My question to you is, do I pop out to Currys Dictafone Warehouse and buy a shiny 4K TV to sit on my desk, or are they no good for PC gaming? Examples of my most recent games played include: Counterstrike Source, Elder Scrolls online, Papers Please, Bioshock games, Battlefield games. Will I regret trying to game on a 4K TV? It's going to be £1k+ for a 40" to 50" TV and I'm unclear if we are supposed to be waiting for monitors, or faster TVs ... (added) I have a Titan GFX card and could double up on it, or upgrade if needed. I just want to know if now is the right time.
TV ≠ Monitor. TVs are for sitting many feet away from, Monitors are for close range work. You will get nothing except eye strain using a TV at a desk.
take a PC in an test, make you r own mind up, I think it would be fine if input lag is OK and you can disable much of th eTV processing in a PC/game mode.
For 4K to work properly on a TV you can not use HMI 1.4 or older, you need HMDI 2.0. While some 4K TVs like for example Samsungs curved 3d smart 4k TV for over £2500 do support HDMI 2.0, many Graphicscards only offer HDMI 1.4 (or older). If you get a Monitor instead you can avoid the limitations by using Displayport.
Bad timing. HDMI 2 isn't an option yet, so unless your TV comes with the right Displayport connectivity, you're stuffed. Given that there's no real 4K TV content out there right now, I'd be inclined to go with a 4K monitor instead.
Bad idea in my opinion. I doubt that 4k tv's have Display Port or your graphics card has HDMI 2.0. This means you will be stuck at 30fps, although 30fps maybe a challenge for your graphics set up @ UHD. I'm no expert, but I imagine the response time of a 4K tv to be pretty high too.
Some of the current top end TVs have HDMI 2.0 already, but on the gpu end you are stuffed as not even Titan Z has it. However, I did some further digging and apparently nvidia has found some trickery to get around the 30hz limit for 4k on hdmi 1.4: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8191/nvidia-kepler-cards-get-hdmi-4k60hz-support-kind-of
I did see that article, but it sounds like a real hack-job. Not something I'd want to invest money in to achieve, although if I had the kit already obviously I'd give it a crack.
It's something that you have to test between many brands, I own a 32" Samsung TV for gaming on my desk, the image its really great and you can find lil details on tv's that can actually help you (like many tv's try to add some kind of "anti-alliasing processing, its not the finest ofc, but it does help). I think the gap its closing between both TV and monitors anyway since both technologies are using the same advances.
I read an article on this a while back of a guy posting about his thoughts on this topic. (Hey 42" 4k or 50" 4k must be a no brainer right?) I believe his conclusion in the article was that the input lag was disgusting for him and there was much in the way of eye strain.