1080p60 has become something of a standard among gamers with high-performance systems. Others have adopted higher refresh rates, and then there are those with enough firepower to run their games in 4K. However, the folks at LinusTechTips decided to go all out with a 16K configuration. Processing more than 132 million pixels at once divided across sixteen monitors is impressive no matter how you look at it, but if we combine the technical problems to solve and the final result, the question is whether it's worth it...
The 16K Gamble
The story began last July 24th, when the LinusTechTips channel revealed the construction of a 16K gaming platform. After having success (if we ignore certain technical details) with their previous 8K project, they basically got in touch with Acer, which without hesitation provided a total of sixteen Predator XB1 4K monitors.
Faced with the need for a structure capable of supporting all those screens, the people at iCTABLE not only customized one of their tables, but their own staff handled the transport and installation. The computer itself uses an Intel Core i7-6900K with 40 PCI Express lanes, 32 gigabytes of RAM, an Asus Rampage V Edition 10 motherboard, and four Quadro P5000 graphics cards, assisted by a sync board to avoid the "jelly effect".
Performance and the Road Ahead
Once they powered on the PC, they discovered problems in the connections of several panels. The quality of the cables played a trick... and their real debut had to be delayed a week, due to the presentation of Vega and Threadripper. The good news is that Windows 10 detected without major issues the resolution of 15,360 by 8,640 pixels, and all that remained was to run some games. The first on the list was Minecraft, with a performance of 40-50 FPS. Then came Rise of the Tomb Raider, with just 1 FPS on "low", saturating the graphics cards' memory completely. Half-Life 2 was much more tolerant, even with V-Sync enabled. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds directly crashed, and Civilization V delivered 20 FPS, although its interface was too small.
In short, playing at 16K is an extraordinary technical development, but we are still far from obtaining an acceptable experience. Let it serve as a glimpse into the future: graphics cards will need to add even more memory, and games will need serious optimization. At the time we thought 4K was a joke, and now it's essentially a standard. We'll get there.
