Samsung Unveils First 8K Ultrawide Gaming Monitor With DisplayPort 2.1

In the wake of yesterday’s AMD RDNA3 GPU reveal, the era of 8K gaming is suddenly upon us. Sure, it existed before, theoretically. But nobody was really gaming at 8K as you needed a television to do it. Plus, frame rates were pretty borderline, as we recall. All that’s changed now that AMD’s newest GPUs have a DisplayPort 2.1 interface. The previous DisplayPort 1.4a version was limited to a peasant’s refresh rate of 60Hz at 8K. The new version bumps that up to a satisfying 165Hz. And according to AMD, its new GPUs can actually achieve that frame rate in some games at that resolution. In light of this advancement, Samsung has announced the world’s first 8K UltraWide gaming monitor.

Now, some of you might recall Nvidia tried to make 8K gaming a thing when it launched the RTX 3090 two years ago. Nobody really bought it at the time, but it made for a good marketing slogan since AMD never brought it up. That is despite the fact that its 6000-series GPUs were just as capable as Nvidia’s Ampere cards. However, Nvidia has ditched that angle with its RTX 4090 GPUs, focusing instead on improvements at 4K with its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). The reason is simple: Nobody games at 8K. Samsung is hoping to change that with its new Odyssey Neo G9 49-inch UltraWide monitor.

According to PC Gamer, it’s not going to be a true 8K panel. Instead, it’ll only offer that resolution horizontally, not vertically. That will endow it with a resolution of 7680 x 2160. If it were a true 8K display, that would be bumped to 7680 x 4320. Sure, it’ll still probably make any GPU cry out in agony, but buyer beware. Samsung’s current version of the Neo G9 sports a 5,120 x 1,440 resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate, so it already requires a beefy GPU for AAA gaming. The new 8K version will pretty much require a new AMD GPU, though we’re sure the RTX 4090 and upcoming 4080 will probably handle it reasonably well, but they’ll be limited to 135Hz at ultra-wide resolution.

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