Playing 1080P on a 4K Monitor

[cockylokie50]

This is my first time here so let me introduce myself.

 

I’m 24 years of age and currently reside in South Africa.

 

As stated in the Title head I’m looking at getting myself a 4k monitor the Asus PB287Q recently reviewed by Linus.

 

My question is, I have currently a MSI 770GTX 2GB and I know that it won’t run any game smoothly in 4K. So how is playing 1080p on a 4K monitor?

 

I've been reading a lot but is just bunch of people who don’t have a 4K monitor sprouting a load of non-sense.

 

I do understand that is not a native resolution so it is going to be blurry?

 

So if anyone has a 4k monitor and has played a game at 1080p on the 4K monitor is it burry or crisp how it compares to playing on a 1080p monitor.

 

Thanks for your time to whoever replies’s to me.

 

Have a great day further.

 

Kind Regards,

Cockylokie

[MrBucket101]

It won't look very good, monitors look best at their native res

It'll run though

[Cacao]

Hello, welcome to the forum! Games will run perfectly fine at 1080p, since it's exactly 4x the resolution pretty much 4 pixels will be like 1. 

[Askew]

Scaling can be horrible depending on a few things.

 

With 1080P - 4K however, as I understand it is not that bad at all because it's a mathematical 4x scale and the same aspect, one pixel will be made into 4 the same.

[Ciccioo]

as far as i know, a lot of people assume that the scaling is perfect because there is that 4:1 ratio, so basically one pixel from the 1080p image just becomes 4 pixels on the 4k display, but this assumpion may be wrong

again, i don't have a 4k display so this is just stuff i read on the internet, but scalers just don't think like that, so your 1080p will look worse than what it would look like on a 1080p display

[cockylokie50]

Thanks so much for the Responce to all of you  .

Hello, welcome to the forum! Games will run perfectly fine at 1080p, since it's exactly 4x the resolution pretty much 4 pixels will be like 1. 

 

Scaling can be horrible depending on a few things.

 

With 1080P - 4K however, it is not that bad at all, it's a mathematical scale and the same aspect.

 

With Replies like these it makes me want to run out and get myself one.

 

Though to flog R 12000 at it and get home and go mMmMmM my 24" 1080p monitor plays games more crisp know that my PC won’t play games at 4K and then again most games don’t even support 4K yet.

 

I wish I could get my hands on one to try out before I buy. 

 

Thanks guys hope to hear some more comments soon. 

[Askew]

Thanks so much for the Responce to all of you  .

 

 

With Replies like these it makes me want to run out and get myself one.

 

 

Though to flog R 12000 at it and get home and go mMmMmM my 24" 1080p monitor plays games more crisp know that my PC won’t play games at 4K and then again most games don’t even support 4K yet.

 

 

I wish I could get my hands on one to try out before I buy. 

 

 

Thanks guys hope to hear some more comments soon. 

 

 

Your 24'' monitor will be more crisp than displaying any 1080p signal on a dispay bigger than 24'', but when using the desktop/non gaming applications on your 4K native display it will be like night and day.

 

Obviously due to the display having to scale, there may be a small amount of lag caused by doing this, I'd look into that before buying one to game on.

 

You could always just game on your 24'' 1080p panel, and have the 4K panel as a second monitor.

[cockylokie50]

as far as i know, a lot of people assume that the scaling is perfect because there is that 4:1 ratio, so basically one pixel from the 1080p image just becomes 4 pixels on the 4k display, but this assumpion may be wrong

again, i don't have a 4k display so this is just stuff i read on the internet, but scalers just don't think like that, so your 1080p will look worse than what it would look like on a 1080p display

 

Thats going threw my mind, But i dont want to go and buy a 1440p Monitor thats like R3000 cheaper, to find out i could of gotten a 4K monitor and sufferd alittle on the burry side. (Or mayby crisp)

 

Then again you need like 2 780 GTX's to play Ok on 4K. (Witch i wont be getting anytime soon  )

 

Thanks again on all the replys guys

[cockylokie50]

Your 24'' monitor will be more crisp than displaying any 1080p signal on a dispay bigger than 24'', but when using the desktop/non gaming applications on your 4K native display it will be like night and day.

