Is gaming at 1080p on a 4K display a good idea, in 2019?

[jippa_lippa]

Hello.

 

For as much as I can remember I had a 1080p EIZO display, which has served me well, but I now want to upgrade to a new 4K panel, with HDR10 (Mostly for work, actually).
Considering I have a GTX 1070, though, I'll probably not play all games at 4K and I really think most of the titles will be played at 1080p.
 

Technically displaying a 1080p image on a 4K screen shouldn't cause any issue, as it is exactly 1/4th of the actual screen size, therefore only doubling pixels on each axis should do the trick, but I'm no expert on the matter.

I was wondering if modern displays achieve this scaling decently or if it is a bad idea alltogether.

Specifically I'll play Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) in such a way, as my first title played on a 4K display, but at 1080p.

Thanks.

[Umeshwarnath]

NO. Its a horrible Idea.

My 1070 @2.1GHz core struggles to keep up with a 1440p display at least for multiplayer. I tried 1080p to up my fps so it stays at 120, but it was a horrible experience. (34")

It only gets worse with size. 10/10 would not recommend!

[dizmo]

39 minutes ago, Umeshwarnath said:

NO. Its a horrible Idea.

My 1070 @2.1GHz core struggles to keep up with a 1440p display at least for multiplayer. I tried 1080p to up my fps so it stays at 120, but it was a horrible experience. (34")

It only gets worse with size. 10/10 would not recommend!

Your experience would be different because the aspect ratio, and resolutions are different.

It's not really the same thing.

[badreg]

1 hour ago, jippa_lippa said:

Technically displaying a 1080p image on a 4K screen shouldn't cause any issue, as it is exactly 1/4th of the actual screen size, therefore only doubling pixels on each axis should do the trick

Unfortunately, no monitor uses nearest neighbor scaling, so it doesn't matter that 2160p is a perfect integer multiple of 1080p. Due to bilinear interpolation, 1080p content on a 4K display will look worse than it would on a native 1080p display.

[King_Fishsticks]

Its not that bad but its not Ideal either, if having jagged edges is something that annoys you immensly i recomend using a 1080p screen for all your 1080p needs.

[Umeshwarnath]

On 11/17/2019 at 9:21 PM, dizmo said:

Your experience would be different because the aspect ratio, and resolutions are different.

It's not really the same thing.

Nope. Its the exact same thing. I tried 2560x1080 on a 3440x1440. Scaling up is a horrible experience period. He would be going from 1920x1080 to 3440x2160 which is a bigger stretch, so even worse.

[dizmo]

4 minutes ago, Umeshwarnath said:

Nope. Its the exact same thing. I tried 2560x1080 on a 3440x1440. Scaling up is a horrible experience period. He would be going from 1920x1080 to 3440x2160 which is a bigger stretch, so even worse.

No, it's really not. You don't seem to understand how resolutions work.

You have an ultrawide panel. So your resolution isn't the same.

He's comparing a 4k (3840x2160) to a 1080p (1920x1080) panel. Do you see how those numbers are perfectly divisible? That means he won't have the issues you're experiencing.

[Umeshwarnath]

On 11/20/2019 at 10:21 PM, dizmo said:

No, it's really not. You don't seem to understand how resolutions work.

You have an ultrawide panel. So your resolution isn't the same.

He's comparing a 4k (3840x2160) to a 1080p (1920x1080) panel. Do you see how those numbers are perfectly divisible? That means he won't have the issues you're experiencing.

"you have an ultrawide panel. So your resolution isn't the same". What are you talking about?

They are both 21:9 in my case and both 16:9 in his case! Educate me, please!

Nearest neighbor (replicating the pixel 4x, which seems to be your pitch) is not how upscaling is implemented in monitors. Doesn't matter if the numbers are "perfectly divisible" or not. The more common bicubic interpolation results in a softer image overall. Bigger the interpolated image, worse the results. (1.8x in my case vs 4x in his case).

You have to run the game at native resolution if you want a good experience.