Pitfalls of higher resolutions? namely 1440p

[_dawn_chorus_]

I finally settled on a 1440p 144hz g-sync monitor until....

- I read that videos and movies with a native resolution of 1080p will look blurry? Is there not just an easy way to scale them without loss of quality? Is it possible to view them in 1080p at the expense of black bars or something?

- Then I read about someone who uses a 4k monitor and plays games in 1080p on it for better fps, which works because it just being 4 times the pixels. ALthough the pixels were said to look a little more "square" up close.

So is scaling that big of an issue with 1440p and beyond? I really don't want a 4k monitor for gaming as I value my fps, and don't watch a lot of movies.

Are there any other unfortunate surprises I can look forward to if I upgrade?

 

[jhensjh]

I've been running a 27" 1440p 144Hz gsync for around a year, I can't say I've seen anything I'd describe as blurry with 1080p content. If you view video fullscreen and it's less than 1440p of course there will be some scaling and loss of quality, but not anything I'd call blurry. I frequently watch 1080p youtube content in full screen mode and it's perfectly acceptable to me, but tastes vary of course. Yes, you can watch 1080p at its native size; it is just not going to take up the entire screen without scaling. I wonder if someone experiencing blurriness has Gsync turned on for all applications; I only have it enabled for full screen applications such as games.

I have no idea why a person would spend the money on a 4k monitor to play 1080p on it unless they overestimated the capability of their GPU before they bought the monitor.

I ran a 1920x1200 24" monitor for about 9 years prior to purchasing my current one and they only pitfalls I can think of is that your eyes may take a couple of days to adjust to smaller text on the screen, and your mouse pointer may seem slower as it has to move across more pixels to move the same distance. A mouse with changeable DPI completely addresses the mouse pointer issue.

 

[ko888]

1 to 1 pixel mapping (i.e. no scaling) will always render the sharpest image.

Scaling can be done by either the monitor or the graphics card's device driver. The algorithm used to apply the scaling may affect the softness/sharpness of the image. I find that scaling to 1920x1080 on my 2560x1600 30-inch IPS panel makes aliasing (a.k.a. jagged edges) more visible in the image. Turning on anti-aliasing of the scaled image definitely makes the image softer.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

I've been running a 27" 1440p 144Hz gsync for around a year, I can't say I've seen anything I'd describe as blurry with 1080p content. If you view video fullscreen and it's less than 1440p of course there will be some scaling and loss of quality, but not anything I'd call blurry. I frequently watch 1080p youtube content in full screen mode and it's perfectly acceptable to me, but tastes vary of course. Yes, you can watch 1080p at its native size; it is just not going to take up the entire screen without scaling. I wonder if someone experiencing blurriness has Gsync turned on for all applications; I only have it enabled for full screen applications such as games.

I have no idea why a person would spend the money on a 4k monitor to play 1080p on it unless they overestimated the capability of their GPU before they bought the monitor.

I ran a 1920x1200 24" monitor for about 9 years prior to purchasing my current one and they only pitfalls I can think of is that your eyes may take a couple of days to adjust to smaller text on the screen, and your mouse pointer may seem slower as it has to move across more pixels to move the same distance. A mouse with changeable DPI completely addresses the mouse pointer issue.

That's all good info, I would definitely have been driven mad by a slow mouse..lol.

What kind of frame rates are you getting on your 1440p with what hardware? I know there are a thousand benchmark videos, I have seen a lot, but I am just curious your personal experience. I got a 1080 SC2 a couple months back with plans to upgrade to a faster refresh monitor, but I didn't want TN, so pretty much every IPS or VA choice is 1440p. I didn't realize when I bought the gpu how much more demanding that resolution is and I am wishing I had just forked up another 200 for the Ti so I wouldn't worry about it. I was aiming to play at around 90-100fps in most games.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

1 to 1 pixel mapping (i.e. no scaling) will always render the sharpest image.

