WoW for Widescreen & 4K Monitors?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Thinking of upgrading to either a 4k or a widescreen monitor. Can WoW run on either? I'm not sure the game's resolution went that high.

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P.S. I mean an super-wide screen monitor. Like this one.

[Deleted]

Your CPU can't handle it and you will play at 20-25 FPS at most. WoW's engine just sucks, it uses only the first 2 cores in a multicore system.

[Chuckadoodle]

I use a samsung 4K monitor... not impressed when it comes to WoW, My video card uses display port so i fluctuate between 45 - 60 FPS.. thinking of going back to my old monitor where i was getting 90+ FPS

[huth]

It's a 3D engine, scaling it to any arbitrary monitor size isn't the issue. Your system not having enough power to run it properly, on the other hand...

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So basically...

1. Yes, it will scale.

2. You need an ass powerful god computer to run it with quality.

Got it.

Thanks!

[DeltrusDisc]

Your CPU can't handle it and you will play at 20-25 FPS at most. WoW's engine just sucks, it uses only the first 2 cores in a multicore system.

The OP didn't even list his CPU, don't say such things. He may also be ready to turn off AA entirely and such, by going to such a high res.

@OP, WoW has always been one of the best games in terms of supporting higher resolutions. ^_^ Yes! Also, yes, 21:9 ratio resolutions are also supported.

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I use a samsung 4K monitor... not impressed when it comes to WoW, My video card uses display port so i fluctuate between 45 - 60 FPS.. thinking of going back to my old monitor where i was getting 90+ FPS

If that monitor's refresh rate was only 60 Hz maximum, then you won't see the 90+ fps, you'll only see 60 fps.

Now if you had a 120-144 Hz monitor, that's a different story.

[chaddd]

It will run on a 4K monitor @ the 4K res. I have an Asus 4K monitor and use 2 MSI 970s SLIed. Usually run 85 - 100 FPS on ultra.

[Didacticus Syntacticus]

Widescreen has a huge advantage in WoW in that it does actually increase you view angle.

4K, unless it's a 40" screen, I think is 100% pointless.

[Retron]

Your CPU can't handle it and you will play at 20-25 FPS at most. WoW's engine just sucks, it uses only the first 2 cores in a multicore system.

Don't know where you got that from! WoW actually favours one core above the others, but it *will* use any that it can get its hands on. Here's task manager showing WoW's processor usage (I was sitting at the desktop, then tabbed back to WoW - it's obvious when I switched back).



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Widescreen has a huge advantage in WoW in that it does actually increase you view angle.

4K, unless it's a 40" screen, I think is 100% pointless.

Then in that case it's easy to see you've not used one! Even at 28" it's night and day between a 4K screen and an HD screen, when viewed at the same distance. The 4K has beautifully sharp text and icons, whereas HD just looks like a blurry mess. Note, though, that until I used a 4K monitor I thought a 28" HD monitor was great.

I run WoW at 4K on a 980 and the system posted above. My monitor has g-sync and the performance is great - it's usually between 55 and 60 fps, with just the odd judder below that. Before I was running at 120Hz on a 670 at HD resolution, getting between 70 and 90 fps with everything turned on.

WoW is gorgeous in 4K. There are some bits of the UI which only have low-res icons, but the majority of it has high-res assets. Here's a crop of WoW running at 4K - as you can see, the icons are wonderfully detailed!

[May90]

Thinking of upgrading to either a 4k or a widescreen monitor.

I'm having the same dilemma, going to buy a new TV/monitor in a week. I, however, ended up going with 4K, since I have a 50 inch TV as a monitor currently and I'm not going to sacrifice the immersion effect I have from it for a better aspect ratio. The 34" one from LG (the curved one, especially) looks very good in terms of pixel density and aspect ratio, but relatively low height just doesn't cut it for me.

To answer your question, yes, WoW can run both and so can most modern games (short of SC2: using aspect ratios beyond 16:9 is banned there since it apparently gives an unfair advantage in terms of field of view). The problem is with older games: while most of them still support 21:9 to some extent, you might run into issues with cinematics and UI. Even modern games are not all perfect to play at 21:9: Dragon Age: Inquisition, for example, has all cinematics recorded in 16:9, so at 21:9 you will get black boxes to the sides. 4K is a safe bet since, pretty much, every game supports the 16:9 ratio, and those that don't support resolutions beyond 1080p or 1440p (I honestly can't think of such a game, but I assume there are some) still will look much better at 1080p upscaled to 4K due to the same aspect ratio, while with a 21:9 monitor you will have to either keep up with the side black boxes or stretch the picture horizontally.

On the other hand, 4K is much harder to drive than even 3440x1440, so if you want more FPS at the settings, I would go with 21:9.

Your CPU can't handle it and you will play at 20-25 FPS at most. WoW's engine just sucks, it uses only the first 2 cores in a multicore system.

CPU doesn't really influence the ability to change graphical settings and still get decent FPS (unless it is in a league well below the GPU's). Although, I am not being entirely accurate since 21:9 ratio will increase horizontal FoV and so require more CPU processing power, I doubt it will make that much of a difference.

You need an ass powerful god computer to run it with quality.

Depends on what you define as "ass powerful". You can play even at 4K with one single 970 most games, but in more recent games you surely will have to lower settings much. On my single 980 system, I haven't tried the most recent graphically demanding games, but, for example, in Guild Wars 2 I use 4K downscaling and all settings maxed out, except for shadows and supersampling, and I get 50 FPS in most cases, down to 30 FPS in the most extreme cases like a lot of water and grass in it.

People overestimate how much it takes to drive 4K today. You will often see nonsense like, "4K without triple Titans in SLI is a no go". Not at all. Depending on what games you play and what settings you want to use, of course. There is a huge advantage in 4K in that you need much lower AA settings in games to get the same amount of jaggies (and AA, as you know, is one of the biggest performance killers). So, effectively, the requirements difference between 4K and, say, 1080p is not as big as you would normally think.

4K, unless it's a 40" screen, I think is 100% pointless.

I generally agree. Unless you have incredible sight or you need as much desktop space as possible for some reason (for example, you are a professional artist and you need to have many toolsets in Photoshop opened at once), anything below 35"-40" won't make much difference at 4K from that at 1440p.

That said, 40" 4K TVs are not as expensive today as many people think. It goes as low as below $500:
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SE39UY04.../dp/B00DOPGO2G
"Branded" TVs will be more expensive, but even the Seiki will probably look infinitely better than a very-very high end Samsung 40" at 1080p.

[Lochton]

Moved the thread to a more fitting section.