pathetically not OK, for 4K gaming. I bought the i5-6400 for my rig on your suggestion. :)

I'm OK with a 30FPS locked console-like experience, at 4K, if that's all those cards will do.
 
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whm1974

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Jul 24, 2016
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With 4K I wouldn't game with anything less then a 480 w/ 8 GB or a 1060 w/ 6 GB even with the lowest graphics settings.
 

Piroko

Senior member
Jan 10, 2013
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The only Steam game I own is Skyrim. I'm wondering if I'll be able to play that at 4K, with one of those cards?
First of all, does it even allow 4K res setting, and second, would either of those GPUs handle the game, even at "low"?
I assume you're talking about the special edition. 4k setting: Yes. Performance: High settings are well below 20 fps iirc, even the 480 and 1060 just barely cover 30 fps: Computerbase test
Low settings might be between 30 and 50 average? But probably fluctuating quite a bit. I would probably go for 1440p medium/high with Skyrim and these GPUs, low really doesn't look all that great.

However, ...
Should I think about budgeting for a 6GB 1060 card next month, or an 8GB RX 480 (if prices drop further, if NV releases 1080ti and their prices slide down a notch, causing AMD to lower their prices too)?
... personally I think that's a better idea to wait that month. Even the 470 4G is almost twice as fast as the 950/460 and that one's well below 200$ afaik. But the 1060 6G (and to an extent, the 480 8G) does pack another layer of confidence on top of a 470 - several layers on top of the 460 and 950 - and if we're only talking about a month...
 

tential

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May 13, 2008
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You need at least a 1070. I couldn't even get overwatch to play at decent settings on my 290. So I'm ordering fury x and crying myself back to sleep. Dolphin emulator will be interesting more with even more gpu horsepower to throw at it

I got Dota 2 playing well but any other game struggles. I think if you're an amd user, this is the worst time to go 4k. But I did anyway because I hate myself lol.
 

Rifter

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Oct 9, 1999
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minimum id go for 4k is probably a 1070/1080. I have a RX480 8GB and play at 1440p and already have to turn down setting to mix of med/high to maintain min of 60FPS in modern games. Ideally for 4k wait for Nvidias high end and AMD's high end to release in coming months then get one of those.
 

dogen1

Senior member
Oct 14, 2014
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Lots of cards can handle 4k at 30 fps at least in some games, as long as you're fine with lowering settings a bit. If you want 60 fps, you're probably going to be mostly limited to 360/PS3 era games. Maybe you could do some modern stuff at medium/low, but I'm not completely sure.

For example, I was playing some sonic and all stars racing transformed on my GTX 950(oc'd to ~1.5GHz) at 4k with max in game settings last night. I don't think it dropped below 60 fps even once, with GPU utilization stting around 65-85%. Sure it's a 360/PS3 port, but it actually looks surprisingly good..
 
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tential

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May 13, 2008
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minimum id go for 4k is probably a 1070/1080. I have a RX480 8GB and play at 1440p and already have to turn down setting to mix of med/high to maintain min of 60FPS in modern games. Ideally for 4k wait for Nvidias high end and AMD's high end to release in coming months then get one of those.
Vega is a long wait away. Im going to get fury x for $320 instead of wait 5 months.

1080ti is the only thing on the current horizon.

Vega is releasing around pascal refresh. To me, that makes it even more "meh" but we have to wait and see. After fury x, I have 0 hope for amd actually executing a high end launch well.
 

freeskier93

Senior member
Apr 17, 2015
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If you really want 4K on a budget now then Fury/Fury X are your best options. I bought my Nitro Fury for $270 a couple weeks ago. Granted I only have a 1080p monitor so I usually stick to 1440 using VSR. However I did find Rise of the Tomb Raider runs great at 4K with textures turned down a notch.

Long term though it's not a great option with 4GB of HBM. My plan is to upgrade to Vega next year (once prices have likely settled). Fury is a stop gap, long term it will likely cost me more but I don't care.
 
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Headfoot

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Feb 28, 2008
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If you really want 4K on a budget now then Fury/Fury X are your best options. I bought my Nitro Fury for $270 a couple weeks ago. Granted I only have a 1080p monitor so I usually stick to 1440 using VSR. However I did find Rise of the Tomb Raider runs great at 4K with textures turned down a notch.

