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From all the communication I’ve had with Nvidia, the prevailing sentiment was that the 4090 was an 8K card, that happened to be good for AI due to vram requirem

by dijit 2y ago

From all the communication I’ve had with Nvidia, the prevailing sentiment was that the 4090 was an 8K card, that happened to be good for AI due to vram requirements from 8K gaming. However, I’m a AAA gamedev CTO and they might have been telling me what the card means to me.

ziml77 2y ago
I do recall an 8K push but I thought that was on the 3090 (and was conditional on DLSS doing the heavy lifting). I don't remember any general marketing about the 4090 being an 8K card but I could very well have missed it or be mixing things up! I mean it does make sense to market it for 8K since anyone who is trying to drive that many pixels when gaming probably has deep pockets.
- ryao 2y ago
  I recall the 3090 8K marketing too. However, I also recall Nvidia talking about 8K in reference to the 4090: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/8k/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/8k/ That said, I recall that the media was more enthusiastic about christening the 4090 as an 8K card than Nvidia was: https://wccftech.com/rtx-4090-is-the-first-true-8k-gaming-gpu-according-to-benchmarks/ https://wccftech.com/rtx-4090-is-the-first-true-8k-gaming-gp...
ryao 2y ago
I recall them making the same claims about the 3090: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-3090-8k-hdr-gaming/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-3090-8...
Refusing23 2y ago
Seems kinda silly to make an 8K video card when ... nobody on the planet has an 8K screen
- dijit 2y ago
  2018 (6 years ago): https://www.techradar.com/reviews/dell-ultrasharp-up3218k https://www.techradar.com/reviews/dell-ultrasharp-up3218k It's uncommon, sure, but as mentioned it was sold to me as being a development board for future resolutions.
- gnabgib 2y ago
  Perhaps you don't, but several of us do. They've been around a while, available in your local bestbuy/costco if you're rocking a 4:4:4 TV they're not even particularly pricey and great for computing (depending on the subpixel layout). On the planet? Many people. Maybe you're thinking 12K or 16K.
  - jkolio 2y ago
    It's been a few years since I worked at [big tech retailer], but 8K TVs basically didn't sell at the time. There was basically no native content - even the demos were upscaled 4K - and it was very hard to tell the difference between the two unless you were so close to the screen that you couldn't see the whole thing. For the content that was available, either you were dealing with heavy compression or setting up a high-capacity server, since file sizes basically necessitated most of the space on what people would consider a normal-sized hard drive to store just a few movies. The value just wasn't there and probably won't ever be for most use cases. XR equipment might be an exception, video editing another.
  - duffyjp 2y ago
    I got 4K TVs for both of my kids, they're dirt cheap-- sub $200. I'm surprised the Steam hardware survey doesn't show more. A lot of my friends also set their kids up on TVs, and you can't hardly buy a 1080P TV anymore.
    - brokenmachine 2y ago
      Does Steam hardware survey show the resolution of your usual desktop, or your gaming resolution? eg I run at 4k in Windows normally, but quite often run games at 1080p.
out_of_protocol 2y ago
Well, modern games + modern cards can't even do 4k at high fps and no dlss. 8k story is totally fairy tale. Maybe "render at 540p, display at 8k"-kind of thing? P.S. Also, VR. For VR you need 2x4k at 90+ stable fps. There's (almost) no vr games though
- diggan 2y ago
  > modern games + modern cards can't even do 4k at high fps What "modern games" and "modern cards" are you specifically talking about here? There are plenty of AAA games released last years that you can do 4K at 60fps with a RTX 3090 for example.
  - philjohn 2y ago
    This - latest Call of Duty game on my (albeit water cooled) 3080TI founders edition saw frame rates in the 90-100fps running natively at 4k (no DLSS).
    - bavell 2y ago
      Can't CoD do 60+ fps @1080p on a potato nowadays?... not exactly a good reference point.
      - CobaltFire 2y ago
        4k90 is about 6 times that, and he probably has the options turned up. I’d say the comparison is what’s faulty, not the example.
      - sfmike 2y ago
        new cod is really unoptimized. on a few years old 3080 still getting 100 fps on 4k that's pretty great. if he uses some frame gen such as lossless he can get 120-150. Say what you will about nvidia prices but you do get years of great gaming out of them.
    - CobaltFire 2y ago
pier25 2y ago
The 4080 struggles to play high end games at 4k and there aren't that many 8k tvs/monitors in the market... Doesn't make much sense that anyone would think about the 4090 as an 8k GPU to be honest.
Aardwolf 2y ago
Why does 8K gaming require more VRAM? I think the textures and geometry would have the same resolution (or is that not the case? but in 4K if you walk closer to the wall you'd want higher texture resolution as well anyway, if the graphics artists have made the assets at that resolution anyway) 8K screen resolution requires 132 megabytes of memory to store the pixels (for 32-bit color), that doesn't explain gigabytes of extra VRAM I'd be curious to know what information I'm missing
- Macha 2y ago
  My understand is between double buffering and multiple sets of intermediate info for shaders, you usually have a bunch of screen size buffers hanging around in VRAM, though you are probably right that these aren't the biggest contributor to VRAM usage in the end.
  - symaxian 2y ago
    Shadow maps are a good example, if the final rendered image is 4k you don't want to be rendering shadow maps for each light source which are only 1080p else your shadows will be chunkier.
- dijit 2y ago
  You’re only thinking of the final raster framebuffer, there are multiple raster and shader stages. Increasing the native output has an nearly exponential increase in memory requirements.
- atq2119 2y ago
  When you render a higher resolution natively, you typically also want higher resolution textures and more detailed model geometry.

