Questions about Res and Refresh of a Monitor

[AlexTheTechFreak]

As of now 4k monitors can only run at 60Hz. My question is if I buy a natively 4k monitor and decrease the resolution to 2k, would I then be able to overclock the refresh rate higher than 60Hz? Or are 4k monitors built with a locked 60Hz no matter the resolution?

Another question I have; are there any negative side effects from decreasing the resolution on a natively 4k monitor?

 

[rhysiam]

Some monitors can be overclocked a little, but no, you cannot do what you what you're asking in terms of trading resolution for refresh rate. While the cable could support the necessary information for the monitor to run at the higher refresh rate, there's all sorts of other components required to support a higher refresh rate. Also FYI about OCing monitors, it can brick them, so it's only something you want to attempt when you really understand what you're doing.

RE the second question, monitors are made up of pixels and look sharpest when one pixel from the graphics card can be displayed on a single pixel on the display. You can support lower resolutions but the monitor still has to light up every pixel, so it effectively has to fill in the gaps by approximating the appropriate colour. That can result in a fuzzy looking display, particularly with high contrast items like black text on a white background. The monitor ends up placing some grey pixels in between the shart text edge giving the fuzzy look. It's much, much less pronounced on a 4K display compared to, for example, running a 1080P display at 768P. It's also much less obvious with pictures and games. But it's still less than ideal.

A 4K display can, however, be run at 1080P just fine. 4 pixels on the 4K display match up perfectly to a single pixel from the 1080P output and all works fine. It's obviously only as sharp as a 1080P display, but at least it's not worse.