Samsung Electronics teamed up with Maingear, AMD and the 8K Association on what they claim was the world’s first-ever demonstration of 8K 120Hz gaming on a native 8K television.
The demo occurred at last week’s NAB 2025 event in Las Vegas using a modified Samsung television, and it suggests that the push for 8K resolution is finally beginning to accelerate after years of misfiring.
Although the demonstration was a success, it’s not yet clear when 8K resolution gaming at 120Hz will be viable for the average gamer due to the need for a custom modified TV, as reported by Flatpanels HD.
According to the 8K Association, the game chosen for the demonstration was Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Forbidden West, which was rendered in 5K and upscaled to 8K. It was played on a turbocharged Maingear gaming PC fitted with an AMD graphics card, and they had to use a special technology called Display Stream Compression or DSC to compress the video into a format that can be handled by HDMI 2.1.
At present, HDMI 2.1 is unable to support the full bandwidth of 8K 120Hz signals, but it’s believed that HDMI 2.2, which was first revealed at CES 2025 in January, will overcome this limitation.
Readers might assume that DSC was the main customization needed on the “modified” Samsung 8K Neo QLED TV used in the demonstration, but actually that’s not likely the case. As TechRadar reported, the latest Samsung Neo QLED TVs, such as the Samsung QN900F, are already said to support DSC technology. If that’s the case, then it suggests Samsung made further, undisclosed modifications to the TV that aren’t likely to be achievable for any consumer.
The modified TV was hooked up to a Maingear PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU. In addition, it used AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 technology to upscale the 5K video signal to 8K resolution.
Although 8K 120Hz gaming is not something the average gamer will be able to enjoy just yet, the demo is yet another encouraging sign for fans of the higher resolution display tech. At the NAB 2025 event, we also heard that Warner Bros. has scanned more than 20 movies in 8K resolution ahead of a possible consumer release.
In addition, we also saw Kaleidescape join the 8K Association as its latest member. That’s an exciting development because Kaleidescape is perhaps the only company in the world that sells the hardware required to get native 8K content into consumer’s living rooms without any negative impact on quality.
