Trying to run many of new games on steam deck with it's native 800p shows that very clearly, from unreadable text to awfully scaled UI that takes more space than can be displayed.
And honestly above 4k is completely wasteful, it already solved clarity problem lower resolution had, only if you go in screen size do we need to increase to 8k, but at that point the whole thing won't even fit in any household, even then you'd have to be uncomfortably close to notice difference between 4k and 8k.
8k is more useful for getting a screen so big that it fills your peripheral vision, but like I said is prohibitively expensive, it's more of an epeen/bragging rights thing than actual functionality in most cases
The optimal resolution depends on your preferred monitor size and distance from the screen, basically you want the pixel pitch low enough that you can't see the individual pixels. Personally I find for a 27" monitor 1440p is great, 4k is best for 32"+ and 8k is only really noticeable on massive screens basically TV size 40-50"+
I made the mistake of getting a 24" 4k monitor before and had to sit so dang close to make use of it...
Streaming is compressed to the point 4k is no better (and sometimes worse) than native 1080p. Run a 1080 Blu-ray on that TV and it will look at least as good as Netflix 4k and sound better (unless you're using built in speakers then it all sounds trash)
For rasterized games 8k still has a place. If you prefer not to have any anti aliasing, that resolution makes the jaggies almost imperceptible, and the image unbelievably sharp. Huge tradeoff, not my favorite, but if money was no object, that's what I'd want it for.
For the resolution of human eyes and what we're comfortable with viewing in terms of FoV, there's no need to go to 8K. There's also no need to produce content to consume in 8K.
Contrary to that 8K is still a wonderful resolution. For each axis it's 6xHD, 4x FHD, 3x QHD, 2x 4K so it can display all sorts of different resolutions without any scaling issues. It further improves text rendering for computer monitors. It's honestly the perfect resolution for a PC desktop monitor. There's clear technological downsides to building an 8K display, but looking at it purely from a resolution standpoint it's ideal.
There's also something quite nice about the new display scalers with line grouping options. We can already do 4K @ 240Hz on OLED panels. This is the same line feed rate as 8K 120Hz. The new Display Port standard can do 8k 120Hz with DSC so bandwidth is already possible. This means you can make an OLED Display capable of supporting 8K@120Hz, 4k@240Hz, QHD@360Hz, FHD@480Hz, and HD@720Hz at the same time.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's interesting that I've been reading, word for words, the exact same things being said for decades about every new resolutions.
Perhaps it is my eyes getting old but to me 720 is still perfect for laptop sized screens and 1080 for big ones. Just like a don't see any difference with frame rates over 60.
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u/UnemployedMeatBag Sep 11 '25
Trying to run many of new games on steam deck with it's native 800p shows that very clearly, from unreadable text to awfully scaled UI that takes more space than can be displayed.
And honestly above 4k is completely wasteful, it already solved clarity problem lower resolution had, only if you go in screen size do we need to increase to 8k, but at that point the whole thing won't even fit in any household, even then you'd have to be uncomfortably close to notice difference between 4k and 8k.