One of the underlying themes of CES this year was the transition to 4K displays. AMD had a 4K (4096 x 2160) demo at its booth driven by a Radeon HD 7970. Most 4K displays require multiple inputs, which was the case in AMD's demo. Two DisplayPort outputs from the 7970 drive the panel in the shot above. AMD ran both video playback and a 3D rendered test as a proof of functionality. If the high-end of the PC space moves to 4K eventually that will continue to drive high-end GPU demand thanks to the 2.1x increase in pixel count over a standard 30-inch display. 

AMD also had a 5x1 Eyefinity setup (not using 4K displays) running off of two 7970s showing a video conferencing app (ooVoo) running alongside Battlefield 3. This was of course one of the original intents of Eyefinity: to deliver a more immersive experience. The addition of video conferencing is a nod to a usage model where you are not only playing a game that makes you feel immersed but you're also able to look to your left and right and see your teammates. 

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  • Concillian - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link

    movie industry will drive this, we're just along for the ride, forced to take what we can get.

    Marketing buzz is 4k, and 3840 is not technically 4k, so it won't happen. We can hope, but I doubt it.

    1920x1200 user here, so I agree with you, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
  • mmatis - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link

    Look, guys, the porn producers are all starting to shoot in 1.9:1, and the panel manufacturers KNOW who the early adopters are for large screen hi-res displays...
  • Penti - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link

    It will mainly be used in film production and medical imaging any way. It's where you find those multi-input high-res displays, or maybe in a air-tower (ATC) for radar display. Professional applications that aren't all that ordinary. Neither is there anything new about the displays until we get displays supporting DP 1.2 4k or HDMI 3GHz. The resolution is just that because of bandwidth limitations. You can get 3840x2400 out of it and there is already multi-dvi displays with that resolution. Since like more then ten years back.

    Digital cinema is around 4096 x 2160 (at what the projector can output) usually shot or scanned to 4096 x 2304, 2160, 2048, 3112 (1.32 35mm film full frame, can still be 2.39:1 lenses or whatever) or 1714 for 2:39:1. So of course about useful resolution for about 4k DI online editing and mastering, color correction, preparing for digital cinema or simply editing 4k digital video and playback of said type of material. Video/Cinema is why they mention and support that typical res as it's full res digital cinema 4k. As said it doesn't mean that they don't support other resolutions. Internally I think they raised the resolution to about 8kx8k in GCN. Not enough bandwidth over a single link for that though.
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, January 15, 2012 - link

    The display at AMD was a 4096x2104 resolution, and there were quite a few 4K displays being demoed around CES. Honestly, 4K was one of the highlights of CES this year. I doubt it will be affordable for most of us for at least five years, but we will absolutely see 4K HDTVs start hitting retail in the next year. They might start at $15K or $20K, just like the HD plasma displays from 10 years back, but in a decade I imagine we'll have a follow up to Blu-ray (with more DRM!) and the home theaters will all be 4K or better. I say bring it on!

    Incidentally, with a 4K resolution, the 46" (it looked about that) panel at the AMD booth has roughly the same DPI as the 30" 2560x1600 display I'm currently using. I'm not sure about trying to put a 46" display on my desk, though! LOL
  • Penti - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link

    It's not really consumer tech yet as you say. Ones we start to see some 4k Blu-ray variant I can see they selling and producing some high-end premium 4k displays for movie consumers.

    It's great that we get to see DP 1.2 (and maybe more proper daisy chaining support) as well as HDMI 3GHz more though, ones we have that in most devices you will never be limited to the 1920x1200 60Hz on HDMI of older gpus and displays, but it's a while for that to really happen if you don't have Displayport at least. But it is at least progressing.

    But I guess there is a while before we see 4k digital cinema quality and mastering in our living room :) Not even all films hit that kind of cinema quality and high-quality mastering. We would be lucky just to get better mastered blu-rays for most of the time I guess. It's hardly equal or close to a proper mastered 2k cinema movie even. AMD would probably even have passed that 8k x 8k limit by then.

    We will see allot of professional applications before they get ordinary consumer goods with 4k support so we will probably see it moving along there as well.

    Still just a 13-14" 1600x900 laptops for consumers is just starting to show up and I don't expect any miracles with what consumers get and what they expect from that industry even if it's pushed quite hard for those smaller LPTS TFT/LCD mobile and tablet displays. I don't expect and see the proposed resolution race by people expecting miracles as unreasonable when we pretty much have had the same resolutions for 25 years and just went from workstations running 1120x832, 1120x900 or 1024x864, or 1280x1024 from 23-25 years ago or 1 M to about 2 M displays of today. We haven't really seen the tech, or LCD and AMOLED panel manufacturers or even GPU companies approaching the print resolution so many would wish to have replicated.

    4k would pretty much be the limit for non IMAX or 70mm or really high-end digital cameras any way so I don't expect much of a resolution race from the companies behind the tech, even if I do expect to see more displays in the ordinary high-res range in stead of standard low res panels being thrown out at people. A revolution hasn't really happened, but we will at least see those 4k displays and consumer home-theater projectors eventually. Considering of how the distribution is handled in the cinema business I wouldn't really hope for that push to happen soon though. Outside US people can't even get digital distribution of movies and tv other then ordinary broadcast, dvd, bluray and useless services that don't have those tens and tens of thousands of titles for streaming.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link

    IF it does happen I hope someone will at least launch a 2160x1215 monitor with a non-TN panel. PLP rocks for multi display use; but needs same height/DPI side screens to work well.
  • Alchemy69 - Sunday, January 15, 2012 - link

    Oh great, now I'll be able to play console ports on a 4k monitor instead.
  • mariush - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link

    Yeah, 720p of washed out textures upscaled to 4k .... it will look so cool... can't wait.
  • mmatis - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link

    Ooooh! I wonder how long before they make these work with active 3D glasses! I can't wait to play Pong 3D on one of them...
    }:-]

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