How to run higher than the maximum resolutions on your display

[TheMonsterMan8]

I tested this out on my weakest PC, so it could give a realistic idea to people not running something stupidly insane. On my main machine, this works fine, decent high resolutions and good FPS.

 

The system I tested this with;

 

BIOSHOCK INFINITE

 

3200x1800

Medium

46 FPS Max

29 FPS Min

38 FPS Avg

 

2880x1620

Medium

60 FPS Max

34 FPS Min

54 FPS Avg

 

Minecraft

 

3200x1800

Render Far, AF 16, Fancy

60 FPS Max

57 FPS Min

60 FPS AVG

 

Borderlands 2

 

3200x1800

Max Settings, FXAA Disabled

Did not work

 

2880x1620

Max Settings, FXAA Disabled

47 FPS Max

29 FPS Min

31 FPS Avg

 

2560x1440

Max Settings, FXAA Disabled

60 FPS Max

36 FPS Min

44 FPS Avg

 

So yeah, this does work on lower end systems, with a tiny bit of tweaking. I saw no change in Minecraft, obviously, Bioshock Infinite had a huge change, Borderlands 2 had little impact on the terrain, but weapon and model detail was a lot more obvious.

[matin94]

this isnt working for me, i've tried everything. i've created a INF file using the downsampling tool thing, i've tried using all 3 of the ones given, i've tried everything in the instructions. nothing works. my monitor wont give signal when i try to use the 4k resolution, i dunno why someone please help.

 

im using the 290.

screen resolution is 1920x1080 at 60hz

[hotfrost]

man, thanks so much! This is epic

[WhatTheQuack]

This is great! Got TF2 and L4D2 running at 2560x1440 on my LG 23EA63, and GTX 760. Couldn't push it to 4k though

[jarthur36]

Thought I'd just post my results.

GPU: ASUS GTX 760

Display: Ancient Hannspree LM02 1440x900 75hz

Game: Ghost Recon Phantoms

NO INGAME AA

Successfully running 1720 x 1080 @ 75hz

 

 

WARNING: LARGE IMAGES

Native 900p, no AA:

 

 

Downscaled from strange 16:10 1080p:

 

In my opinion it actually got worse for this exact scenario but your opinions are welcome.

[xAcid9]

this isnt working for me, i've tried everything. i've created a INF file using the downsampling tool thing, i've tried using all 3 of the ones given, i've tried everything in the instructions. nothing works. my monitor wont give signal when i try to use the 4k resolution, i dunno why someone please help.

 

im using the 290.

screen resolution is 1920x1080 at 60hz

 

From what i've read, GCN card only support 2880x1720 max. Can you search your ModeTimingOverrides_DVI_Conn12556 or just ModeTimingOverrides in Registry and dump the value here in spoiler?

[Kappa4Dayz]

Now guys i may sound like an epic noob but i have an xl2420te which is 144hz monitor and when i try and do it, it say custom res failed 2560x1440 at 144hz (32-bit) is not suppoted by your display. now im god damn sure i dont have anything that is 32 bit so im thinking its just the monitor if anyone could help i would be very grateful.

[Rikyy]

Hey guys, Luke said in the video to post the results and settings here for others with similar setups to be able to use them too, so, here is what I can do on a GTX 780 with a 4670k and 16GB of RAM, all being outputted to a BenQ XL2411T 144hz monitor through a dual-link DVI.
The resolutions go from the lowest over 1080p to the highest, including screenshots of the settings for each. Some of them are unplayable because they require to run at 24hz, which makes them suitable just for hires screenshots if there's anybody here interested in that (I am). 
All of them work on my setup.
 
 
2560x1440 AT 60HZ (16:9)
 

 

2560x1600 AT 60HZ (16:10)

 

 
3840x1260 AT 60HZ (~23:10)
 

 

3840x2160 AT 60HZ (16:9)

 

 

4096x2160 AT 30HZ (19:10)

 

 

5000x2000 AT 24HZ (25:10/5:2)

 

 

5120x2160 AT 24HZ (~23:10)

 

 

That's it, enjoy. 

[An Awful Player]

Just did 2560x1440 on a 1080p LG Flatron E2442 with a GTX 660 3gb on Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and i can tell a difference on GTA IV, lost a few frames but nothing unplayable. Only problem i have with it is the desktop looks blurry and my wallpaper is only 1920x1080 but its well worth changing your resolution before heading into certain games. 

[zeiferlance]

Awesome! Thank you so much!

 

[Rikyy]

Just did 2560x1440 on a 1080p LG Flatron E2442 with a GTX 660 3gb on Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and i can tell a difference on GTA IV, lost a few frames but nothing unplayable. Only problem i have with it is the desktop looks blurry and my wallpaper is only 1920x1080 but its well worth changing your resolution before heading into certain games. 

