Minimum GPU specs for Milkdrop at 4K 60 FPS

[mrehorst]

I have an 8 year old Thinkpad W530 laptop with an Nvidia K2000M graphics card that happily displays Milkdrop fullscreen on my 2k monitor at 60 FPS. It does not have HDMI out, so I would like to build a "jukebox" to connect to my 4K TV that can run Milkdrop at 60 FPS or more so I can get audio and video via HDMI cable.

Can anyone tell me what specs I should look for in a GPU that would ensure operation at 4k 60 FPS? How much does the performance depend on the GPU and how much on the CPU?

I suspect a fairly low-end/older graphics card would do the job considering the performance I am getting from the ancient, low power card in my laptop.

Thanks to the developer(s) for making Milkdrop run so smoothly!

[Dr.Flay]

It really depends on the presets in use at the time.
Most are lightweight but many of the most impressive are heavy especially when blending between.

4k is overkill unless your screen is wall size.
I used to be a VJ and can tell you that if the FPS is high then you won't notice it is a lower resolution.
Nothing hangs around on screen for long enough to tell 1 pixel from another.

If you use the keyboard shortcuts to add text and images, then the extra resolution can be useful, but again this depends on the images and the font settings used per preset.

[mrehorst]

Thanks!

I have a 77" OLED TV.

I have noticed that some of the patterns go black on my 2k monitor, whether I run it windowed or full screen. I don't know if there's an issue with the card not keeping up or if there is some issue with those specific patterns. If it's a GPU issue, maybe a more modern one would be able to handle those patterns, hence the original question.

I have an Nvidia Shield TV Pro driving the TV and I believe there's a ProjectM app available for it, but in my past tests (a few years ago, on a PC) of projectM it didn't run nearly as fast or smooth as Milkdrop does in Wacup. I haven't actually tried in with the new TV and Shield TV Pro yet, so I'll give that a go and see what happens.