GIGABYTE's Dual-Thunderbolt Motherboards Support 4K Resolutions

A humorous thing about CES is that every year, there's always a couple of buzzwords that you can't ignore. "3D" has been a big one in recent years, as has been "cloud", "ultrabooks", "superphones' and so on. This year, a major buzzword is one that really caught fire throughout 2012: "4K". We're of course talking about display resolutions here, though exactly how it's used varies.

While true 4K displays are going to take a while to catch on due to their cost (we are talking ~8 million pixels+, after all), some companies have found ways to use the buzzword elsewhere, such as GIGABYTE. At CES, the company is showing off its dual-Thunderbolt motherboards that are able to drive a 4K resolution with up to four displays, made possible with the Intel HD4000 found in the latest Core i5 and i7 processors.

Though the term doesn't seem to be set in stone, "4K" generally represents resolutions that are 1080p x 4, in which case the total pixel count would be at least 8,294,400. GIGABYTE's dual-Thunderbolt motherboards can handle that no problem, with the company touting a supported resolution of 3840x2400, which would be an effective 9,216,000 pixels.

I'm not exactly sure if this 4x1 display arrangement GIGABYTE has shown off is targeted at the end-user, but it looks to be a dream for those working with massive projects where many things need to be monitored at once.