If I downscale from 1440p to 1080p does the image quality get worse

[RossJK]

Hi I was wanting to upgrade to a 1440p and want to play some games at 1440p and others at 1080p depending on the frame rate i get but i have heard that downscale to 1080p from 1440p is alot worse image quality is this true? 

[Glenwing]

1 minute ago, RossJK said:

Hi I was wanting to upgrade to a 1440p and want to play some games at 1440p and others at 1080p depending on the frame rate i get but i have heard that downscale to 1080p from 1440p is alot worse image quality is this true? 

It is worse than if it were on a native 1080p monitor, but it's not really horrible as many people seem to think.

[AlTech]

11 minutes ago, RossJK said:

Hi I was wanting to upgrade to a 1440p and want to play some games at 1440p and others at 1080p depending on the frame rate i get but i have heard that downscale to 1080p from 1440p is alot worse image quality is this true? 

Not that much. 1080p is fine.

[Virtual01]

It depends how busy the game is. The more stuff to display and animate the more you will notice.

[TechnoTony]

25 minutes ago, RossJK said:

Hi I was wanting to upgrade to a 1440p and want to play some games at 1440p and others at 1080p depending on the frame rate i get but i have heard that downscale to 1080p from 1440p is alot worse image quality is this true? 

Yes the image quality will drop, due to the fact that it's not a native resolution for your monitor. It's definetly playable, won't be a huge deal, but maybe consider keeping 1440p and running your game at slightly lower details.

[Glenwing]

53 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

If you play at 1080p while the monitor is 1440p, the image is stretched and you will see interpolation.

If you play at 1440p on a 1080p monitor, you can use DSR/VSR to output in proper 1080p format and not get interpolation.

There won't be any stretching from playing 1080p on a 1440p monitor. DSR also isn't some special way of playing at different resolutions without quality loss, you can't play at lower resolutions using DSR, and it would be impossible to display a 1080p image on a 1440p monitor fullscreen without interpolation.

[Jaen]

As someone who was recently in the same scenario, I think there is some exaggeration when people talk about downscaling to 1080p on a 1440p monitor. Yes, it's not as good as a native 1080p monitor. However, it still looks relatively nice imho. 

[RossJK]

Thank you guys for replying quickly, appreciate it!