Ultra HD Monitors are now available from many of the online shops. Before you purchase a 4K device do some research about the device you are buying as it may not be up to the task.
4k Monitors
With many Monitor choices available you have to make sure what you buy is suitable for you. For example someone editing pictures would probably choose a different type of monitor to a gamer. The type of panel makes a differnce to the way the monitor behaves.
Types of LCD Panels
In-Plane Switching (IPS) panels
This technology was originally invented in 1996 by Hitachi.
IGZO
Indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) is a semiconducting material, consisting of indium (In), gallium (Ga), zinc (Zn) and oxygen (O).
"IGZO" was jointly developed for mass production by Sharp and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd.
http://www.sharp-world.com/igzo/
TN
Twisted Nematic (TN) LCD panel
TN Panels are cheap to produce and TN panels can change state quickly, giving them the very fast response time. This makes the panels more appropriate for games that render fast image transitions.
A good writeup about LCD panels
OLED
Organic Light-Emitting Diode
Each organic cell (pixel) panel generates its own light source, so light doesn’t go acroos to the next cell, helping to create a great picture. No backlight is needed, and your display is even slimmer.
Connections:
Connecting to a monitor can be achieved in a variety of ways. Monitors will have a variety of connection. The best connection at present is Display Port. If you are buying a 4K monitor make sure it has a Display Port, HDMI can also be used but it is not as good at present, the main stumbling block is the refresh rate, see below.
Display Port
DisplayPort 1.3 supports 5K displays, 4K at 120Hz
DisplayPort allows high-definition digital audio to be available to the display device over the same cable as the digital video signal. It delivers true plug-and-play with robust interoperability, and is cost competitive with existing digital display interconnects. Designed to be available throughout the industry as an open, extensible standard, DisplayPort is expected to accelerate the adoption in PCs of digital outputs enabling higher levels of display performance. When the optional content protection capability is active, DisplayPort will support viewing high definition television, video and other types of protected content.
DVI
DVI connectors transfer video signals in pure digital form, which is especially beneficial if you're using a plasma, LCD, or DLP TV. Signals are encrypted with HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) to prevent recording. There are two types of DVI connectors - DVI-D carries digital-only signals and DVI-I passes both digital and analog video signals.
Some TVs feature DVI-I inputs for greater hookup flexibility.
For backward compatibility with displays using analog VGA signals, some of the contacts in the
DVI connector carry the analog VGA signals. Thus, the DVI connector can carry a digital-video signal,
an analog VGA signal, or both. DVI cable does not carry sound.
HDMI
HDMI specification (1.4a) can only output a 4096×2160 resolution at a refresh rate of 24 Hz or 3840×2160 at 30 Hz
HDMI 2.0 supports a full 60 Hz refresh rate at 3840×2160
VGA
VGA cables transmit analog video signals only. Mainly was the default connection on CRT screens, LCD screens are digital devices and work best with a digital connection. Many LCD TVs and computer monitors still have a VGA input but will also have DVI or HDMI or Display Port.
HDCP
(High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)
Copy protection/content protection. This started in the days of VHS video recorders, called Macrovision, then we had CSS for DVD and now we have HDCP, which stands for High-bandwidth digital Content Protection. You will come across HDCP when playing Blu-ray video, TV boxes, satellite and cable boxes. HDCP can also be implemented to work over DVI, DisplayPort and USB.
HDCP 2.2 is on the horizon to protect the 4K data stream, it may not work with your current hardware.
The latest 4K TVs from the main manufacturers list HDCP 2.2 compliance in their specifications. If you already have a 4K TV check the specs for HDCP 2.2. If it's not 2.2-compliant contact the manufacturer to see if they have any software upates to support this feature.
10 Bit colour
AMD’s series of workstation graphics cards come into play by natively supporting the emerging standard for 10-bits per color channel (or 30-bits per pixel) video output.
8-bits per color channel (or 24-bits per pixel) to display images and video. Approx 16 million colors.
10-bit displays use 10 bits to represent each of the red, green and blue color channels. Each pixel is represented with 30 bits. 10-bit displays can generate more than a billion shades of colors.
10-bit per color support on NVIDIA Geforce GPUs
Check out the specs of AMD GPU cards.
The R9 series of GPUs should have no problem supporting 4K monitors. If you intend to use multiple monitors at 4K make sure you have Display Port connectivity.
If you are a gamer and intend to play on a 4K resolution monitor you may need more than 1 GPU so do some reseach before you commit yourself. The monitor will probably cope but the GPU may struggle to keep up.
