is apple tv 4k d best graphic zwift experience?
what is zwift highest graphic resolution & best frame per second?
what processor & graphic card requirement to get the best/top zwift graphic experience?
Apple TV… best graphics… 
For best graphics you’ll need a decent PC with a gaming GPU.
Zwift don’t really need much power compared with newer games like Skyrim, Witcher3 or Red Dead Redemption.
An old i5 (or Ryzen) with 8GB and GTX970 or above/newer should do the trick.
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Depends on your budget but if you’re building a dedicated Zwift PC from scratch I’d go i3-9100F, 2x4GB 2400Mhz DDR4 and GTX 1650 Super*.
Have a read: Zwift on PC: The Ultimate Guide to Running Zwift at Its Very Best | Zwift Insider
*currently only receives High profile, but they’ll add Ultra eventually…
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I’ve just built a PC with i3-9100F, 2x4GB 2400 MHz DDR4 and a GTX 1650 OC (not Super and not overclocked).
I get a solid 30 fps (ultra profile, 2160 resolution, 2048 shadow res) at 4K 60p on my Samsung TV. It looks like the fps is synced, it doesn’t vary at all.
Thanks for the advice, it’s a huge improvement on using my laptop in the basic profile (I can see where I am going in the shadows now)!
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You should be able to get 60fps easily with that setup, something’s not right for it to be stuck at 30fps. Make sure you’re using an HDMI 2.0 cable, and a 2.0 port on the TV.
@DanielS Check that and report back, the jump from 30fps to 60fps is great and I hope you get it sorted.
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@Dave_ZPCMR Hello again!
I bought this cable which is meant to be 4K 60Hz and tried it in the different HDMI ports of the TV; that didn’t make any difference (still 30 fps).
I have the graphics card OSD showing the frame rate in the bottom left corner, and did notice something strange during testing (watching another rider). When the view switched to helicopter, the frame rate jumped from 30 to 60 fps, at least demonstrating that the card/TV is capable of that frame rate (although of course helicopter view may adjust the effective resolution).
I went back in the game settings and changed to 1440 resolution (not the 4K 2160 I started with). At that game resolution, the frame rate is a perfect 60. The TV is still reporting its resolution as 3840x2160/60p even though the game resolution is lower.
When you mentioned that I should easily get 60 fps, did you mean with the game resolution set to 1440?
So, it looks like my options are to run at 4K game resolution at 30 fps, or 1440 game resolution at 60 fps (with the TV at 4K 60p in both cases).
Thanks very much
Daniel
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@DanielS In a solo ride your components should be getting 60fps with ease on all settings including 4K. I’ve just put together a machine for someone with an i5-3470 (so quite a lot less capable than your CPU) and a GTX 1650 and it could do 50-70fps in solo rides away from the crowds on the 4K setting. However these numbers were testing the 4K setting on a 1080p TV and a 1440p monitor. It may be that native 4K (as per your TV) is too hard for the 1650, but I wasn’t aware this made a difference. You’re right in that the helicam gives much higher frame rates, I think that’s because it doesn’t have to do the drafting calculations. On the machine I’ve built it does about 90fps using the helicam but again that’s not on a true 4K TV.
What you are seeing is classic vsync behaviour, this is because of the default settings in the Nvidia Control Panel. So any time the card can’t hit 60fps it’s dropping to 30fps. This removes tearing at the expensive of performance and usually there’s some stutter as the frame rate fluctuates between 30fps and 60fps. However you’re seemingly pegged at 30fps all the time.
There are few things to try, search Facebook for ZPCMR. 
Alternately just stick with 1440p.
@Dave_ZPCMR I plugged in a 1920x1200 monitor (yes a slightly strange size) and could reproduce what you saw; much higher fps on single rider views on the 4K game resolution setting. So the presence of the real 4K TV is limiting the frame rate in the 4K setting compared to a lower resolution monitor.
I now understand why you thought I should be able to get 60fps easily (I can’t)!
And the suggestion to stick with 1440p is a good one. I can’t particularly see any worsening of the graphics, and this is confirmed by another post here that frame rate might be preferable over resolution.
Having a decent frame rate and the ultra profile activated makes the biggest difference to the experience, the resolution less so (at least between 1440 and 2160).
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Interesting, albeit a shame. Yeah the difference between 1440p and 2160p is minimal on a lower resolution display. Not sure how it looks going the other way on a 4K display but I would agree that 60fps trumps marginally clearer visuals.
Thanks for the info anyway. 
@DanielS That said, there are still a few things you can try. Overclocking is easy and free, and tweaking your Nvidia driver settings can help - particularly changing the vsync setting. There’s one change you can make (Adaptive) that means if your GPU is capable of say 50fps that’s what you see rather than 30fps. It’ll have tearing, but some people don’t notice this as much as others. Let me know if you’re unsure how to do this.
