Question for owners of 4K monitors

[bc5]

Hello! I'm considering getting a 4K monitor, but I know my GTX970 won't handle 4K at max settings in most modern games.

Obviously 1080p goes into 4K four times exactly, so should in theory scale perfectly at 1080p, with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?

Also, if anyone is running Linux with a 4K display, which desktop scales best for high-DPI?

 

[bwrlane]

Hello! I'm considering getting a 4K monitor, but I know my GTX970 won't handle 4K at max settings in most modern games.

Obviously 1080p goes into 4K four times exactly, so should in theory scale perfectly at 1080p, with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?

Also, if anyone is running Linux with a 4K display, which desktop scales best for high-DPI?

I tried that, thinking the same as you. But it looks blurry.

 

[KindaHardcoreGamer]

Hello! I'm considering getting a 4K monitor, but I know my GTX970 won't handle 4K at max settings in most modern games.

Obviously 1080p goes into 4K four times exactly, so should in theory scale perfectly at 1080p, with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?

Also, if anyone is running Linux with a 4K display, which desktop scales best for high-DPI?

I tried that, thinking the same as you. But it looks blurry.

It will scale perfectly, but it will be blurry. The ppi would be too small (1080p on a 4k-sized monitor would have a low ppi)

 

[bc5]

Thanks for the fast responses! To clarify though I'm talking about a small (<25") 4K display for super high DPI. So the kind of size you'd normally get 1080p at anyway. Still a bad idea?

 

[geofelt]

FWIW, I bought a Philips 40" BDM4065UC monitor and am very pleased with it.
Text is large enough to read.
A GTX980ti is sufficient to run the monitor at 60fps in games such as civ 4/5, skyrim.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

"with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?"

I explained why everyone saying this are wrong somewhere in depth but can't find it now.

The 1:4 is just a myth based on another myth. However, there won't be any distortion, the aspect ratio remains the same. A 4k display receiving a 1080 signal can never look as good as 1080 on 1080, that's the short version.


All the best!

 

[bc5]

"with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?"

I explained why everyone saying this are wrong somewhere in depth but can't find it now.

The 1:4 is just a myth based on another myth. However, there won't be any distortion, the aspect ratio remains the same. A 4k display receiving a 1080 signal can never look as good as 1080 on 1080, that's the short version.


All the best!

1440p it is. 4K hasn't come down in price quite as much as I'd hoped it would anyway. If you do find that explanation though I'd love to see it. Surely if I had a 960x540 image and full-screened it on my current 1080p display, each pixel in the image would just be stretched to double width and double height, becoming 2x2 screen pixels displaying each image pixel? Sure they'd be some big chunky pixels, but there's no reason I can see for blurring?

 

[RaidHobbit]

Hello! I'm considering getting a 4K monitor, but I know my GTX970 won't handle 4K at max settings in most modern games.

Obviously 1080p goes into 4K four times exactly, so should in theory scale perfectly at 1080p, with 4 actual pixels becoming 1 effective pixel. How does this work in practice? Will it look just as good as an actual 1080p display when running at 1080p or am I likely to see some of the distortion you tend to get when running a monitor at non-native resolution?

Also, if anyone is running Linux with a 4K display, which desktop scales best for high-DPI?

Why a 4K Monitor and not a 4k HDTV? Unless you get a GPU outputting more then 60 FPS in 4K mode then there is no benefit whatsoever from the faster response times of a monitor. No GPUs currently on the market output 4K at that many FPS yet.

You wont get the benefit of a 4K monitor for a few years yet.