Does 4k look good on 1080p monitor?

[sim379]

I have a 1080p monitor and a gtx 970. If I play games at 4k resolution on my monitor will it look much better than when playing at 1080p?

 

[SBennett13]

You will have to use DSR and downscale. The game itself must also support 4k (ie Skyrim would look bad b/c it doesn't support 4k). Regardless, you won't be able to much of anything in 4k with the graphics card you currently have. The 970 does have enough VRAM to support fluid 4k gaming. Maybe 1440 with low-medium settings at the most.

 

[rulejunior]

1080P and 4k are resolutions. You can't produce an image in 4k resolution on a 1080P unless you use Nvidia Dynamic Super Resolution and even then it isn't a true 4K image. It would just be a 4K image projected onto a 1080P screen. Whole lotta technical mumbo jumbo on how that works so I'll link it to Nvidia's website for you to study yourself

You can read up on DSR here http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/dsr/technology

With that said, I don't know how well your GTX 970 will be able to handle that resolution, even if it is DSR. I know it won't handle true 4K maxed out. Just a little food for thought

 

[clonazepam]

I have a 1080p monitor and a gtx 970. If I play games at 4k resolution on my monitor will it look much better than when playing at 1080p?

It depends entirely on the game whether the performance cost will be worth the enhanced image quality. Creating a higher resolution image and downscaling to the user's selected resolution has been a common anti-aliasing technique to improve image quality for a long time.

Areas with really fine details, like blades of grass waving in the breeze, may only look decent when using 4K DSR. That's because the game's built in anti-aliasing technique(s) may just not be up to the task. Use it on a case by case basis and decide for yourself if the performance cost is manageable and worth it.