How is the image quality and fps for 4k downscaled to 1080 or 1440?

[verte200]

So I'm on the brink of pulling the trigger to get a 4k monitor, but I heard that the quality is horrible if your down scaling to 1080 or any lower resolution. In regards to this I also heard that since the pixels are trying to convert to fewer pixels you have a lower frame rate than if you were just playing on 4k. To recap, how is the quality on lower resolutions & the frame rate?

 

[yumri]

DSR was ment for older games that would benefit from rendering at a higher resulation than orginally set for while super sampling is AA for the entire screen and every pixel there of it takes a ton of processing power but ussualy looks better than even MSAA x8 in that though MSAA x8 will take alot less GPU power to run than SuperSampling would.

If your game is relatively new then DSR will just probably hurt your fps and not give you much in return for it image quality wise while DSR on older games will hurt your fps but make it look slightly to majorly better as it basicly replaces AA in some ways but not in others.
Still with older games a texture pack wil lbe better than DSR will and for newer games DSR is unneeded and will just hurt your framerates.

 

[Entomber]

there's no point in buying a 4K monitor if you're not going to use the 4K resolution.

 

[burdenbound]

there's no point in buying a 4K monitor if you're not going to use the 4K resolution.

Perhaps he is asking because he wants to watch 1080p movies on it, along with other 4k content. If this is the case I wouldn't worry about the quality, it will probably look fine as long as your not right up on the screen.

 

[verte200]

I have a good setup, but I know I cannot handle every game at 4k so I'm hoping that when some games do reach the point of hitting 20-30 then I can downscale to a lower res maybe like 1600, 1440, or even 1080 so I can get better fps.

PC Specs:
Intel Core i7-4770k 3.50GHz
G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866MHz 16GB
Gigabyte G1 GTX 970 SLI OC'ed to 1550MHz & 8k Memory Clock
Windows 8.1
Cooler Master HAF X Case
Phantek PH-TC14PE
ASUS 24X DVD Writer
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
Corsair AX1200i PSU
ASUS Maximus VI Extreme

 

[verte200]

DSR was ment for older games that would benefit from rendering at a higher resulation than orginally set for while super sampling is AA for the entire screen and every pixel there of it takes a ton of processing power but ussualy looks better than even MSAA x8 in that though MSAA x8 will take alot less GPU power to run than SuperSampling would.

If your game is relatively new then DSR will just probably hurt your fps and not give you much in return for it image quality wise while DSR on older games will hurt your fps but make it look slightly to majorly better as it basicly replaces AA in some ways but not in others.
Still with older games a texture pack wil lbe better than DSR will and for newer games DSR is unneeded and will just hurt your framerates.

Isn't DSR for people who do not own a 4k monitor? I thinking more along the lines of in-game resolution set to 1080 while playing on a 4k monitor.

 

[bystander]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

 

[-Lone-]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

I have watched a movie (Transformer : Age of Extinction) on my TV before and it definitely does look better than when I watched a trailer. So the upscaling definitely helps

 

[verte200]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

So I guess I did confuse it, I'm down scaling since I will be getting a 4k monitor and shrinking to 1080 on certain games. Here is the monitor I'm getting: http://www.asus.com/us/Monitors_Projectors/PB287Q/. I haven't heard anyone talking about whether the scaling is good or not, but I'm going to guess that scaling it to a lower res would hit my frame rate and wouldn't be anymore beneficial than just playing at 4k itself.

 

[-Lone-]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

So I guess I did confuse it, I'm down scaling since I will be getting a 4k monitor and shrinking to 1080 on certain games. Here is the monitor I'm getting: http://www.asus.com/us/Monitors_Projectors/PB287Q/. I haven't heard anyone talking about whether the scaling is good or not, but I'm going to guess that scaling it to a lower res would hit my frame rate and wouldn't be anymore beneficial than just playing at 4k itself.

I always tend to use my monitors/TVs at it's native resolution so there would be the least amount of problems.

 

[bystander]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

So I guess I did confuse it, I'm down scaling since I will be getting a 4k monitor and shrinking to 1080 on certain games. Here is the monitor I'm getting: http://www.asus.com/us/Monitors_Projectors/PB287Q/. I haven't heard anyone talking about whether the scaling is good or not, but I'm going to guess that scaling it to a lower res would hit my frame rate and wouldn't be anymore beneficial than just playing at 4k itself.

You are still confusing it. Downsampling is when you render at a higher resolution than your monitor, and shrink the image to fit the screen. Upsampling is when you render at a lower resolution, and make it larger to fit your screen.

Using a 4k monitor but gaming at 1080p will require the monitor or GPU to take the 1080p image, and expand it to fit 4k. That is upscaling and the quality will vary from monitor to monitor if relying on the monitor to expand the size of the image. Btw, this does add latency, so be aware of that possible downside.

 

[bystander]

Oh yeah, I didn't answer all your questions.

Your frame rate will improve upscaling to 4k from 1080p, in comparison to just rendering directly to 4k. However, as I mentioned earlier, you may gain latency. How much latency will depend on the monitor or GPU.

 

[verte200]

I think the question has some wording problems and has confused some.

You will not be downsampling. You are upsampling to 4k from 1080p or 1440p. Downsampling is in the other direction, having the GPU render at 4k, and shrinking it down to 1080p, which acts like OGSSAA.

In both cases, you are relying on the quality of the scaling abilities of the monitor/TV. TV's will likely have better scalers, as they are selling to people who will always be upsampling, as there isn't 4k content for tv's. Monitors may or may not do a good job. This is where reviews and seeing one in person will be important. TV companies claim upsampling looks better than watching on a 1080p TV, but I bet in some cases, it would look terrible on a PC, but until I see one, I will not know.

So I guess I did confuse it, I'm down scaling since I will be getting a 4k monitor and shrinking to 1080 on certain games. Here is the monitor I'm getting: http://www.asus.com/us/Monitors_Projectors/PB287Q/. I haven't heard anyone talking about whether the scaling is good or not, but I'm going to guess that scaling it to a lower res would hit my frame rate and wouldn't be anymore beneficial than just playing at 4k itself.

You are still confusing it. Downsampling is when you render at a higher resolution than your monitor, and shrink the image to fit the screen. Upsampling is when you render at a lower resolution, and make it larger to fit your screen.

Using a 4k monitor but gaming at 1080p will require the monitor or GPU to take the 1080p image, and expand it to fit 4k. That is upscaling and the quality will vary from monitor to monitor if relying on the monitor to expand the size of the image. Btw, this does add latency, so be aware of that possible downside.

Okay I understand, so if I had a 1080p monitor and the resolution for the game was 4k it would downscale to fit my 1080p monitor. Excuse me for making this question a single question to multiple, but exactly what is latency? I apologize in advance.

 

[bystander]

Latency is the time it takes for an image to be displayed. Because the conversion from 1080p to 4k takes added processing time, that time adds to the latency. It probably won't be too bad, but I've found it can make me feel motion sickness when downsampling, depending on the game.

 

[verte200]

Thank you everyone who helped. Especially thanks to you bystander for helping with understanding not only 4k, but the type of scaling and latency.