by dijit 2y ago

ziml77 2y ago

I do recall an 8K push but I thought that was on the 3090 (and was conditional on DLSS doing the heavy lifting). I don't remember any general marketing about the 4090 being an 8K card but I could very well have missed it or be mixing things up! I mean it does make sense to market it for 8K since anyone who is trying to drive that many pixels when gaming probably has deep pockets.

ryao 2y ago
I recall the 3090 8K marketing too. However, I also recall Nvidia talking about 8K in reference to the 4090: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/8k/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/8k/ That said, I recall that the media was more enthusiastic about christening the 4090 as an 8K card than Nvidia was: https://wccftech.com/rtx-4090-is-the-first-true-8k-gaming-gpu-according-to-benchmarks/ https://wccftech.com/rtx-4090-is-the-first-true-8k-gaming-gp...

ryao 2y ago

I recall them making the same claims about the 3090: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-3090-8k-hdr-gaming/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-3090-8...

Refusing23 2y ago

Seems kinda silly to make an 8K video card when ... nobody on the planet has an 8K screen

dijit 2y ago
2018 (6 years ago): https://www.techradar.com/reviews/dell-ultrasharp-up3218k https://www.techradar.com/reviews/dell-ultrasharp-up3218k It's uncommon, sure, but as mentioned it was sold to me as being a development board for future resolutions.
gnabgib 2y ago
Perhaps you don't, but several of us do. They've been around a while, available in your local bestbuy/costco if you're rocking a 4:4:4 TV they're not even particularly pricey and great for computing (depending on the subpixel layout). On the planet? Many people. Maybe you're thinking 12K or 16K.
- jkolio 2y ago
  It's been a few years since I worked at [big tech retailer], but 8K TVs basically didn't sell at the time. There was basically no native content - even the demos were upscaled 4K - and it was very hard to tell the difference between the two unless you were so close to the screen that you couldn't see the whole thing. For the content that was available, either you were dealing with heavy compression or setting up a high-capacity server, since file sizes basically necessitated most of the space on what people would consider a normal-sized hard drive to store just a few movies. The value just wasn't there and probably won't ever be for most use cases. XR equipment might be an exception, video editing another.
- duffyjp 2y ago
  I got 4K TVs for both of my kids, they're dirt cheap-- sub $200. I'm surprised the Steam hardware survey doesn't show more. A lot of my friends also set their kids up on TVs, and you can't hardly buy a 1080P TV anymore.
  - brokenmachine 2y ago
    Does Steam hardware survey show the resolution of your usual desktop, or your gaming resolution? eg I run at 4k in Windows normally, but quite often run games at 1080p.

out_of_protocol 2y ago

Well, modern games + modern cards can't even do 4k at high fps and no dlss. 8k story is totally fairy tale. Maybe "render at 540p, display at 8k"-kind of thing? P.S. Also, VR. For VR you need 2x4k at 90+ stable fps. There's (almost) no vr games though

diggan 2y ago
> modern games + modern cards can't even do 4k at high fps What "modern games" and "modern cards" are you specifically talking about here? There are plenty of AAA games released last years that you can do 4K at 60fps with a RTX 3090 for example.
- philjohn 2y ago
  This - latest Call of Duty game on my (albeit water cooled) 3080TI founders edition saw frame rates in the 90-100fps running natively at 4k (no DLSS).
  - bavell 2y ago
    Can't CoD do 60+ fps @1080p on a potato nowadays?... not exactly a good reference point.
    - CobaltFire 2y ago
      4k90 is about 6 times that, and he probably has the options turned up. I’d say the comparison is what’s faulty, not the example.
    - sfmike 2y ago
      new cod is really unoptimized. on a few years old 3080 still getting 100 fps on 4k that's pretty great. if he uses some frame gen such as lossless he can get 120-150. Say what you will about nvidia prices but you do get years of great gaming out of them.
  - CobaltFire 2y ago

pier25 2y ago

The 4080 struggles to play high end games at 4k and there aren't that many 8k tvs/monitors in the market... Doesn't make much sense that anyone would think about the 4090 as an 8k GPU to be honest.

Aardwolf 2y ago

Why does 8K gaming require more VRAM? I think the textures and geometry would have the same resolution (or is that not the case? but in 4K if you walk closer to the wall you'd want higher texture resolution as well anyway, if the graphics artists have made the assets at that resolution anyway) 8K screen resolution requires 132 megabytes of memory to store the pixels (for 32-bit color), that doesn't explain gigabytes of extra VRAM I'd be curious to know what information I'm missing

Macha 2y ago
My understand is between double buffering and multiple sets of intermediate info for shaders, you usually have a bunch of screen size buffers hanging around in VRAM, though you are probably right that these aren't the biggest contributor to VRAM usage in the end.
- symaxian 2y ago
  Shadow maps are a good example, if the final rendered image is 4k you don't want to be rendering shadow maps for each light source which are only 1080p else your shadows will be chunkier.
dijit 2y ago
You’re only thinking of the final raster framebuffer, there are multiple raster and shader stages. Increasing the native output has an nearly exponential increase in memory requirements.
atq2119 2y ago
When you render a higher resolution natively, you typically also want higher resolution textures and more detailed model geometry.