1080p Gaming on 4K panel

[bernandops]

Greetings,

I just bought an Alienware 15 with 4K panel (with Graphic Amplifier in the future). But I have yet to see it because I wont be home for the next 3 weeks.

From the info I gathered on google, playing 1080p on 4K screen will make your graphics suffer ( so blurry and low sharpness ).

However, some people also said that its definitely downgraded, but you wont notice it in-game, and the scaling also depends on your panel quality.

My question is, which claim is true ? will the blurry graphics annoy us enough ?

I would really appreciate your answers guys, especially experience-based answers.

 

[Colif]

I don't have your exact panel but I have had issues playing games at 1080p as from memory i got screen tearing, I generally tried to play at 2k instead at the very least as it just looked better. It probably doesn't help I have a Nvidia card matched to a Free sync monitor.

I haven't had time in last few months to try to play anything so my memory isn't exactly clear.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Playing at 1080p will obviously produce a less sharp image than playing at 4k, but other than that I don't think you'll have an issue. I can't imagine having any scaling issues, as upsampling from 1080p to 4k is very straight forward as a result of 4k being an integer multiple of 1080 (twice the vertical and horizontal resolution).

 

[bernandops]

Playing at 1080p will obviously produce a less sharp image than playing at 4k, but other than that I don't think you'll have an issue. I can't imagine having any scaling issues, as upsampling from 1080p to 4k is very straight forward as a result of 4k being an integer multiple of 1080 (twice the vertical and horizontal resolution).

that's exactly what I'm thinking. the way I see it every pixel of the original 1080p signal is represented by 4 pixels (in 2x2 dimension) in 4K display. but the condition is the shape of the pixel should be the same, and that's something that I cant figure out since everyone is saying that 4K, 2K, and 1080p display each uses different pixel shape, which may distort the graphics.

so basically, am I doomed to 4K graphics wasteland ?

 

[jaguarskx]

The decrease in sharpness should not be too bad. A 4k monitor resoultion is exactly twice the resolution of 1080p so at least when the screen is does video interpolation to fit 1080p resolution on to a 4k resolution screen, the multiplier is a whole number.

To get an idea what graphics may look at just load up a game using whatever PC you are currently using where you are right now. Play it full resolution (presumably 1080p), then lower the resolution to something 1366x768. If it is possible to use a custom resolution, then 960x540 would be best since that is half of 1080p.

Note that each individual pixel on a 4k screen is very small which reduces the impact on graphics quality as as blurriness is considered. Also, keep in mind that pixels are larger on a monitor compared to pixels in a laptop screen.

 

[Runding99]

I have a 17 R3 with a 4k screen with a GTX 970M which is not strong enough to power the native resolutions while gaming. I can tell you that I'm pretty picky when it comes to visual issues and I have no complaints while gaming at 1080p.

The IGZO IPS panel will not disappoint regardless of 4k or 1080p. The only thing that sucks is that the 4k screen is so beautiful in desktop mode that you will wish the mobile GPU was powerful enough to drive the 4k resolutions while gaming.