Guide to Gaming on 4k Sony Android 2015 TV

[xx4L0Mxx]

Here is a rough guide to gaming on 2015 Sony Android 4k TV's.

Before  I personally bought a 4k tv I had a lot of questions about how gaming would perform on a 4K TV, would the PS4 look any better? Would the upscaling be OK? Would everything outputted @1080p look blurred?  Can I output my PC @4k-60HZ RGB 4:4:4?

I will attempt to help answer some of these questions as it took me a long time of research and ultimately testing, with me making some stupid mistakes along the way, so helpfully it may help some of you guys out who are thinking about taking the plunge or already have a 4K TV and want to get the best gaming experience out of it.

I'm no expert but I have been gaming since the dawn of man, so these are my experiences to hopefully help you make an informed decision whether 4k gaimg is right for you or not.

Some things before I start :

1 : I have ZERO Affiliation to Sony or any other company.

2 : I own the 55" 2015 Sony Bravia Android TV KDx558509c, all settings / experiences will be based on this model.

3 : Any Questions then please ask, I may not know the answer, but I'm sure someone from this community will be happy to help.

4 : This guide WILL NOT be geared toward Android gaming, as I personally never play any android games and the mediatek processors inside the TV are not going to be running Real Racing 3 or similar with any aplomb.

4 : All comparisons to 1080p output will be compared to a 2014 model 55LB650V 55" LG smart :

http://www.lg.com/uk/tvs/lg-55LB650V

5 : I realise that UHD and 4k are technically different, but the phrase  "4k" will be used here on out, as it's less to type and I'm lazy.

6 : The input Lag of this TV is about 39 m/s in GAME mode and about 65 m/s with ALL post processing effects like clear motion and HDR enabled. So I would rate it as "Very Good" for a 4k Panel. Some 2015 4k Samsung panels have a lower input lag in "GAME" mode of about 25 m/s, but the input lag dramatically increases up to nearer 100 m/s with any post processing enabled.

So, I suppose the first question is :  Should I buy a 4k TV for gaming?

My first reply would be, that unless you have a very powerful gaming PC, then you are not going to be gaming in raw 4K anyway. Your console will still output 1080p, but it will be upscaled to the 4K panel, not all 4k scalers are made equal unfortunately, but Sony's 4k upscaling algorithm is meant to be one of the best on market at the moment.

The PS4 and Xbox One both natively output at 1080p, with some games actually only being outputted at a resolution of 720p in some cases, but, in the case of the 4K Sony TV, The Playstation 4 and Xbox One generally look great on it regardless of what game you are playing. Picture quality and colour reproduction is excellent upscaled onto the 4k panel and I have been unable to discern ANY bluriness of HUD elements like Health bars, Compass etc.

In general, the Picture quality of the PS4 and Xbox One is generally excellent throughout. It's not native 4K, but on the other hand the upscaling is done well with no noticable bluriness, ghosting or input lag, In fact, I am unable to feel any appreciable input lag during rounds of BF4 or playing FIFA 16 etc.

Playing Assassins Creed Syndicate last night on the PS4 did show some aliasing on the windows of the buildings which was quite noticeable, but the same thing can be seen outputting to a 1080p TV. It's no better, but no worse, so I just thought I would point it out as a comparison point.

Picture quality is subjective, and what I find to be acceptable picture quality settings are probably different from yours, but so far, console gaming has been a joy.

So to quickly sum up my initial question, If you are in the market for a new TV, and you class yourself as a gamer ( and of course if you can afford one ), then console gaming on a decent 4k panel is equally as good and responsive as a 1080p panel ( as long as it's a decent make with lowish input lag ).

If you are a PC gamer and you have the necessary hardware to output and game at 4k, then gaming on a 4k Sony panel is absolutely stunning, no other way I can describe it. More on this topic in next post.

[xx4L0Mxx]

OK, now to PC gaming and the reason that I bought a 4k TV.

First things first, you are going to need a FAST gaming pc to game at 4k resolution.

4k gaming@60 frames per second unfortunately costs a ton of money, no 2 ways about it.  My graphics cards cost £540. You could buy an XBOX ONE AND a PS4 for that money. If you are not going to SLI your cards then realistically a 980Ti or TITAN Z are the only way to go but they cost between £500 - 800+ so it's not for the faint of heart and even a single 980Ti is going to struggle giving you 60 frames per second in a lot of games.

I have an I7 4770k watercooled running at 4.4Ghz. I also have 2 MSI 4G 970 GTX cards in SLI that have a slight factory overclock, and I have then added another 150 MHZ on top to clock speed and 250 Mhz ( 500MHZ Actual as it's doubled ) on the RAM .

For some inexplicable reason AMD have NOT put HDMI 2.0 connections on their cards at this time of writing.  r9 290(X) and up would be a perfectly viable crossfire solution for gaming in 4k, arguably even better than Nvidia due to the 512 bit memory bus on AMD cards, but without native HDMI 2.0 support you may be able to get around this by buying an active displayport to HDMI 2.0 adapter, but I cannot verify if these are widely available or even fit for purpose, so this guide will be NVIDIA only I'm afraid.

