Many people that buy graphics cards severely underestimate the value of updating GPU drivers. You could buy a GPU for a certain purpose, but if one of the things that you need it to do simply doesn’t work, it’s worthless. Sony and Microsoft both claimed that their Xbox One and PS4 consoles will be able to playback video in 4K, but not necessarily games in 4K. The 4K recently completed the establishment of standards and yet to see widespread adoption due to its high cost.

While at the recently concluded E3, both AMD and NVIDIA talked about their plans for 4K PC gaming and updating their GPU power. AMD in particular makes the technology that powers the X-Box One and the PlayStation 4 and also provides the central APU (integrated CPU/GPU) engine, while the Wii U uses AMD graphics.

Nvidia is heavily dependent on the success of PCs, as well as the popularity of its Tegra SOCs in Android devices for their business. The company recently unveiled its own gaming platform, the Nvidia Shield and it intends to use the Shield to make it a player in the console wars.

The next generations of consoles are ported with 1080p. But many PC gamer are already playing their games at that resolution and are bet to move on to better things. The good news for all PC gamers is that both AMD’s 7970 and Nvidia’s GTX680 are capable of running games on such resolutions at 30fps.

Both companies are now looking for the capabilities of their latest technologies. At E3, AMD pointed out that existing PCs have the capability to connect to 4K televisions and play 4K games now. Likewise, Nvidia boasts that next generation consoles will not be able to bridge the gap to PC performance, unlike the PS3 and Xbox 360.

“I think PC still going to be the premiere gaming platform. For game developers who want to deliver the richest, best experiences, they’re going to develop for PC. I think that’s going to keep PC very healthy through this new generation of consoles, and obviously PCs are going to continue to take off in terms of innovation,” NVIDIA’s Jason Paul, director of product marketing, explained to Forbes.

Nvidia has had some interesting experiences with 4K displays. They recently released the 326.41 Beta driver, which enables the ability to support tiled 4K displays and expands the amount of 4K displays supported. The driver also adds the PC streaming functionality, which enables for game streaming from the PC to Nvidia’s SHIELD.

On the other hand, AMD has decided to push the new card as one of the ideal solutions for gaming at 4K and is experimenting with multiple GPU configurations, which include multiple HD 7970s or a dual GPU card like the HD 7990. AMD’s new CrossFire Frame Pacing in their 13.8 Beta driver supports resolutions up to and including 2560×1600 (single display). AMD states that the next development would come shortly with OpenGL, resolutions above 2560×1600 and DX9.

“Something like a Sharp 32 inch 4K [3840×2160 resolution] display can be plugged into a PC today. You can do 4K gaming right now with the games that are out there now. So on the PC continues to lead and really define the leading edge of gaming. So I don’t think it’s going anywhere; in fact I think it’s actually grown quite a bit because [for] the consoles that have been out there…it’s been a long console cycle,” an AMD spokesperson said.

Intel’s fourth-generation Core processors, based on Haswell designs use a more advanced manufacturing process and better power efficiency. Intel notes that its current graphics processor performance is twice that of last year’s model and is more than 75 times better than 2006 models.

What does this mean?  In the past, the consoles leapt ahead of the PC, but only for small period of times as in the case of Xbox 360 and PS3. With constant refreshes in technology coming every six months, PC can equip with latest graphics card and processors to leapfrog the consoles. We can only speculate on how 4K will shape PC gaming in this coming generation.

In a time when PC sales are declining and with so much of today focused on mobile, free to play, and casual gaming on smartphones and tablets, the gaming performance on those devices may be approaching good enough for many players.