Long term though it's not a great option with 4GB of HBM. My plan is to upgrade to Vega next year (once prices have likely settled). Fury is a stop gap, long term it will likely cost me more but I don't care.
To that end, this deal is going on right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202186&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Video+Cards+-+AMD/ATI-_-N82E16814202186&gclid=CIOd2-6_vNACFUUaaQod5z4Eew&gclsrc=aw.ds. Some tips on the original thread said you can save some more with the $20 MIR and $25 AMEX cash back if you have AMEX. $214.99 after rebate and after $25 AMEX cash back. Pretty nuts how cheap that is. You can sometimes unlock extra shaders on the Fury too, no idea how often that happens these days though.
 
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SPBHM

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Sep 12, 2012
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if you want 1060 performance at 1080p but at 4k I think you will need a 1080 or almost a Titan xP
if not 1440P rendering on the 4K screen, or lowered details overall might go "OK" with the 1060.

the PS4 PRO is probably going to do a better job at "4K" than most affordable VGAs, their upscaling and other techniques like checkerboard seem to be quite fine for it, and those are not as easily available on PC.
 

wilds

Platinum Member
Oct 26, 2012
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OG Skyrim without can be maxed out at 4k with an R9 290. 4k isn't that demanding for DX9 titles.

For newer games, a single GTX 1070/Fury/980 ti can do 4k medium and 4k high at 60 fps depending on the title.

A used Fury + 4k free sync is an awesome combination. I went with 1070 + used 4k gsync instead and it runs every game at 60fps without a hitch.

I'm surprised at how many of you guys think 4k is so hard to run. It isn't. I could have gotten away with using my R9 290 for 4k low another year if I wanted to.

Yes, Ultra/Very High settings are out of reach for these cards. my 1070 can do ~90fps medium 4k on average in R6 Siege without vsync. Titan XP can do 4k 120fps near ultra.

4k60 Ultra with AA is possible now with a $1200 GPU. 4k60 medium/high is attainable now on mainstream GPU's.
 
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VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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OG Skyrim without can be maxed out at 4k with an R9 290. 4k isn't that demanding for DX9 titles.

4k60 Ultra with AA is possible now with a $1200 GPU. 4k60 medium/high is attainable now on mainstream GPU's.

Hmm. I would probably be happy with 4K med @ 30-40. (60 would be great!) in Skyrim (vanilla).

I do own a couple of 7950 3GB cards (older 800Mhz core models, HIS brand). Also a pair of BNIB 270X 2GB cards, and a GTX950 2GB OC, and the aforementioned RX 460 4GB Nitro card, which I have in it right now.

I would consider throwing both 7950 3GB cards in and Crossfiring them, but no HDMI 2.0 output. I'd have to spend on one of those Club3D active DP-to-HDMI2.0 adapters.
 

SlickR12345

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Jan 9, 2010
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www.clubvalenciacf.com
Even the 1060 6GB and RX 480 8GB can't really offer 4k gaming. Sure you are going to be able to play few games at 4k and 30fps average, but consider you'll have low 10's as a minimum as well, so literally unplayable. For true 4k gaming you need AT LEAST a GTX 1070 or from AMD's side of things a Fury X.
 

whm1974

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Jul 24, 2016
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You know Larry, with all the money you spend on low end hardware you could build something really really nice. Something that would be a real pleasure to use.
 

MajinCry

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2015
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The 460 is pretty much the same as the 7850, in terms of framerate pushing. You're going to need way more grunt, even for Skyrim, to hit 4k. And if you have an ENB, forget about it, you're going 1080p tops on even the highest end of hardware, supposing you don't skimp on the quality settings.
 

Piroko

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Jan 10, 2013
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I just booted up original Skyrim without mods and did a quick and dirty test:
maxed ingame settings @ 1440p yield around 55 to 60 fps in Whiterun with a HD 380.
low ingame settings @ 1440p get me 60 fps locked at ~60% GPU load (eyeballed from gpu-z).

Based on that I'd say 1440p with high-ish settings will get you around 45 fps on a HD 460/GTX 950, and 4k low settings might be in the 40 fps range as well. Though you will probably see quite a number of fps dips througout the game.
I'd still reccomend waiting that one month to double down on the performance. That would get you 4k high settings at acceptable framerates and the game looks so much nicer when npcs don't pop up out of nowhere some 30 ft in front of you.

Disclaimer: My game might still have some modded configs in it even when I just start the skyrim.exe. I didn't want to reinstall it. Definitely had the high res textures installed as well.
 

Insomniator

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2002
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If you really only dabble in skyrim once in a while, its probably not worth it upgrading. Make due with the 460... I imagine at low/med it could be playable at 4k. Vanilla Skyrim is quite old.

