Grid-like artifacting on non native resolution

[Baffman]

Since I have and old GPU (GTX 970) I find myself making compromises on resolution more and more in recent games. The render scale sliders are very useful for this, I can simply set the resolution to something like 85%, apply a sharpening filter and enjoy smooth 60fps. The problem is, in most of the games I noticed a weird grid artifacting, like the image is split in multiple small squares. Seems like something is wrong with how the GPU handles the scaling, somehow the pixels get distorted to form this "tiles". The squares are especially visibile on vegetation (so playing games like Monster Hunter World is basically a nightmare). Is there any way to fix this?

[tikker]

What resolution are you playing at? I must admit I don't really see it in the image you attached. I think the artifacting is unavoidable, because you are upscaling. How bad it will be will depend on how close or far from the target resolution are and how well the render resolution fits in your target resolution (e.g. integer factors are nice). I would try different percentages and see if you can minimise the artifacts that way.

[Baffman]

I play at 1080p. You mean you don't see the square pattern in the first image? For me it's extremely distracting. I don't mind the upscaling blur, that's fine, sharpening fixes most of it, but I can't stand the squares. If I change the render resolution it just changes the size of the squares, but they are still there.

[Baffman]

Here is another example from Monster Hunter World, cropped and sharpened to highlight the artifacts:

[DarthBaggins]

looks more like you're over-sharpening the image than a real artifact.

[Baffman]

1 hour ago, DarthBaggins said:

looks more like you're over-sharpening the image than a real artifact.

This happens even if I don't apply any sharpening, so no. The sharpening just makes the effect more visible.

[Baffman]

After further research, I found out this might be some kind of moiré effect caused by the pixel pattern when the lower res frames get resized to 1080p.
If this is the case, there are two solutions:

1) Apply a strong blur effect (FXAA helps)
2) Change the upscaling method (which can't be done since video drivers apply bilinear filtering by default and there's no way to change that)

So I'm stuck with either a blurry image or a sharp image with artifacts.

[DarthBaggins]

You should be able to set other parameters w/in the Nvidia Control Panel to lighten this, I would think within the "Manage 3D Settings" tab/menu.