Does scaling 5k to 1440p need a good GPU.

[apple_noob]

Hi I'm a little new to this community and this is my first post. I was thinking of getting a 27" iMac with a Radeon pro 580. I am a strictly apple user so this seems to be the best there is for editing, movie watching, and occasional gaming.

Obviously a 5k display would need two high end video cards for gaming, which this dies not have. I was thinking about scaling the resolution down to 1440p. Would this really be easier on the GPU, or would it still be just as hard? Also, would scaling it down like this make things distorted or odd looking?

Sorry if this is a confusing post. Thanks in advance for any answers.

 

[Mind Games]

nvm

 

[TechyInAZ]

No, going from 5k to 1440P doesn't require a fancy GPU to work. Using a 1440P downscale on 5k will be the exact same as a native 1440P display -- load wise -- on the GPU.

 

[InvalidError]

Scaling doesn't take much processing power and should look fine at resolution that are clean fractions of the native resolution. Another possibility if Mac gaming works like Windows does is to have the game switch the display resolution and let the monitor do the scaling.

 

[k1114]

The display's native res doesn't matter as far as stress goes, it's the actual res being displayed. Displaying 1440p is the same stress as 1440p. Scaling itself is too little work to even be considered as work. It won't distort if you are scaling to the same aspect ratio but it is going to blur.

 

[Sakkura]

The display's native res doesn't matter as far as stress goes, it's the actual res being displayed. Displaying 1440p is the same stress as 1440p. Scaling itself is too little work to even be considered as work. It won't distort if you are scaling to the same aspect ratio but it is going to blur.

5K is an integer multiple of 1440p (just like 4K vs. 1080p), so it is possible that there will be no blurring from pixel interpolation. Depends how the display handles a lower res though.

 

[apple_noob]

Thanks to everybody for the quick replies. K1114 got best answer because he answered both parts of the question.

Also what exactly do you mean by blurring?

 

[InvalidError]

Also what exactly do you mean by blurring?

When an image gets upscaled to a higher resolution, the extra pixels need to be filled in somehow and those extra pixels will be some intermediate value between its neighbors. This can noticeably water down (blur) sharp details, especially for non-whole-fraction resolutions where original pixels don't line up with physical pixels.

How noticeable this is depends on the quality of the upscaling algorithm. You could also have no pixel interpolation, in which case pixels will simply be whatever the color of the nearest pixel in the original image was, which would cause more visible aliasing. It is a pick-your-poison thing at this point.

 

[k1114]

I've never seen nearest-neighbor used in scaling algorithms for monitors/gpus. All upscaling I see is bicubic.

You can have an idea of how much it blurs by choosing a lower res on your existing monitor.

 

[apple_noob]

Ok thanks so much invaliderror!