First thing to do :

Make sure you are on the latest drivers. When I first got my TV my drivers were about 2 months old.

Initially everything played fine GTAV and Skyrim played in 4k no problem, but when I loaded up Project Cars, I got crazy green flashing at 4k.  The latest Nvidia drivers have fixed this bug.

As far as I can see, your graphics card HAS to be plugged into HDMI port 1 on your Sony Bravia to enable all of the correct settings.

Open up Nvidia control Panel and change your resolution to 3840x2160p@60Hz.  You will instantly notice after pressing Apply that your Desktop Icons go super tiny, counteract this by right clicking on your desktop, clicking display settings and changing desktop scale to 300%.  You can now actually see your desktop properly again !

You will see that currently, Nvidia control panel only lets you have a resolution of 3840x2160@60 Hz with an Output colour format of yCbCr4:2:0 LIMITED, you can change this to FULL RGB 4:4:4 Chroma sampling, but you need 3 things to acheive this.

The first is to make sure that your TV has the latest firmware installed. RGB 4:4:4 was introduced in a firmware update, so make sure this is up to date first.

2nd is to go into your TV settings, choose "External Inputs" and scroll to the last option which is "4k HDMI SIGNAL FORMAT".  You have 2 settings here "STANDARD" and "ENHANCED". You have to choose "ENHANCED" and then your TV will have to reboot for the option to be enabled.

Now the first time I did this, my TV rebooted and I saw my desktop, but when I opened Nvidia control panel and selected RGB 4:4:4, my TV black screened. I thought it was a fault with the TV not being able to take the input properly but I finally found a fix. A real easy one.

Step 3 : You know when you used to go into Curry's and they always tried to flog you a "Monster" cable that was made from Gold Plating and it was allegedly the greatest cable ever made, but always seemed to cost as much as the upscaling DVD player that you had just purchased and you knew that the HDMI cable you had bought from the pound shop would do just as well?

Well unfortunately, to game at 4k you WILL probably need a new cable. You will need a HDMI 2.0 certified cable that is capable of tranferring 18GB/s.

Sadly as I found out though, not all HDMI 2.0 cables are exactly alike. I bought a HDMI 2.0 cable off Amazon that had 1000's of great reviews and had an overall rating of 4.5 stars, 3m long and cost me about £6.

It was with this cable that I was having the Black screen issues. I was annoyed, I thought it was the TV, it turned out it wasn't it was the cable.

On a whim, i purchased this cable :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IBRA%C2%AE-Speed-PRO-GOLD-Cable/dp/B002U3I1EW/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=144907...

and it ACTUALLY WORKED !  3 weeks in, hasn't black screened once!

So bear this in mind as it was probably the most important piece of the 4k PC gaming puzzle!

[xx4L0Mxx]

 

[Lewisjd88]

Hi. Great guide, thanks.

I have a Sony 49" Android UHD TV and an Alienware i7 with gtx 970. When I try to increase the resolution to 4K from 1080p in the nvidia control panel, I lose signal. Is this likely to be a hdmi cable issue? It is a HDMI 1.4 cable, and you suggest 2.0. 

Any ideas?

many thanks,

James

[sparkes81]

Hi can you help me?

I have exactly as you have tv wise and hdmi cable (tho my cable is a 10 meter one)

I have read and done everything you said in your post but i am still getting black screen

when selecting 3840x2160 @ 60hz. and the same with 50hz too.

I can get the tv to work at this resolution @ 30hz but not with higher hz's.

I am using HDMI port 1 set to enhanced mode too!

What am i doing wrong???

[xx4L0Mxx]

More than likely your HDMI cable is too long at 10m.

 A lot of people appear to have problems with 5m+ HDMI cables. 

Cable also needs be certified for 18G/b second. 

[sparkes81]

Oh thank you for replying.

Really? You think the cable is too long?

I bought this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0036BHCSS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Omg I would never have thought that.

I was just about to contact Nvidia and start enquiring about my laptops GTX 1060.

When I bought the laptop I made sure it came with a desktop version of the 1060.

I'd started to think it was a mobile graphics card and slightly compromised in some way.

Do you think I could get away with a 3m cable, like this one?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/IBRA-Speed-PRO-GOLD-Cable/dp/B002U3I1EW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485686676&s...

Ive just read/found this too. You're good, really good. Seems your absolutely right.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/4k-60hz-4-4-4-chroma-over-10m-hdmi-cable.1954551/

[xx4L0Mxx]

The 3m cable you have listed is EXACTLY the same as the cable I use. It has worked flawlessly for me 2160p@60hz.

[SpookyZeus]

Try here for some solid HDMI cable advice:

http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/televisions/article/buyers-guide-to-hdmi-cables

But check you are using the right HDMI cable for 4K, have it plugged into the correct HDMI port, and have your TV correctly configured for 4K output.

Are you conecting to a PC or console?

[sparkes81]

Hi, I gave up in the end.

The 3m cable got delivered but gave me the same result:

3840x2160 @ 30hz was the best I could get using HDMI port 1 set to enhanced mode.

I'm connecting using a gaming laptop, this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LWJHSC7/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Its a real shame.