12K (Triple 4K Monitor) Graphics Test Bench Upgrade Review
Introduction
1080p, 1440p, 1660p, 2160p; just a random bunch of numbers with a ‘p’ after them can mean nothing to some people; however, to gamers it means a whole world of display quality goodness. For the last few years, 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) monitors have been the normal standard for a ‘decent’ gaming setup and what most graphics cards are tested at. Then we started moving up to higher resolutions such as 2560 x 1440p and 2560 x 1600p.
For some, this wasn’t enough; despite the pixel densities growing larger, as humans we wanted even more pixels. This resorted to users buying multiple monitors and connecting them one next to another and activating AMD ‘EyeFinity’ or NVIDIA ‘Surround’ to have an almost 180° viewing range. Even though the latter part of the pixel count didn’t change, this meant that monitor set-ups were hitting 5760 pixels wide by using three 1920 x 1080p monitors.
Then we move onto today, 1080p and 1440p has been surpassed by what has now become the new ‘standard’ of gaming, 2160p, or 4K. At this resolution, even the most powerful of graphics cards can struggle to churn out the desired 60FPS which we have come to accept as the acceptable standard. So what about when you put three 4K monitors next to each other and ask for 11520 x 2160 of pixelated goodness (or 6480 x 3840 if you prefer your monitors in portrait mode.)
Before we go rushing into things, there are some issues regarding our particular test system. The provided AOC monitors (U2868PQU) has known issues with AMD graphics cards and 60Hz refresh rate. Symptoms can present themselves as minor screen flickering to a complete system freeze. This was made worse when trying to display at 11520 x 2160; however, after multiple tests, we found the issue was subdued by putting the monitors into Portrait mode. This isn’t the ideal gaming set-up, however, in the interest of bringing you the information; I endured the pain of a 2″ thick bezel between each monitor.
To get to the technical nitty gritty, a typical 4K monitor at 60Hz refresh rate can present 497 Million information pixels per second, so this set-up can present almost 1.5 Billion pixels per second; yes 1.5 BILLION. To put that into perspective, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge has a screen size of 1440 x 2560 and a refresh rate of 60Hz; that works out to a mere 221 Million pixels per second in comparison.
True 12k = 9 4k monitors. 3 wide and 3 high.
4k = 4096 x 2160 = 1 4k monitor or 4 1080P monitors
8k = 8192 x 4320 = 4 4k monitors
12k = 12288 x 6480 = 9 4k monitors.
VESA has not written the standard for Displayport yet as there is NO consumer image sensor or camera capable of providing that resolution. The NSA or CIA might have one in a spy satellite but you will not see one on Amazon any time soon.
In fact it has only been recently that 8k cameras have been released and Japan has been experimenting with 8k broadcast.
12k may just be limited now for UHD computer graphics and cinematic production.
3 4k monitors is NOT 12k. Disinformation is NOT what your readers want to see.
@ Rikki
If you want to publish a piece that folks will actually read and comment about, then you might run DX12 benchmarks and compare Radeon 390x, Fury and Fury X to nVidia.
Of course this site will have to give back the money that nVidia paid them to NOT publish that data.
3x4k is less than 6k