Skip to main content

Move over, 4K — Nvidia’s RTX 4090 introduces 13K gaming

Nvidia’s beastly RTX 4090 has just managed to set a new record by running a game at 13K resolution. We don’t just mean something along the lines of Tetris, either, but a modern and well-loved title — Genshin Impact.

One brave RTX 4090 owner attempted to run the game at 13K. Despite the ultra-high resolution, the RTX 4090 made the game run at a surprisingly high frame rate, and there’s video footage that proves it.

RTX 4090 runs Genshin Impact at 13K resolution...and it lags? 180 Megapixels per frame insanity!

No one questions the fact that the RTX 4090 is great for 4K gaming. If any card can pull off playing AAA titles at max settings and on a high resolution, it’s definitely Nvidia’s latest and greatest. However, Golden Reviewer on YouTube decided to try it out in a previously untested setting by pushing the resolution up to 13K.

Recommended Videos

The game, Genshin Impact, is an open-world RPG that was made to run on mobile devices, so it’s not the most demanding title. Using an RTX 4090 is overkill for this game, and the publisher confirms this, asking for a GTX 1060 as the recommended GPU. However, things are different when you drive up the settings as high as Golden Reviewer did.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The YouTuber set all of the game’s settings to high, tweaked the resolution to 13,760 x 5760, and started recording. Tom’s Hardware did the math: a 13K resolution translates to 178.32 megapixels per frame. This makes it 1.4 times higher than 8K and a whopping 8.5 times higher than 4K.

If you’re wondering, running the game at 13K doesn’t mean that the user somehow obtained a 13K monitor. Those are still not available on the market. Instead, the image was upscaled to reach 13K.

No matter how it was achieved, the resolution is pretty much insane by today’s standards, and yet, Genshin Impact plays very well on it. The game averaged around 30 frames per second (fps), which is completely playable. Most gamers long for 60 fps and above, but obviously, when you’re playing at 13K, 30 fps is still great.

Screenshot of Genshin Impact.
Golden Reviewer

As for the visuals, it’s safe to say that they hold up. There’s a lack of annoying pixelation, the edges are crisp, and the image is every bit as good as it should be. Even when zooming in closely, the details are on point.

On the other hand, zooming out reveals a fair bit of blurriness; you can’t tell that the game is being played at 13K just by image quality alone. However, for a mobile title being played on PC at 13K, we’ll have to say that it looks great.

When Nvidia’s RTX 4090 is not being throttled (or set on fire) by the ongoing issue of melting cables, it’s certainly the best graphics card on the current market — provided you only care about pure performance metrics and not a mix of power and value. Today’s crazy 13K test is certainly a testament to the card’s abilities, even if there won’t be any real need for this kind of performance anytime soon.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
I tested AMD’s RX 7800 XT against Nvidia’s RTX 4070, and there’s a clear winner
AMD logo on the RX 7800 XT graphics card.

With the release of the Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, AMD finally set foot in the mainstream gaming sector with its RDNA 3 lineup. Nvidia, its biggest rival, which also makes some of the best graphics cards, was the first to release competing cards with similar performance -- at least on paper. But are Nvidia's options better than AMD's in this generation?

The RX 7800 XT was, from the get-go, said to be the competitor to Nvidia's RTX 4070, but in reality, these GPUs differ both in price and performance. We've tested the RX 7800 XT and compared it to the RTX 4070, and we now know which of these two GPUs is the one to pick.
Pricing and availability

Read more
Here’s why I’m glad Nvidia might kill its most powerful GPU
The RTX 4090 graphics card sitting on a table with a dark green background.

A reliable leaker has just revealed that Nvidia might be abandoning the idea of releasing an RTX 4090 Ti. If the project hadn't been canceled, the RTX 4090 Ti would have ended up becoming the best GPU by a mile -- or at least the most powerful. That spot is currently held by Nvidia's own RTX 4090.

But don't worry -- if the report about the cancellation is true, it's not such a bad thing at all. In fact, it might be for the best for pretty much everyone involved. Here's why.

Read more
Nvidia’s peace offering isn’t working
Two MSI RTX 4060 Ti 16GB GPUs over a black background.

Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is here, but you wouldn't know it if you didn't follow GPU news closely. It seems that the GPU might just be so far behind some of the best graphics cards that Nvidia isn't advertising it too much. As a result, early benchmarks are scarce.

MSI has released some benchmarks of its own, comparing the 8GB and the 16GB versions of the RTX 4060 Ti. It turns out that the new GPU might actually be slower. Is this why Nvidia didn't even make its own version of this card?

Read more