Dave:
I’m interested in your opinion that in Zwift, 60 FPS is significantly better than 30 FPS. I haven’t seen that 30 FPS hurts Zwift “game play,” or that it doesn’t look good.
In other words, if I had to choose between (1) higher resolution and higher quality textures, etc., or (2) higher frame rates, I’d choose higher resolutions and higher quality textures.
In fact, I’ve experimented with using MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner to cap the frame rate in Zwift to 30 FPS and found it didn’t hurt the experience of using Zwift.
(There certainly is a point at which low FPS becomes unpleasant to view, but 30 FPS is above that threshold for me.)
Unfortunately we as users don’t get to choose the quality of textures and level of detail (what actually appears in the Zwift environment). That part is predetermined by Zwift. All the in-game resolution setting changes is how sharp things appear. At 576p things do look blurry but by the time you’re at 1080p, all that 1440p and 2160p bring are fewer jaggies and slightly sharper text on jerseys etc. Whether you’re bothered by the difference in smoothness between 30fps and 60fps is personal opinion. IMO 60fps is a massively better experience, but you’re right in that it doesn’t actually look any different. I would take 1440p60 over 2160p30 every time.
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And to clarify my context – we’re almost always viewing Zwift on a 1080p screen. If I studiously looked for a difference viewing Zwift on those screens at 30 FPS versus 60 FPS I might see a difference. But in actual use we don’t notice a difference.
And also to be doubly clear, 30 FPS versus 60 FPS or higher is just in the context of Zwift. In plenty of online games, such as first-person shooters, the frame rate is important for success in game play.
See I find that quite unfathomable, to me the difference is immense. Of course, it makes no difference to your training whatsoever and input lag etc is utterly irrelevant. I just find the smoothness far superior, and IMO it’s half the reason for using a PC for Zwift in the first place. Doesn’t mean either of us is wrong. 
For reference here are three screenshots at 1080p, 1440p and 2160p, all on a 1440p monitor. Whilst the 1080p option did look more blurry in reality, the 1440p and 2160p options are virtually identical so if the choice was 60fps or 30fps I’d take the former.
Hmm, for some reason the screenshots don’t reflect reality very well. 1080p was worse than 1440p and 2160p was only marginally better than 1440p. Up there they all look the same and the 2160p screenshot seems to have saved at 1080p, wtf.
@Dave_ZPCMR @1506
I’ve done an hour and a half on the trainer this morning at 1440p/60fps (with the PC into the TV at 4K 60Hz), and I didn’t like it. It didn’t seem particularly smoother than 2160p/30fps (some movement seemed jerky but this might be the same in both and depend on the CPU), but there were a lot more artifacts (subtle horizontal banding especially).
For me personally (and I realise this is very subjective and also depends on the TV), it looks like it is better to set the PC at 4K 60Hz resolution and the game at 2160p, and let it run at 30fps, rather than run the game at 1440p and let scaling happen somewhere in the PC (and affect the picture quality).
I am already over the moon at the improvement compared to running Zwift on a laptop into the TV (where apart from being limited to the Basic profile there was screen tearing). I’ve achieved 4K resolution and the Ultra profile with a budget CPU and graphics card (the GTX 1650 OC not even the Super variant). I understand I would have to spend substantially more to guarantee 60fps at 4K, into a 4K display. The PC that I have built is also low energy (less than 100W in game).
Going back to the original question in the title of the thread, your mileage may vary depending on the resolution of the display that you are using and also your tolerance to the difference between 30fps and 60fps.
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@DanielS
Was it a workout? If so check you’ve turned off the workout pain effect, because that looks like horizontal banding.
Fair enough on preferring solid 30fps vs potentially variable 60fps though. I would think you’d be able to maintain 60fps at 4K with your existing CPU and a 1650 Super which is quite a lot stronger (so it’s not spending a whole lot more), but there’s no real way to absolutely guarantee it in all circumstances even with top end components. Frame drops just cannot be avoided in Zwift, for a couple of reasons.
Glad you’re pleased with it though.
Groups rides through the dusty sections of Watopia are the worst framerate killers I recall.
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I gotta back DaveH on his advocating shooting for the higher FPS.
I did what I needed to see >60 FPS at ultra and I love it.
I am currently running a gaming PC, CAT6 cable from the router and a 32" gaming monitor through a displayport connection.
This makes the experience very immersive and for me at least worth every cent.
JWR
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@Jimmie_Richey It’s always going to be subjective but the more immersive the better for sure; I am two feet away from a 49 inch 4K TV with a soundbar, and I want to lean into corners (and have the sound far too high)! And smooth graphics is going to help, which leads to me my next point…
@Dave_ZPCMR I’ve been seduced and as it was an easy swap (thanks Amazon) I have upgraded to the GTX 1650 Super. I’ll start a separate thread as I’m not sure it qualifies for the answer to this threads original question!
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