Why is it that when you downscale, it doesn't look like the actual resolution.

[Carlos1010]

Hi all,

So I have a 1440p monitor but there are some games that my GPU won't play smoothly in 1440p. So I want to put the resolution to 1080p. But I have heard that it won't look at nice, can anyone explain to me why? Why monitor is better then the resolution so I have to be able to play FULL HD. Also if I can't, what can I do so it will look like 1080p?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Have you actually tried it for yourself, rather than going on what others claim? I run my 4K monitor at 1440P a lot of the time and I can't see any real difference between that and a normal 1440p monitor. If you can't see the difference, or the difference doesn't bother you, why does it matter what people claim it looks like? 

[byalexandr]

3 minutes ago, Carlos1010 said:

Hi all,

So I have a 1440p monitor but there are some games that my GPU won't play smoothly in 1440p. So I want to put the resolution to 1080p. But I have heard that it won't look at nice, can anyone explain to me why? Why monitor is better then the resolution so I have to be able to play FULL HD. Also if I can't, what can I do so it will look like 1080p?

Because you're trying to draw what isn't actually there. It's like taking a really low res image and guessing what the detailed version would look like.

[samcool55]

if your monitor is 1440p and you are running at 1080p you upscale, not downscale.

 

Downscaling is pushing a 1440p image to a 1080p display because you need to get the image down in size, not up

 

It doesn't look as good because the monitor has more pixels to color in than it has information about so it stretches it, which makes it look awful as you would expect.

[Techicolors]

this is called interpolation, and has to approximate the image

 

you can read more about it here

 

[swordsman247]

It has to expand the 1080p out to 1440p and the pixels don't line up as well as running at a native res.

[PlayStation 2]

Downscaling basically acts as a form of anti aliasing. This is best seen if you're not running any anti aliasing at the native resolution then it's scaled down.

 

What you are referring to is upscaling, which is interpolation. It will never look as clean as native resolution.

[AresKrieger]

Downscalling from a higher resolution acts like AA so if 1080p with SSAA looks bad to people then that's their problem, the only issue you might have is the pixels not lining up/being cut off/ borders but that's only really an issue if your changing aspect ratio rather than just resolution

[minibois]

You aren't downscaling, what you want to do is upscaling.

Basically what you are doing is taking 1 pixels and shoving that in the area of 1.5 pixels. That is going to create some weird things, that you will either hate or not notice.

[Glenwing]

13 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

this is called interpolation, and has to approximate the image

 

you can read more about it here

 

Took the words right out of my mouth

 

@Carlos1010  It's all explained in that link, under "Does 1920×1080 scale perfectly on 3840×2160 (4K UHD) monitors? What exactly happens when you run a non-native resolution on a display?"

[Energycore]

Why not run games at lower settings?

 

Alternatively if you don't like the upscaling artifacts, run your games windowed on an actual 1920x1080 window.