 

You're not supposed to change it before starting the game, you do it ingame. That way you just start the game and it will automatically change without you having to manually do it inside of the Nvidia CP before starting it.

[StareX]

I have got 1440p set up as a custom resolution and it tested fine, but i cannot get it to pick this resolution up when im playing dota 2.

 

Am i missing something ?? 

 

you're missing the tick button.. tick it on custom resolution.. etc

[Labeled]

1440p was blurry and awkward on my VG248QE, Using 4k worked, but it made my mouse feel awkward more or less as if mouse acceleration on.

[pipnina]

Wait, the the driver there is a drop down list between "perfrom scaling on: Display and GPU"

Does GPU scaling not work? And if it does, then is it not as good as display scaling?

I ask because if the image was scaled down to 1080p by the GPU would that not avoid damage to the monitor?

[Xander McN]

I can get to 3840x2160. i have a hanns.g 1080p 23.5" with a gtx 770.

[baldysoftknuckles]

I have being doing this for a while with my 32" LG TV that only has 768 x 1366 pixels (I think). So im pushing a 1080p resolution at it and it looks crap on the desktop but better in games. I will try it with a 2k resolution going to my 1080p monitor later now i understand what i am doing.

[SamboStrand]

I managed to get my GTX 780M in the Alienware 17 to 3600 x 2025 which has made a noticeable difference to some games.

 

Here's a quick look at Skyrim. Still perfectly playable hovering around 30 fps. Shame about the "Level Up" Which seems to be a bit of a glitch caused by the resolution. Images available to view in full resolution over on Photobucket.

 

 

[Lord Pantaloons]

I've been doing this for some time now, I will post pics and whatnot later if I remember but I run 3200x1800, 2880x1620, and 2560x1440. The maximum resolution that my monitor supports is 3200x1800(Asus VS229). A few games like Mass Effect 3 require so little GPU power that I can run it at a high resolution like 2880x1620 on top of having 32xCSAA, 16x AF, and 8x supersampling forced through the NVC all while running at a solid 55-60fps. The imporvement in image quality it astounding, the only problem with that particular game at this point is the sub par textures in some areas but the complete absence of jaggies go a very long way in improving the game's visuals. I don't know if I can ever go back at this point.

 

 

Rig Specs

Intel i5-3570k @4.5Ghz

Asus Sabertooth Z77

x2 EVGA GTX 760 Dual FTW ACX 4GB

16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866Mhz

(full system specs in signature)

[dunkanlord]

on every except 4k it is getting blurry on 4k it's nice but damn small everything and i think will be to big impact on games and mouse sensitivity changes as well because need to go bigger distances

msi gtx 760 hawk

dell u2122hm monitor

i7 3770s turbo speeds oc to same as normal 3770 (stock cooler)

gigabyte z77x d3h

8gb kingston 1600mhz

[Lord Pantaloons]

on 1440p it is getting blurry on 4k it's nice but damn small everything and i think will be to big impact on games and mouse sensitivity changes as well because need to go bigger distances

msi gtx 760 hawk

dell u2122hm monitor

i7 3770s turbo speeds oc to same as normal 3770 (stock cooler)

gigabyte z77x d3h

8gb kingston 1600mhz

your doing it wrong, you don't set the higher resolution as your resolution. You need to set the scaling to the GPU in the NVC and when your in game you set the resolution to the desired setting. Running a higher resolution on your monitor all the time will only result in subpar image quality. Look through the neogaf guide again and set everything correctly.

[skullbringer]

So, I have tried it, its not for me.

 

I am using a 4930k@ 4.4 GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 780 Ti and for gaming a Benq XL2720T 27" 120Hz 1080p monitor. The games I tried it in were BF4, BF3 and CSGO. (Windows 8.1/1)

First of, I am taking a different approach, as I wanted to keep my monitor at 120Hz. If you read Corky's guide, he mentions that 120Hz downsampling is not feasable due to bandwidth limitations (I assume of dvi or dp). But I have been running 1440p monitors at 120Hz overclocked before, so I tried it. With the difference that now I would not keep the monitors resolution (1440p) and overclock its refresh rate to 120Hz, but that I am already running 120Hz, keep that, and now increase the resolution.

 

The highest 16:9 resolution I could get my monitor to run at with 120Hz was 2400x1350. It would not do 1440p, saying the resolution is not beeing supported by the display. For context, I could get 1440p to work going back to 60Hz. But even at 60Hz the highest resolution possible was 1620p, crashing at everything from 1800p up to 4k. Bottom line, the highest setting at 120Hz, which I used for all my testing was 2400x1350 @ 120Hz.

