[SOLVED] My friend is claiming he overclocked the resolution of his monitor past its physical limits

[Luca_21]

He has a 1600x900p monitor, and claims hes "overclocked" it to 1080p, his computer thinks its a 1080p screen and hes CLAIMING it looks the same as his 1080p monitor.

Im trying to talk him out of this non-sense but he wont listen so ive went to here to try and set him straight so please tell me...

How does one add more pixels to ur screen when ur screen doesnt have those pixels?
And yes, we have checked and the original monitor is a 1600x900 monitor. its a Dell P2011H.

Now... he claims it looks "the same" as his Bigger, 24 inch 1080P monitor, for some reason hes comparing a 19 inch 1600x900p monitor to a bigger 24 inch 1080p screen and saying that "it looks 1080p on both after overclocking"
Can someone please tell him that this is physically impossible unless hes broken the rules of the universe as we know it.

 

[rgd1101]

is physically impossible

 

[DRagor]

lol

 

[USAFRet]

Let him revel in his misconceptions.

 

[Grobe]

I assume you and your friend are adults - if not, my answer won't make much sense (!)

Well, the nature of misconception is pretty hopeless. The typical behaviour pattern is that the beholder of the misconceptions aren't open for better ideas from friends and family members. I've seen this pattern for vaccine skepticism, flat-earthers, various ideas based on religion (creationists etc.).

I think - If you're hoping to convince your friend (he might just be trolling you), the strategy may look something like this:

• Ask him if he understand how a monitor works (make him elaborate), and then make him elaborate how he have managed to "increase" the number of pixels.
• If he cannot answer - provide him some easy-to-digest information, like YouTube (link).
• If he can answer, but it conflicts with the real world, make him have a look at the above link.
• If your friend doesn't want to look at the youtube link and still adament in his ideas on how monitors (don't) work, then hopeless (he either trolling you or have some other issues you cannot fix)

 

[Glenwing]

There are many monitors that will accept signals that are higher resolution than they can actually display, and simply downscale it to their actual resolution. There may be various reasons for this. Many 720p TVs were designed to accept 1080p signals simply so they could be advertised as "1080p ready". There are also 1440p monitors that accept 4K signals in order to improve compatibility with consoles. And so forth.

 

[USAFRet]

There are many monitors that will accept signals that are higher resolution than they can actually display, and simply downscale it to their actual resolution. There may be various reasons for this. Many 720p TVs were designed to accept 1080p signals simply so they could be advertised as "1080p ready". There are also 1440p monitors that accept 4K signals in order to improve compatibility with consoles. And so forth.

"Accept a signal" does not mean more physical pixels.

 

[Eximo]

Also GPUs can render at a higher resolution and downscale before sending it to the monitor. I wouldn't call that overclocking though.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, he probably sees the resolution setting from supersampling and thinks he can do it on his monitor.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Love this thread, hilarious You might want to recommend your friend a good optician.

 

[punkncat]

I second the answer above about a TV. I have two (720) that will both "resolve" at 1080. The screen fit/stretch/whatever you want to call it makes things look normal even though they are not TRULY 1080p. One of them is what I use for a monitor at the remote shop and for all intents and purposes is fine aside from some very minor "blurring" type effect. The one at home does so clearly, but you can see when you extend the mouse cursor out to the edges that there is some (screen/desktop) there not being displayed.

 

[Glenwing]

"Accept a signal" does not mean more physical pixels.

Correct, as I said:

accept signals that are higher resolution than they can actually display, and simply downscale it to their actual resolution.