Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU flexes its muscles at 13K gaming

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 is a beast at 4K gaming, and even able to cope with 8K resolutions, but how about 13K? Well, it can manage there too – just about – as a YouTuber has proved.

The key to this 13K feat, as you might guess, is to find a game that isn’t too demanding – because that’s a heck of a lot of pixels to cope with (even 8K is, to be fair) – and in this case, that game is Genshin Impact.

Yes, this is primarily a mobile game, but there is a PC version of the action RPG (and console spins), but due to its mobile roots, the specs are undemanding (Genshin Impact will run on an Nvidia GT 1030, with a GTX 1060 as the recommended GPU).

As Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab) reports, YouTuber Golden Reviewer (opens in new tab) ran it on an RTX 4090 at a resolution of 13,760 x 5,760 and managed to achieve 30 frames per second (fps) on average.

Analysis: Is there any point to this? Yes and no

Now, 30 fps is a bare minimum for gaming palatability, meaning it’s just smooth enough to feel okay – but you really want more than this for a properly enjoyable frame rate. Most folks look for 60 fps as the magic milestone in that regard, but 30 fps is nonetheless playable – and a pretty staggering achievement at 13K, in all honesty.

30 fps is an average frame rate, of course, so there are dips below that to around 25 fps at times, and that’s without a lot of action happening on-screen, too. So, no doubt in the thick of things there are going to be moments of jerkiness, but this is more of a demonstration of a feat than a practical exercise.

It’s worth noting that Golden Reviewer doesn’t have a 13K monitor (and neither does anyone else, as far as we’re aware anyway), so the resolution is achieved via upscaling.

In other words, the monitor cannot display that 13K natively, but upscaled 13K (on a lesser resolution display) means it offers an incredible level of detail (so much so, that you won’t need to turn on anti-aliasing for example to smooth out jagged edges, as everything will be sharp and super-crisp from the get-go). Golden Reviewer demonstrates how crystal-clear the displayed image is by zooming in to a level of 500% where the graphics stay absolutely pin-sharp.

The drawback is that the game’s textures aren’t 13K resolution, of course, which means some blurriness is introduced on that front.

Still, Genshin Impact does look seriously impressive at 13K, and one of the commenters on the video tried the same trick with an RTX 3090. Pinch of seasoning required as ever, but apparently the result was an average frame rate of 12 fps at 13K – meaning the RTX 4090 is a huge step up here (bearing in mind there will be other variables aside from the GPU, naturally).