I recently bought a 32-inch 4K monitor, but my current setup isn't powerful enough to stream 4K videos on YouTube. I have an i7-6700k processor, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia 980Ti graphics card. What are the most affordable upgrades I could make to watch YouTube in 4K? I mainly play text-based games like FM26 and EU V.
2 Answers
You might want to upgrade your GPU to at least a GTX 1050 Ti or better from Nvidia. If you're looking at AMD, the 5000 series or newer could do the trick. But honestly, the 980Ti might still be capable because I’ve seen people running 4K on a 970.
When you say it's not powerful enough, are you experiencing lag? I used to have a Q8400 with a 1080 Ti, and anything above 1080p would lag like crazy. After upgrading to a 7950x3d with 32GB of RAM while keeping my 1080 Ti, I can now watch 4K videos without any issues! I think my old CPU was struggling because of how encoding worked. You might want to toggle hardware acceleration on and off in your browser to see if that helps.
The YouTube videos lag, and even local 4K videos do. So do you think swapping to a 1080 Ti would solve that?
Don’t forget to check your internet speed too, that can really impact 4K streaming!