Why can't games be nice to my monitor? Or vice versa?

[NonStandardUser]

I usually play GTAV and source engine games like l4d2, tf2. I would have liked to rage specifically on the source engine, but I can't since Rockstar also gave me shit at times.

So I need to [alt + tab] a lot, because I tend to switch to YouTube and stuff while I'm in a queue for a round or the game's loading or something. I'll also have to mention that I use a 4K monitor, and since I'm not rocking a supercomputer, I usually scale down my games to FHD or QHD. In these circumstances, the games have a f**ing stroke. When I click on the games on the taskbar or [alt + tab], my monitor changes its resolution(I can see that before the game comes up) and the game appears, but then the game flickers and I get kicked back to my desktop. Then the monitor spasms again to change the res back to 4K. I have to keep doing that until the game lets me in. This didn't happen when I was using my FHD monitors at native res. How can I fix this?

 

PS. the source engine is so outdated that they can't run in windowed fullscreen mode, where games are fullscreen but are more togglable and can upscale in resolution. When in windowed mode, it becomes a B**ch and runs in exactly that amount of pixels(FHD? 1/4 of my monitor.).

Gaben...smh

[Ashleyyyy]

try changing the system resolution to the resolution of the game. then, if you alt-tab out it doesn't have to change. 

[NonStandardUser]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

try changing the system resolution to the resolution of the game. then, if you alt-tab out it doesn't have to change. 

Then I literally have no reason to use 4K...

[Braxlaw]

How about you write yourself a script to set the system resolution to FHD and then start gta v when you want to play it.

Afterwards just let it change back via either the same script or another short one.

 

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, NonStandardUser said:

Then I literally have no reason to use 4K...

change it back when you're done gaming...

[NonStandardUser]

44 minutes ago, Braxlaw said:

How about you write yourself a script to set the system resolution to FHD and then start gta v when you want to play it.

Afterwards just let it change back via either the same script or another short one.

 

Thx for the suggestion.

[LogicalDrm]

This is more about OS than anything else. Since every time you alt-tab, OS needs to change resolution from one ingame to one on desktop. There are two fixes if you want to keep desktop on 4k and games at HD. Either run all games in windowed mode where you still have desktop resolution active all the time, or have script, hotkey or shortcut for switching resolution once you start and stop gaming. Ofc this means that while you game, desktop will be at lower resolution.