Also, you could sell your old garbage and build a decent machine, like people suggest in almost every thread you make.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,572
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If you really only dabble in skyrim once in a while, its probably not worth it upgrading. Make due with the 460... I imagine at low/med it could be playable at 4k. Vanilla Skyrim is quite old.
Yeah, I just installed Steam on this box, and it auto-detected at 2560x1440 (currently running VSR 2560x1440 on a 1080P monitor), and Ultra settings, and it was quite playable. I dare say, it might run med or high @ 4K (when my UHD TV arrives later today.)

Also, you could sell your old garbage and build a decent machine, like people suggest in almost every thread you make.
Is an i5-6400 @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB DDR4, SSD, not a decent machine? It only lacks a really high-end video card.
 

[DHT]Osiris

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Dec 15, 2015
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Vanilla Skyrim is quite old.

Vanilla vanilla is. Skyrim SE is using an updated engine and has (marginally) higher requirements.

Is an i5-6400 @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB DDR4, SSD, not a decent machine? It only lacks a really high-end video card.

That i5 is going to hold you back under some circumstances. 4k may well be one of them. 1070 would likely be alright, but i'd really call that a 1440p machine, not a 4k machine.

I'm surprised at how many of you guys think 4k is so hard to run. It isn't. I could have gotten away with using my R9 290 for 4k low another year if I wanted to.

It's not 'just 4k'. You can run Quake 2 @4k on a potato, but an extensively modded Skyrim SE is going to crush most cards at 4k just from a vram perspective, and that's to say nothing of newer games (2016 AAA titles, not refreshes of older games)

It's also about what quality you want. I'd personally rather play a game with most/all the tweaks turned on @1440p than have garbage textures, crap shadows, and most particle effects turned off @4k. Maybe VL feels different though.
 

poofyhairguy

Lifer
Nov 20, 2005
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One thing that amazes me Larry is you have all these boxes lying around and you don't cryptomine.

Take that AMD 460 (and all the AMD you have), read the Zcash thread, stick it in a box that is just sitting there and mine its cost back.

When I finally got into it myself this year it was a revelation. Years of PC parts I had collected just needed some GPUs and then suddenly they worked for me. You already spent the money....

Use the Nvidia card for gaming.
 
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VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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I just ran it in 4K, I manually adjusted the resolution in the menu, but that's all I did. I don't know if it auto-adjusted the preset to "low", but it didn't look all that great outdoors. Inside looked pretty good. BTW, at 4K, you can really see the lack of quality in the textures (vanilla).
 

tential

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May 13, 2008
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Yeah, that's the other fun part about big 4k screens. AA becomes less of an issue, but boy-howdy do 512 textures look like ass.
Every bad texture is painfully obvious now that I have a 4k monitor. But it's honestly amazing for desktop usage. Like beyond amazing. 4k is better than I had hoped
 
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VirtualLarry

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Another dilemma. Looking for sources of 4K content for PC. As some may have heard, Netflix 4K UHD HDR support is coming to Kaby Lake when it comes out. And so far, ONLY Kaby Lake, although, supposedly, NVidia has support for PlayReady 3.0 DRM in their Pascal cards and drivers.

So, assuming that NV cards eventually get "approved" by the media cartels, as a viable distribution method for 4K content via Netflix, then I guess my upgraded gaming card had better be Nvidia. So, I'm thinking 1060 6GB, or 1070 8GB. If so, then I should probably wait until the 1080ti launches, to push prices further down the stack. Or just pick up a 1060.
 

tential

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May 13, 2008
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Another dilemma. Looking for sources of 4K content for PC. As some may have heard, Netflix 4K UHD HDR support is coming to Kaby Lake when it comes out. And so far, ONLY Kaby Lake, although, supposedly, NVidia has support for PlayReady 3.0 DRM in their Pascal cards and drivers.

So, assuming that NV cards eventually get "approved" by the media cartels, as a viable distribution method for 4K content via Netflix, then I guess my upgraded gaming card had better be Nvidia. So, I'm thinking 1060 6GB, or 1070 8GB. If so, then I should probably wait until the 1080ti launches, to push prices further down the stack. Or just pick up a 1060.
Are you 100% amd won't have it?

Although there is so little 4k content and 4k Netflix is low bit rate anyway. 4k is purely for gaming at this point. It's surprising seeing 4k pushed so hard for tvs when there is a pathetic amount of content