Can your PC handle 4K 60fps in YouTube? TEST IT!

Compumind said:

Hmm...

"Online video decoding is handled mostly by your CPU, so it's the CPU the one that must be powerful. Your GPU can help if your browser or app has hardware acceleration, but keep in mind it's a CPU intensive task."

Actually, the GPU is the game changer. 4K video is nice, but sitting right in front of a display is a bit overkill if it is too expensive. Just like a good 4K television - distance is your friend.

What? I didn't understand much of your message.

The GPU is not a game changer, I know this because I don't get that much difference in frame drops if I use, under the same PC, the video decoded with an HD 4600 (integrated Intel "crap") and a GT 755 (crappy nowadays, but way more powerful than Intel's). The clear bottleneck here is the CPU, the GPU's hardly reach 30% of usage, in the PC's I've used to do this test.

I don't understand at all what you are trying to say in your second sentence. Could you explain further?
You mean we should select 4K video? Or use 4K TV's or monitors?

Hi folks
I use an amzon fire TV stick so all the hard work is done by the amazon fire TV box.

BTW if you don't have a 4K monitor / TV you won't be able to see 4K UHD output so there's no point in doing the test !!!!

Load the Youtube video up on to the fire TV box.

BTW those who have got the latest SKY Q (4k UHD capable) boxes (mainly UK, R.O.I, Germany, Belgium -- ROI boxes there and Italy) can simply use the Youtube built in app. The software in the SKY Q box also does all the hard bits and just presents the video stream to your TV. (R.O.I = Rep. of Ireland).

I can't say if I'm at a computer with my nose near some screens that I'd want to look at a huge 4k monitor -- watching on a decent TV a distance away from the screen is IMO the way to go.

I have to laugh at people with crappy small screen mobile phones watching 4K video (and in PORTRAIT mode as well !!!!) well it's like "Bookies going bust" as who'se ever heard of a poor ISP / phone company supplying all that unnecessary bandwidth !!!! and reaping in the "shekels" by the truckload.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

...BTW if you don't have a 4K monitor / TV you won't be able to see 4K UHD output so there's no point in doing the test !!!!

That's actually not correct. You don't have to own a 4K TV or HDMI 2.0 to experience 4K "quality", or notice a difference between 1080 and 4K. Let me explain:

We don't live in a perfect infinite world, where one can just put work and work on components and these will respond and do the job. We have limits, limits of power, of bandwidth, and of space (digital size). What all of this mean?

It means that we watch videos that are compressed in lossy formats. YouTube compresses the videos, and this means there's a huge, HUGE amount of data that is lost. When you have a 1080 monitor and watch a 1080p film, you are not "maxing out" your monitor capabilities. That 1080p film is compressed, and it lacks huge amounts of data that is necessary to experience real, 100% 1080p. So, if you shove a 4K video to your 1080 monitor, it's not at all "useless because I can only get 1080", it makes all sense in the world and it will be better than a 1080 video. Let me explain it with an example:

In a perfect world (not impossible to create), you can have a 1920x1080 video that contains all the information of every single pixel (2 073 600 pixels) for every single frame during the whole duration of the video. This is the best, ideal way of experiencing any resolution, working with uncompressed, perfect videos. Let me do the math:

2 073 600 * 3 = 6 220 800 bytes
6 220 800 * 24 = 149 299 200 bytes
149 299 200 * 5400 = 806 215 680 000 bytes

That means that our perfect 1h 30min Full HD film is about 806 GB, almost 1TB just 1 film!!!

That wouldn't stand anything, so telecommunications engineers have managed to lower that from 806GB to just 4-8GB. That's 1/100th of the original perfect size! Now that's handful, you can sell these films in 40GB blurays, emit them via ethernet, etc...

If when you watch a film in your TV, you're using this uncompressed format of 800GB, then yeah, you are right, there's no point in feeding 4K to your TV because that would make absolutely no difference. Nevertheless, you're probably using 5-10GB sources, so when you select 4K video, yes, it makes a difference.

Pejole2165 said:

At the end of the day (hate that phrase but...) if you do not have a 4k large screen, 30" plus I would say, there is absolutely no point watching 4k footage. However this test is designed to see if your setup can handle 4k streaming without noticeable frame drops. The issue would be compounded I think if you had a 4k display hooked up to your GPU and the GPU couldn't handle the display. 4k is a lot of pixels on a large screen to push out.

Not correct neither, you can perfectly tell the difference in a laptop 15" screen if what you're watching is 1080 or 4K content, PROPERLY DONE. Any average person can totally tell if a 15" laptop is using a 1080 or a 4K panel. The thing is, when watching videos, the scenes are all so fluid and there is so much going on (colors, brightness, movement, explosions, contrast...) that you simply don't really notice. Even in a still image, if it's full of colors and things, the resolution goes to the background because there are so many distractions for your eyes.

Finally, yes, you are correct, this test is intended to check if your PC can handle what I've explained in the first post to be the "highest video quality for the future", which is 4K 60fps. That will be the maximum you will be asking for your PC for the next 10 years, I believe. Again, not going overkill.

Compumind said:

OK. Here goes...

CPU -> BUS -> GPU -> Display. It's a given that you need a 4K Display for 4K video. Many modern GPU's take the "strain" off of the CPU by doing the video processing itself to a large extent.
Yes, the CPU traditionally has done most of the work for the video. Most modern CPU's have an onboard GPU but I'm speaking about a dedicated (discrete) GPU. Different.

Like a 4K television, the further away from the screen, (6-8 feet) the more enjoyable the experience. 3 feet away from a 4K computer display is about optimal.

I guess?
I don't really know what you mean when you talk about 4K video. You don't need a 4K TV to enjoy a 4K video or notice its differences. I don't know neither why you talk now about distances, hahaha. Why are we talking about distances right now?

Compumind said:

OK. Here goes...

CPU -> BUS -> GPU -> Display. It's a given that you need a 4K Display for 4K video. Many modern GPU's take the "strain" off of the CPU by doing the video processing itself to a large extent.
Yes, the CPU traditionally has done most of the work for the video. Most modern CPU's have an onboard GPU but I'm speaking about a dedicated (discrete) GPU. Different.

Like a 4K television, the further away from the screen, (6-8 feet) the more enjoyable the experience. 3 feet away from a 4K computer display is about optimal.

That all depends on the age of the hardware, including CPU, GPU, drivers, etc. My old system was pretty much pushed to its limit to display the "4K" video. The newer system did that with ease.

The connection was the same for both system, nominal rate of 200 MB/s. I could have both system display the test video at the same time, without much of an issue.

As for the distance from the screen, it's been just fine to watch them from about three feet or so, 32" and 40" respectively...

Compumind said:

Seriously, now.

Yeah, absolutely, here:
Can your PC handle 4K 60fps in YouTube? TEST IT!

Read my comment and you will understand. I can say it as many times as necessary: you don't need a 4K screen to enjoy 4K content, you can put 4K on YouTube connected to a 1080 monitor, you can tell the difference in that monitor between a 1080 and 4K content (specially in multimedia we are talking, not videogames), you can tell the difference between a 4K and 1080 video in a 15" monitor, and so on. It's all explained in my comment.

I don't know if you mean that you can't select 4K resolution in your GPU options if you're using a 1080 panel, and I don't know about that, it's not what I'm talking about. May be you're misunderstanding me.