The Original 4K Gaming PC

Building & testing a £2000 gaming PC from 2012 to see how it performed in 4K gaming over the last decade.

Ten years since the UHD standard was announced by the Consumer Electronics Association, and it still seems like the gold standard for visual fidelity in modern games. Imagine how good it looked in 2012!

In this video, I’m reminiscing on games from 2012 onwards, and seeing just how good the early adopters of 4K PC gaming had it, or whether they had perhaps jumped the gun.

00:00 The Original 4K Gaming PC
00:35 History: 4K Gaming in 2012
01:45 The PC
05:20 The Benchmarks
05:23 2011 & Earlier
07:09 2012
08:59 2013
10:19 2014
11:38 2015
13:02 2016
14:21 2017
15:13 The Story Ends Here

A D S
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G E A R
Audio:

Video:

C O N T A C T
Twitter/Insta @IcebergTop10s

#sli #4k #nostalgia

[Photo]

The fact that ten years later, you can get surprisingly thin laptops that perform much faster than this is amazing.

[Odinsday]

SLI is such a interesting piece of gaming history. A novel concept of just staking GPUs on top of each other to get higher performance (despite not getting extra VRAM), even if the performance was not worth the insane power draw of certain setups like double or triple GTX 480s. I kind of wish we got to see it work. There is a certain charm to it that I just don't think can be found nowadays.

[TechDweeb]

I will NEVER get tired of you saying "Dirty CEX Machine"

[Edwardi]

This video is making me feel old AF, this is still a dream build in my head. I remember watching NCIX tech tips dreaming over this kind of hardware.

[bardofhighrenown]

To be fair to the 690, it almost lived as long as SLI itself. I think it could have seen a revival with the advent of raytracing had there been any raytraced games that supported it.

[genethebean]

That pie chart at the beginning really got to me...I never truly realized that over 10% of surveyed users in 2012 still gamed on native 4:3, granted it was 1280 x 1024. The fact that 1680 x 1050 (16:10 aspect ratio) was also above 10% was additionally impressive.

[marco_evertus]

I had a similar setup back in the day with a core i7 990x and a GTX 690 and I think around 24GB of RAM, it was a beast for so long. I was only around 15 years old so I don’t remember this clearly but I have to give big props to my dad he was the real one for giving his 15 year old son the top of the line hardware to get his curiosity fired up. I definitely miss him a lot.

[internziko]

Happy 40th Ice. Don't let 40 get you down brother. I know in my heart you've got a long and healthy benchmarking life ahead of you.

[evklinken]

Great video. I think a "through the years" run for a GPU like this could be made into a mainstay as a concept.

As an example: the GTX 780 was a console destroyer in its day but has gradually fallen into incompatibility hell and below minimum system requirements. What big release showed it to be too weak for decent settings? When did it drop below 60 fps at a decent res for demanding titles? That sort of thing sounds like a fun video, perhaps your cup of tea. Feel free to ignore the suggestion, your own ideas are awesome as is.

[hoff]

The nostalgia. I had almost the same pc as the initial buy. Same case, p67 with 2500k, 16gb, 120ssd, 1tb hdd, gtx 670, 700w psu. Maxing bf3 out at 1080p felt so good

[euXX]

Tested on my other PC (FX 8300/R9 290/16GB 1866) some 2012 games at 4K, and it rans fairly well at 30FPS and some games at 60+FPS...

[TrevorLentz]

Love the time frame and hardware covered. This is brilliant. 😀

[jackgymboarder]

Watching this video on an i7 3770K, Z77 V-Pro, Dual 670 SLI setup. Crazy to think thats it's still kickin. Spent a lot of money on it at the time. I guess it was worth it.

[livingthedream]

I wonder how this test would have gone with 2x HD 7970s, their architecture was much more forward thinking than Kepler and they shipped with 3gb vram standard..

[THC]

11:34 don’t worry about your age, it only limits you when or where you let it. In relation to tech look at YouTubers like Tech Moan and Frugal Tech a.k.a. The Boomer Consumer, not to mention “tech grandpa” Jayztwocents. Your videos are great and I’d have never guessed you were 40. Keep up the great work, your channel has grown so much so fast, it’s impressive to see how quickly your subscriber count has grown.

[vanburman]

To be honest I do not usually subscribe, particularly off of one video. But you did such a good job on it. The 690 I bought for £20 during Covid only have one of the GPU cores working, which infact makes it weaker than a 680 but still a very cool card.

[alterablebark]

I'm not even sure what case that is but I know it brings me back

[Cooperal]

This PC has the same case as the one I just paid a mint to replace with a whole new machine. Thank you for making me feel more secure about my expensive buying decision.

[BIadelores]

GPUs used to be outpaced by games VERY quickly and this is a fine example of that. Nowadays, it's the exact opposite.

[grumpybollox]

great video man, another small channel suggested this week, the algorithm served me hidden gems all month