Lowest cost GPU for UHD/4K?

[Blair S. Paulsen]

With UHD/4K monitors finally hitting the streets and the RedRay delayed, I'm looking for a cost effective PCIe card that can drive UHD (3840x2160) and/or 4K (4096x2160). I have an ATI Radeon 7970 card that works great, but its $400. Can anyone suggest a cheaper graphics board that could manage UHD resolution???

Cheers - #19

 

[Todd T]

You may have missed this:

On the low end, I tested Radeon HD 7770, it picks up 4K right away and it seems to have less issues with blanking than Nvidia cards.

But the real gem, to my surprise, was... Radeon HD 5450 with 512MB RAM. The computer just booted straight into 3840x2160@30p on generic Windows driver. This is a $30 card hmy:... in case you were wondering what kind of processing power and prowess is needed to drive such mighty resolution (decoding 4K video is a whole different story, of course).

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Thank you Todd. I did miss that. Was that somewhere in the 65 page Seiki thread?

Cheers - #19

 

[Todd T]

Yes, click on the arrows after Nicks name to open that post in the thread.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Thanks Todd, I did just that already and its a good data point in my research. That said, I do need a card that can actually play back a UHD video source at a rock solid 30Hz. If I can accomplish that with a $30 card I'd be stoked - and more than a bit surprised. IAC, what I'm looking for is real world attempts to drive displays like the Seiki via a single HDMI cable from a commodity GPU.

$30 Radeon HD 5450 with 512MB VRAM is the lowest spec card reported to work, at least in terms of displaying the Windows desktop. I'm going to try to get my hands on one and test it tomorrow.

$400 Radeon 7970 with 4GB VRAM worked a treat, but am looking for a cheaper option to dedicate to driving the display when my primary machine is occupied.

Anyone tried the Radeon 7950 2GB version?

How about the Radeon 8730M 2GB mobile GPU?

After seeing that someone managed to drive the Seiki with a MB Air I'm starting to wonder just how much grunt UHD requires at 30hz?

CHeers - #19

 

[Les Dittert]

I'd be interested in one of those cheap ATI cards as well, if it can actually play compressed streams without stuttering on a PC.
Let us know how it goes!

 

[Les Dittert]

I got a ATI HD5450 ( 1GB version ) to test with the Seiki, but it does not seem to support 3840x2160 UHD at all.
I'm on Windows 7 64bit and tried the current driver and the Beta ATI driver.
What am I doing wrong ?

 

[Elsie N]

Thanks Todd, I did just that already and its a good data point in my research. That said, I do need a card that can actually play back a UHD video source at a rock solid 30Hz. If I can accomplish that with a $30 card I'd be stoked - and more than a bit surprised. IAC, what I'm looking for is real world attempts to drive displays like the Seiki via a single HDMI cable from a commodity GPU.

$30 Radeon HD 5450 with 512MB VRAM is the lowest spec card reported to work, at least in terms of displaying the Windows desktop. I'm going to try to get my hands on one and test it tomorrow.

$400 Radeon 7970 with 4GB VRAM worked a treat, but am looking for a cheaper option to dedicate to driving the display when my primary machine is occupied.

Anyone tried the Radeon 7950 2GB version?

How about the Radeon 8730M 2GB mobile GPU?

After seeing that someone managed to drive the Seiki with a MB Air I'm starting to wonder just how much grunt UHD requires at 30hz?

CHeers - #19

Hey Blair, I've got a 7950 3GB version and it works great with the Seiki 39". Admittedly I haven't used it as an R3D footage monitor yet, but it displays the Windows background as a second screen via HDMI 3. $220 after $30 rebate IIRC.

 

[Les Dittert]

the real test is if it can playback frames without any Judder or instability in frame rate.
on Monday I'll try to get my ATI card working with the 39 inch version. So far it doesn't want to go above 1920.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

The ATI Radeon 7950 3GB graphics board for $220 might be as far down the ladder as one can go and still get rock solid UHD (3840x2160) at 30Hz. Almost pulled the trigger on that card the other day myself. Ultimately I'm just trying to build out a cost effective config that would live with the display. The alternative is the RedRay, and I expect to have at least one of those around, but its not cheap (no offense, alien technology and all ;-) - but even more on point, a low end PC with easy access drive bays, USB3 and/or eSATA ports - with the right GPU - would be both a sorted solution for driving the display and a copy/archive/render station as needed.

Stepping down from the 7970 to the 7950 just saved me $200. Nice. Anyone know of any reason a bit less processing power in the graphics board would alter picture quality? Are the any rounding issues? Reduced precision? Unless there's a gotcha I haven't heard about...

Leveraging infrastructure investment since childhood bruddah ;-)

Cheers - #19

 

[Christopher Quarksnow]

I have been using Intel 4th gen core to drive my Seiki 50" [2160p @ 24, 29 & 30Hz], yet my main preoccupation is color depth, and I could not get a straight answer from Intel: the source & sink in 7.5 gfx are "deep color" capable, yet it is not clear whether from memory/config interface to port mux or eDP mux we can have a 10bpc or more at full res., even at 24Hz.
One issue is that the Intel Windows configuration utility only presents 8bpp, 16bpp or 32bpp as choices (as of driver 3186). Driver version 3257 came on 9/11 with one of the corrections stating "Resolved issue where xvYCC & YCbCr color options may not appear in the Intel Graphics Control Panel after connecting an HDMI panel", but nothing about "deep color" that is mentioned so many times in 4th Gen Core-related documents, as well as 12bpc, not indicating if it's throughout the chip. Their resolutions & frame rates for HDMI & DP don't indicate any color depth, or seem pure assumptions.
I also wrote Microsoft asking how the the Intel drivers could have passed WHC not doing "deep color", yet no response ; I know they mandate EDID 1.4 and apparently the maximum frame rate at full resolution as a condition for the driver certification, but I doubt that the Seiki, that I connected straight to HDMI, and then to DP via the famous Accell adapter would have inhibited a deeper color choice.
I then thought about a 2101010 convolution, as I might skip transparency for the sake of better colors. I am also checking the Linux side initially with Canonical and now the Wayland developer, and maybe someone can check whether the latest MBA can be configured to send 10bpc via TB1 port.
Not to say that Intel embedded graphics will perform as fast as a $100 PowerColor AX7750 for everything, but the low latency helps, and NUC such as Intel D54250WYK, BRIX GB-BXi7-4500 might become more ubiquitous, thus being the new landscape.
If it turns out that the Core i*-4*70* or Xeon E3-12xx v3 can't churn deep color at 4k, the RGB101010 format might gain momentum, especially in view of BT2020.

Can't figure why so many industries don't include color depth in their specs, and it took me 4 weeks to find that Google Chromecast was only 8bpc, not even mentioned in the API or the leaflet inside the box.

 

[Evan Dickerson]

I got a ATI HD5450 ( 1GB version ) to test with the Seiki, but it does not seem to support 3840x2160 UHD at all.
I'm on Windows 7 64bit and tried the current driver and the Beta ATI driver.
What am I doing wrong ?

Did you ever figure this out? It would appear that some of these cards (depending on specs and manufacturer) come with HDMI 1.3 and some come with HDMI 1.4. I found this out after ordering a 1GB card and having it not boot into UHD. The box said the HDMI spec was 1.3a. I could not find one for sale with a guaranteed HDMI 1.4 so I ended up just ordering a radeon HD 7750, but if I can get the 5450 to work (it is so incredibly cheap!) that would be great.

Thanks.