4K TV but Game at 1440p?

shankly1985 said:
Hello if I buy a 4k TV do you get an option to selected, 2560x1440p?

Thanks
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You could run 1440 on a 4k screen.

It wouldn't look very good though. Would look a bit blurred.

I believe 1080p would work better due to pixel scaling ratio.

1080 is exactly half 2160 lines of a 4k screen.
 
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Depending on how good the TV is and how close you're sitting to it, it can be quite difficult to discern much difference between 4K and 1080p so I wouldn't get too uptight about a high res particularly if you're playing games from your couch.
 
IvanDobskey said:
You could run 1440 on a 4k screen.

It wouldn't look very good though. Would look a bit blurred.

I believe 1080p would work better due to pixel scaling ratio.

1080 is exactly half 2160 lines of a 4k screen.
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Bluecube said:
Depending on how good the TV is and how close you're sitting to it, it can be quite difficult to discern much difference between 4K and 1080p so I wouldn't get too uptight about a high res particularly if you're playing games from your couch.
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Thanks guys, I be sitting about 7 feet away from the screen. I just dont want to game at 1080p after using 1440p for sometime now. Surely 1440p on a 4k screen will still look much better?
 
Best to try it for yourself as everyone is different! The reason that 1080p will supposedly look better than 1440p is because (as IvanDobskey said) a 4K screen has exactly four times the number of pixels as a 1080p screen so the scaling is much more natural. With 1440p there's going to be some fudging here and there to make the projected resolution fit the 4K screen.
 
1440p is a bit of a strange resolution really. 1080p / 4k are designed with media content in mind, so 1080 scales perfectly to a 4k screen.

At 7ft away, 1080p will look absolutely fine unless it's a 65 inch screen. Might be a bit pixelated then.
 
Every resolution on a TV goes through the scaler with all the artefacts and smoothing that brings. There is no 1:4 pixel mapping (1080p -> 2160p). It's why many cheap TVs look fine at 4k but absolutely atrocious with normal SD/HD TV content.
 
sadbuttrue said:
Every resolution on a TV goes through the scaler with all the artefacts and smoothing that brings. There is no 1:4 pixel mapping (1080p -> 2160p). It's why many cheap TVs look fine at 4k but absolutely atrocious with normal SD/HD TV content.
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That doesn't sound very intuitive. Why would they leave out such a simple and obvious feature? And isn't one of the core features of TVs' "Computer modes" to bypass any scaler after-effect features, so smoothing etc. shouldn't be an issue?
If not, then there's a nice market gap for a new competitor...

Furthermore, wouldn't it be possible to just let the GPU do the scaling? Meaning the GPU will upscale the game's 1080p resolution to 2160p (1:4), and output the 2160p directly to the TV.
 
I wasn't ready to accept that, so I tried to reproduce it with my AMD setup. Unfortunately, I only have a 1920x1080 monitor, and for some reason I couldn't get Windows to accept 960x540 resolution, even though I managed to create it with the Crimson GUI. Linux doesn't see the resolution either, and frankly I'm not that keen on starting to play with xrandr, at the moment. (Laptop would have 2160x1440, but it uses Intel iGPU, so not that optimistic for any superior scaling features, nor support for custom resolutions)

But now that I started thinking, the last time I've actually needed custom resolutions, I still had CRT (that was in 2012). So it's entirely possible that things have gone downhill in that regard.

And the occasional emulation games I play probably use software scaling (and mostly use hgx filters, in any case), which explains why there is no blurring issues there...
 
sadbuttrue said:
Integer ratio scaling is something many have asked for from AMD and Nvidia for years. There's even a petition setup.

http://tanalin.com/en/articles/lossless-scaling/
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Integer upscaling is a must. How is it possible it isn't implemented yet? I would understand nvidia not implementing it, but AMD participating in this anti-consumer behaviour is something new to me :eek:

[Feature Request] Nonblurry Fullscreen Upscaling at Integer Ratios
This question is Not Answered.

At integer scaling ratios, full-screen upscaling should be done just by duplicating pixels, with no blur at all. For example, Full HD (1920×1080) image could be displayed on a 4K display (3840×2160) with no blur, just by displaying one image pixel as a group of exactly 4 (2×2) absolutely identical physical pixels with no interpixel diffusion whatsoever.

On the contrary, full-screen upscaling via graphics driver is currently blurry even if scaling ratio is integer (e.g. 2x, 3x, 4x). For FHD (1920×1080) and HD (1280×720) images on 4K (3840×2160) monitors of 24-27-inch size where individual image pixels are almost indistinguishable, such blur unreasonably decreases perceptible sharpness without adding anything useful.

There should be a driver option to disable blur or at least to switch between bilinear/bicubic and nearest-neighbour interpolation.

For better understanding of what nonblurry integer-ratio scaling is, please see the demo. Thanks.

See also the “Nonblurry integer-ratio scaling” article which is an attempt to explain the blur issue and collect and summarize all the important relevant information about the issue and nonblurry integer-ratio scaling by pixel duplication as a solution.

See also a corresponding petition on Change.org. https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-amd-nvidia-we-need-integer-scaling-via-graphics-driver

Update (2017-07-06): The feature is now supported by nVidia GeForce driver 384.47 (Beta) for Linux via the “Nearest” transform filter.
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https://community.amd.com/thread/209107

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...est-nonblurry-upscaling-at-integer-ratios/54/
 
shankly1985 said:
Thanks guys, I be sitting about 7 feet away from the screen. I just dont want to game at 1080p after using 1440p for sometime now. Surely 1440p on a 4k screen will still look much better?
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As someone who uses a 55" TV @ 1080P for gaming at 7-8 feet, 1080P is not an issue at all imo and still looks far better than my much higher PPI monitor (but then it's not really fair to compare OLED and LCD :p)

Sharpness/clarity that resolution provides all comes down to the PPI of the display and the viewing distance from said display.

I've tried 4k numerous times and yes, it is sharper looking (although only more noticeable in a few games I've found) but it's not all that, even had a number of people who've seen mine be thoroughly disappointed with 4k (been blown away by HDR and 120HZ though)

EDIT:

I should say, 4k is very noticeable on the desktop with icons/text etc. though.

Mine can go to 2560x1440 as well, not tried it yet, will do later and let you know but as said, every TV will handle the scaling differently.
 
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