1080p Content upscaled to 1440p

RadiatingLight · June 19, 2016

I'm debating between getting a 4K monitor, and a 1440p one, because i want more than 1080p for gaming, and don't want to stress out my GPU with 4k games. 1440p is perfect for me, except for the fact that there is no content that is natively shot/made in 1440p, and i watch lots of movies & youtube on my computer.

Will 1080p or 4K content look bad upscaled/downscaled to 1440p?

Enderman · June 19, 2016

its alright

most of the benefit comes from higher bitrate, not more pixels

DXMember · June 19, 2016

I'm watching 1080p and 4k Blu-Ray on 1440p all the time, it's good as long as the bitrate is above 15kk

plus your games will be natively rendered and displayed at 1440p so it's all good

Mira Yurizaki · June 19, 2016

Unless you're looking at 144Hz gaming, I'd say get a 4K monitor. If you get a 27" 4K monitor, you'll be running at basically the same effective PPI as most 1440p monitors. The only quirk is you'll need to set the scaling on Windows to 150% because the text and elements are smaller.

As far as upscaling 1080p to either resolution, I saw no real noticeable issue on either 1440p or 4K.

StormEye · June 20, 2016

I consume passive contents (videos) at resolutions of 720P and 1080P regularly on my 1440P monitor. Unless there is something really REALLY wrong with the media playback software, or the monitor itself, scaling is non-issue.

I even have consoles hooked up to me 1440P monitor, and aside from my crappy HDMI Switch not working (its rated up to 1080P only), console rendering on 1440P monitor looks fine.

Mira Yurizaki · June 20, 2016

6 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Most 1440p monitors are 27"

4K in 27" would be a higher PPI...

And then W10 might screw with the scaling

Arart from being harder to run games at 4k

A higher PPI negates running the monitor at a lower native resolution, especially at a resolution where the monitor size is expected to run.

Windows 10 doesn't screw with scaling with games unless you're running it in a window and only if the game is too old anyway. Though I suspect it'll just run it at the resolution you set and scale it up, which it does for a lot of apps that don't scale up anyway. Unless the app totally ignores what Windows does.

Also if you're going to keep a monitor for 3-4 years, why not get a 4K monitor? They're starting to become solid in terms of quality and features.

EDIT: Here's a picture of a game on 4K and 1440p on a 4K screen, can you tell the difference? Keep in mind the camera had to be inches from the monitor, so you're not going to see this normally.

Spoiler