Odyssey looks good at 4k medium settings, although there are some textures missing on yonder hills.
If you hang out around certain corners of the internet (reddit), you might think you need a 2000 dollar plus computer to play at 4k. Not true, internet! My two year old pc featuring hardware that's about three years old at this point is perfectly capable of gaming at 4k, provided you're aiming for 60 frames per second and are willing to turn graphical settings down below Ultra. In a very scientific experiment, I took a ten foot HDMI cable and hooked it up to my 4k 55 inch tv and then booted up some games. Here's what I found.
Elden Ring was up first. Although not a particularly well-optimized game, I found that it played pretty similarly at 4k medium compared to 1440p maximum, albeit with a few more dropped frames. Frame rate is capped at 60 fps in Elden Ring, but I did notice drops more, since I was playing on a tv without veritable refresh rate. Still, it played well and looked great, the only real noticeable difference being an increased rate of pop in as you approach objects.
For Halo Infinite, I used the medium preset as well as the dynamic resolution feature (min and max frame rate), which I set to 60. There aren't many differences between medium and ultra in Halo, that is, unless you're analyzing comparison screenshots. The drs wasn't readily apparent, and the game held 60 fps even in the open world areas. This surprised me quite a bit, since Infinite has a reputation for being unoptimized. I think the game was designed to be used with drs, and it's good enough that you'll not notice it on a decent machine. I didn't try native 4k, but the X Box Series X can't do 60 fps at 4k native in Halo either, and heavily relies on drs, according to Digital Foundry. I think a 3700x/5700 xt combo stacks up pretty well against the next gen consoles, which makes sense, considering similarly powered AMD hardware is in both machines.
Forza Horizon ran beautifully at 4k High settings, keeping a steady 60 fps. This is a fun game to play on a big screen. I also tried Assassin's Creed Odyssey. To keep a steady 60 fps, I had to reduce settings to the medium preset. I also turned adaptive anti-aliasing on, which is actually an upscaling feature tied to the framerate limit. Medium settings at 4k looked great. My general impression is that an increase in resolution generally looks better than higher graphical settings at a lower resolution. 1080p ultra doesn't looked as good as 1440p medium, just like 1440p ultra doesn't look as good as 4k medium.
Now I wouldn't purchase three year-old hardware if I were building a gaming computer to pair with a 4k monitor, but I wouldn't break the bank on a 3090 ti for 1600 bucks. This is more a reminder for myself than my non-existent computer gaming audience. Hop off the hedonistic treadmill and the upgrade wagon. Save that sweet cash for essentials, like your housing payment and gasoline.
Elden Ring is one of those games where medium quality settings don't look that different from max.
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