 

Obviously due to the display having to scale, there may be a small amount of lag caused by doing this, I'd look into that before buying one to game on.

 

You could always just game on your 24'' 1080p panel, and have the 4K panel as a second monitor.

 

OMG never thought of that hahaha

Now thats one more thing to think towards my PROS & CONS

[Askew]

OMG never thought of that hahaha

Now thats one more thing to think towards my PROS & CONS

 

For sure man, if you are only interested in this for gaming I'd hold on to your money, if you're expecting buying a 4K monitor to improve your gaming experience on your current setup you're going to be disappointed.

 

However for doing other stuff? It'll be nice.. Decisions decisions...

[cockylokie50]

For sure man, if you are only interested in this for gaming I'd hold on to your money, if you're expecting buying a 4K monitor to improve your gaming experience on your current setup you're going to be disappointed.

 

However for doing other stuff? It'll be nice.. Decisions decisions...

 

Thats very true.

I do try game alot plus my PC is like the Multi-Media Center.

 

Your right Decisions, Decisions 

[Stonep11]

Think about it, it is a 28 inch displayif I remember, so it is basically just gonna look like any other 1080 28inch (like a small TV) it won't be optimal ie. Pixels will be too big at 1080p but it won't be horrible and i think you may be surprised what your 770 can do.

[DodgeZA]

Hello there fellow saffer..

 

Don't go for it. I'm running a decent 1440p display and 1080p looks bad on it, not sure it'd look better on a 4k, save your dosh. 

1440p is a good option though, there are plenty of decent options and there are great 1440p screens coming soon with G-sync.

 

You can look on the Carbonite forums locally for deals.

 

Ken

[Stelios615]

I have the Samsung 4k monitor and can tell you playing at 1080p and 1440p looks surprisingly good. I thought that there would be some significant blurring but for the most part it works really well. 1440p looks perfect, 1080p looks good with minor blur (i think this is more due to the size of the monitor in relation to the resolution) You know how there are 1080p 27 inch monitors and they just don't seem to have enough pixel density? that is what it is like. Over all though I am very pleased, I am using a 780ti and can play almost every game at 4k with high settings. Spoiler alert... it looks awesome.

[Glenwing]

4K displays can display 1080p content natively in theory, if they can do exact 4:1 "dumb" scaling rather than interpolation, and if they did then it will look exactly as sharp as an equivalent 1080p panel of the same size.

 

On 1440p, 1080p content requires interpolation, which causes blurring.  This is not necessary for 1080p on 4K.

 

Edit from 3 years in the future: This post was made before 4K displays were widely available, and was based on theory/speculation of how scaling could possibly be handled. Now that 4K displays are available, it has been investigated and determined that most 4K displays do still apply interpolation to 1080p images, they do NOT scale perfectly and display like a native 1080p display.

 

Spoiler

Edit from 3 years in the future: This image was created by me before 4K displays were widely available and only demonstrates a theoretical possibility, it is now clear that this is NOT representative of how 4K monitors actually handle 1080p signals in actual implementation; they still apply interpolation effects similar to the ones seen in the 1440p output image.

 

However, the scaling method will differ depending on your graphics card and monitor itself, so this will require some research on the specific parts in your particular setup.  GPU scaling typically always interpolates, and even if the higher resolution happens to be 2x the source in each direction, it doesn't treat it any differently than another mismatched resolution and upscales the source via interpolation.  You can try disabling GPU scaling in NVIDIA/AMD's control center, and let the display's internal scaler handle it, but different monitors will do it differently.  The Dell UP2414Q doesn't even have an internal scaler.  So you will have to go on a product-by-product basis, to try to find a 4K monitor that is cable of exact 4:1 pixel mapping when given a 1080p source.  Unfortunately this information isn't widely publicized or tested, so it's difficult to research.  In any case, I think waiting a bit longer for 4K displays to mature a little bit isn't a bad idea on the whole.

 

Edit from 3 years in the future: Now that 4K displays are widely available, it has been determined that in fact most displays do not scale images with 4:1 pixel mapping, but apply interpolation to 1080p images. Even though in theory it would be possible to display them like native 1080p images, most 4K monitors do not implement this method of scaling in practice.