I am getting a new PC in a few days and I am wondering if I could just plug a HDMI from my GPU to my TV and just play games in 4k on my TV. Is it that easy? Do TV's work the same as monitors? Just wondering if other people have tried this. Thanks
i plug in my PC on my 65" tv all the time. it's just a straight hdmi cable. it works great but it's not 4k cause my tv doesn't have that resolution. it still looks great for me.
as long as your TV has a 4k resolution then yes, you should be getting 4k visuals. obviously your video card will be working harder to keep frames up. i've had people tell me that the refresh rate on TVs is lower than a monitor, but i've never really cared much about refresh rate.
Will it work at all? Probably. Will it work all that well? Not necessarily. It might take some fiddling with settings to get it to work well. Computer monitors are commonly optimized for higher refresh rate and lower latency than televisions.
When you're watching television, if it buffers data for 100 ms before displaying it, you don't care. When you're using a computer, even just moving a mouse when web browsing, that will drive you nuts. Some televisions have a "game mode" or other low-latency mode to get the latency down to something acceptable for a computer monitor. If your television has some sort of frame interpolation mode, you'll definitely want to turn that off for using it as a computer monitor. And probably also for watching television, as it's a dumb idea.
Televisions are commonly used for game consoles, and those are latency sensitive. But tests using game consoles with televisions tend to show much higher latency than computer monitors with desktop computers. That, I think, is the real problem, much more so than a 60 Hz refresh rate. If the television has a lower refresh rate than 60 Hz, I wouldn't use that as a computer monitor.
If you're playing any frame important games (fighters, FPS, 3PS) beware of the input lag. Hopefully your TV will have a game mode that mitigates this. You might have some luck finding your model at https://displaylag.com/display-database/
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Easiest way to find out is to try it by - as you say - simply plugging in a HDMI cable in. Won't harm your PC or TV.
Just in case you decide you need a longer HDMI cable be aware that the standard has been updated a few times. Shouldn't be an issue but sometimes there can be issues with older cables.
Set that HDMI input to Game or PC mode on your TV (this bypasses all the processing and junk on your TV)
You may need to fidget with Overscan setting some in your graphics control panel if you see the edges of the screen are either clipped or don't reach all the way to the edge of the TV. The overscan control should pop up in your Display settings for your GPU once it detects it's connected to a TV
I play on my TV. I have a Roccat Sova so I can play comfortably in a recliner. It is as simple just putting in the HDMI cable but you will probably want to tweak the settings.
Make sure you enable game mode if you can, make sure the input channel knows it's a PC signal (there's usually a PC option on modern sets) and disable ALL of your TV's enhancement options for that channel (like dynamic contrast etc.). Game mode usually disables them all anyway.. if your TV has it.
Keep a monitor handy though because a lot of TVs won't show your PC's POST info during boot up.
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as long as your TV has a 4k resolution then yes, you should be getting 4k visuals. obviously your video card will be working harder to keep frames up. i've had people tell me that the refresh rate on TVs is lower than a monitor, but i've never really cared much about refresh rate.
When you're watching television, if it buffers data for 100 ms before displaying it, you don't care. When you're using a computer, even just moving a mouse when web browsing, that will drive you nuts. Some televisions have a "game mode" or other low-latency mode to get the latency down to something acceptable for a computer monitor. If your television has some sort of frame interpolation mode, you'll definitely want to turn that off for using it as a computer monitor. And probably also for watching television, as it's a dumb idea.
Televisions are commonly used for game consoles, and those are latency sensitive. But tests using game consoles with televisions tend to show much higher latency than computer monitors with desktop computers. That, I think, is the real problem, much more so than a 60 Hz refresh rate. If the television has a lower refresh rate than 60 Hz, I wouldn't use that as a computer monitor.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just in case you decide you need a longer HDMI cable be aware that the standard has been updated a few times. Shouldn't be an issue but sometimes there can be issues with older cables.
Set that HDMI input to Game or PC mode on your TV (this bypasses all the processing and junk on your TV)
You may need to fidget with Overscan setting some in your graphics control panel if you see the edges of the screen are either clipped or don't reach all the way to the edge of the TV. The overscan control should pop up in your Display settings for your GPU once it detects it's connected to a TV
That's about it.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Make sure you enable game mode if you can, make sure the input channel knows it's a PC signal (there's usually a PC option on modern sets) and disable ALL of your TV's enhancement options for that channel (like dynamic contrast etc.). Game mode usually disables them all anyway.. if your TV has it.
Keep a monitor handy though because a lot of TVs won't show your PC's POST info during boot up.