Dell unveiled its UltarSharp 32-in. Ultra HD monitor at CES in January and it is now available for pre-orders with April 17 as the shipping date. The $5,000 display with bleeding edge technology requires an equally powerful hardware that will most likely choke on AAA titles until chipmakers develop graphics cards specifically designed for 8K.
Dell already makes 4K display obsolete even before it could fully launch to the general public. Dell's 8K monitor has just been teased barely three months ago and it is now available for pre-orders. The announced March 23 shipping date has just been updated to April 17. The monster $5,000 monitor priced for its powerful screen resolution can only be understood by the sheer number of pixels, which is four times as many as the 4K resolution. That will amount to 33.2 million pixels across its 7,680 x 4,320 resolution.
Dell in its 8K monitor is able to support 100 percent AdobeRPG, 100 percent sRGB and 98 percent DCI-P3 while offering 400 nits of brightness, according to Anandtech. Given that the new monster monitor belongs to Dell's UltraSharp range, it is expected to be color calibrated out-of-the-box to any given dE value which will usually be less than 3. The display will most likely be hooked using the DPI.4 inputs in order to produce adequate bandwidth. This means managing internal controller that puts together two sets of 3,840 x 4,320 display similar to early versions of 4K monitors.
With a monster Dell 8K monitor, hardware support needs to be equally matched to handle the gargantuan task. Dell at CES used a NVIDIA Quadro workstation graphics cards to power the display. The bleeding edge technology, which is still under development, will require highly specced hardware that usually comes with a high price. This makes the new monitor not yet ideal for gaming since it will most likely experience issues with a triple A title and even with the fastest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, according to PC World.
The Dell 8K monitor is filled with potential for it could set the future of PC gaming. Over time, its price could drop just as it did when UHD display was introduced, initially costing within the range of $3,500 to $5,000 with limited supplies. Now an UHD display can be purchased for as low as $350. History may repeat itself with the 8K display, which could be the future of PC gaming in the years to come.
Gamers may have to wait a few more years for the technology to be better, production to be less costly and average prices to go lower. AMD and NVIDIA may also create consumer graphics cards at competitive prices and specifically intended for 8K gaming. For now, the monster display is only for professionals willing to splurge money on what would have been a more than adequate budget for an entire gaming rig, not just a monitor.