Scaling can be done by either the monitor or the graphics card's device driver. The algorithm used to apply the scaling may affect the softness/sharpness of the image. I find that scaling to 1920x1080 on my 2560x1600 30-inch IPS panel makes aliasing (a.k.a. jagged edges) more visible in the image. Turning on anti-aliasing of the scaled image definitely makes the image softer.

I will keep that in mind, thanks. I naively assumed scaling was just as simple as the image is bigger now... lol. I never thought about pixel density or anything before shopping for this monitor.

 

[jhensjh]

That's all good info, I would definitely have been driven mad by a slow mouse..lol.

What kind of frame rates are you getting on your 1440p with what hardware? I know there are a thousand benchmark videos, I have seen a lot, but I am just curious your personal experience. I got a 1080 SC2 a couple months back with plans to upgrade to a faster refresh monitor, but I didn't want TN, so pretty much every IPS or VA choice is 1440p. I didn't realize when I bought the gpu how much more demanding that resolution is and I am wishing I had just forked up another 200 for the Ti so I wouldn't worry about it. I was aiming to play at around 90-100fps in most games.

Since I decided to go back to school a few years ago I don't have as much time to game as I'd like to, nor funds to purchase lots of games, so keep in mind I'm not the most hardcore gamer. I'm running a GTX 1070 (non Ti) 8GB on an old ivy bridge i7-3770k @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB DDR3-1600. My motherboard predates NVMe and M.2, so I'm running a Samsung 950 pro in a x16 slot resulting in my GPU only having 8 pcie lanes to work with.

About the only recent game I play very much these days is Battlefield 1. I honestly don't have the FPS display enabled in BF1 anymore, but I did have it turned on for a while. Under ultra settings at 1440p I think I would get around 70-100fps, maybe 110 max at times. This is under DX11 in windows 8.1 (I ditched windows 10, not even going to start on all the issues it gave me) but I had very similar performance under DX12 when I was running windows 10. I don't even have the fps display in BF1 turned on anymore, but it's always been perfectly playable FPS wise and looks fantastic detail wise.

Considering my going on 6 year old CPU and motherboard and GTX 1070 with only 8 pcie lanes I don't think you'll have much trouble with a GTX 1080, but of course your mileage may vary.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

That's all good info, I would definitely have been driven mad by a slow mouse..lol.

What kind of frame rates are you getting on your 1440p with what hardware? I know there are a thousand benchmark videos, I have seen a lot, but I am just curious your personal experience. I got a 1080 SC2 a couple months back with plans to upgrade to a faster refresh monitor, but I didn't want TN, so pretty much every IPS or VA choice is 1440p. I didn't realize when I bought the gpu how much more demanding that resolution is and I am wishing I had just forked up another 200 for the Ti so I wouldn't worry about it. I was aiming to play at around 90-100fps in most games.

Since I decided to go back to school a few years ago I don't have as much time to game as I'd like to, nor funds to purchase lots of games, so keep in mind I'm not the most hardcore gamer. I'm running a GTX 1070 (non Ti) 8GB on an old ivy bridge i7-3770k @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB DDR3-1600. My motherboard predates NVMe and M.2, so I'm running a Samsung 950 pro in a x16 slot resulting in my GPU only having 8 pcie lanes to work with.

About the only recent game I play very much these days is Battlefield 1. I honestly don't have the FPS display enabled in BF1 anymore, but I did have it turned on for a while. Under ultra settings at 1440p I think I would get around 70-100fps, maybe 110 max at times. This is under DX11 in windows 8.1 (I ditched windows 10, not even going to start on all the issues it gave me) but I had very similar performance under DX12 when I was running windows 10. I don't even have the fps display in BF1 turned on anymore, but it's always been perfectly playable FPS wise and looks fantastic detail wise.

Considering my going on 6 year old CPU and motherboard and GTX 1070 with only 8 pcie lanes I don't think you'll have much trouble with a GTX 1080, but of course your mileage may vary.

Ah I see, well I guess I'll just have to pull the trigger on it and find out. Thanks for the info!