 

Just a quick note: I found changing the resolutions with all the applying, testing, and black screening really really annoying. It is the complete opposite of responsive. Windows get shoved all over the place, beeing open and active behind other windows, so I had to click them in the task bar and stuff, really not optimal. I am not a programmer, and I dont know much about graphics drivers and how they work, but why cant the position of windows depending on the resolution just be saved somewhere, as in x and y coordinates and size? Also I found out that, when I saved the 1440p 60Hz setting and tried to apply 120Hz, the "not supported by display" notification would not show up any more, so I assumed it would work and be saved as a selectable resolution, but it wasnt. After testing it just glitched back without saving it and without giving me a notification, that it could not be saved. Aggravating!

 

Anyways to in game testing:

1.BF4 - Applying was unexpectedly easy and not a problem, and I could just start playing. I did not find the image quality beeing significantly increasd, probably because my downsampled resolution isnt that much bigger than 1080p compared to 1440p or 4k. So concerning textures and objects it was pretty much the same as befor at regular 1080p render resolution. One thing that did change was, that hud elements were much smaller giving me more field of view space. In this game I did not find fonts to be more blurry than normal, what I expected because of personal experience with interpolation between resolutions. But on the other hand bf4 in its self is pretty blurry and messy with its RGB distortion filter, so not much to get worse there. To be honest I stopped playing after about 15 minutes. I am just sick of the input lag and hit detection nonsense in bf4, it feels like you are dragging your crosshair through soup and when you finally manage to aim and shoot at the enemy, it takes half a second for hits to be registered. Its just so broken. BF4 is just the worst fps ever period, imho.

 

2. BF3 - Pretty much the same like in bf4, easy set up of the new resolution, smaller hud, and more field of view space. but compared to bf4, hud elements and fonts were much more blurry and fatiguing to watch. Objects did not seem to be cleared or rendered more detailed, so in the end no improvement over regular 1080p. With all the blurryness it actually looked worse than before, so I keep playing bf3 in its normal non downsampled state.

 

3. CSGO - Normally in source engine games when you turn on aa you get massive input lag, but not with using downsampling. So I got smooth object edges without input lag which I found quite nice. hud and fonts stayed the same size and sharpness, nothing blurry in game. But when using the steam overlay, everything is just as blurry and distorted as when you were to use downsampling in desktop mode. Causing me to feel nauseous very quickly. As the steam overlay is quite essential in csgo for the community marked, reporting other players and general use, I did not find downsampling to be an improvement in csgo either.

 

Conclusion: Its a huge hassle to set up in the nvidia contol panel, it did not make games look better for me with the setting my monitor would run at, but rather distort the image and make fonts and hud elements blurry and unusable. Clear thumbs down for downsampling from me.

 

However, I would like to thank Slick and all the guys on the various forums for bringing it up. I liked to play around with it and try out new things to make games look better. Just because it didnt work for me, doesnt mean its a bad thing, and I will definitely try it out in other games when I think it could benefit from it.

[PaZZeRi]

Can someone explain what happened here:

 

So i did the exact same things as shown on Linus' video, but then i saw this. Everything got shrinked and Rainmeter's weather display changed from my second screen to my primary one. Unlike in the screenshot, all the text on-screen got shrinked, too, making it barely readable.

My computer specs:
CPU: AMD FX-6100 6-core
Mobo: Asus M5A99X-EVO

RAM: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX660Ti SC

[Claryn]

ok so im now at 2560x1440 and things are smaller, but for regular desktop use, everythings just more blurry.. also I noticed since doing this that every now and then a faint 'scanning' sort of effect is going on on my seccond monitor which is not downsampled and is runnin off dvi a to bga..

 

 

text is blurrier..  everything is blurrier... im gonna give games a shot now since that seems to be what this is targeted for

I tried this. Jumped into WoW.. still blurry and shitty. 

Game is set to 1440p and Desktop is set to 1440p. Tried this on a BenQ 2720T and a LG IPS234

Edit: Running on a 780

[trckojr]

I'v ran my games on 2560x1440, opposing to native 1920x1080. I couldn't run 2160p.

My specs:
Windows 8.1
GTX 650 Ti

For monitor I am using Samsung TV ue22es5000
I've taken screenshots for GRID 2
1. 1080p ultra all max http://imgur.com/FMyATxv
2. 1440p medium http://imgur.com/labpCEc

I know this isn't very strong config for pc, but these are my results..

[dunkanlord]

your doing it wrong, you don't set the higher resolution as your resolution. You need to set the scaling to the GPU in the NVC and when your in game you set the resolution to the desired setting. Running a higher resolution on your monitor all the time will only result in subpar image quality. Look through the neogaf guide again and set everything correctly.

yes that was my mistake now all ok