1080p gaming on 4K panel

can anybody share their experience using alienware (15 spesifically) with 4K screen playing games on 1080p ?
will the blur and pixels be so eyecatching ?

 

I've had a couple of games running at 1080p on the 17R3's 4K screen. It's honestly no different to gaming on a 1080p panel. I know it's not the AW15, but the bigger screen means bigger pixels, which should make any problems more obvious.

Why would you expect things to look bad? The 4K panel has exactly twice add many pixels in each direction, so when the game draws a single (1x1) pixel, it's displayed on a 2x2 pixel block instead. It's an exact multiple, so no interpolation is needed.

 

Sometimes the scaling goes wonky I remember the old days on COD modern warefare the fonts for chat would become 'odd' if you didn't use your native resolution.

However i'm on the 15R2 4K and i've used many of the resolutions and I can see they all work properly and look correct. The only issue you may have is windows 10 scaling which is friggin awful making fonts soft. if so use this app to use windows 8.1 scaling. http://windows10_dpi_blurry_fix.xpexplorer.com/

 

Yeah i have read about the exact multiplier thing in another source, but somehow there's always people tellin that its not that simple, and anything not in native display will look more pixelated.

However, my logic agrees with you, and I hope I make the right decision because i want to do stuff aside from gaming in 4K.

Thanks for the positive share bro.

 

Am i supposed to launch it upon startup or should i put it in a windows folder ?

 

I play most games in 1080 and see zero blurring or ghosting. Doom looks amazing on Ultra@1080. The only issued I noticed was on the game Polarity there was a lot of screen tearing at 1080 but at 4k it was perfect. Not a big deal because the game isn't demanding and it doesn't have v sync either.

 

Ok so I listened to everyone here who said no difference with 1080p gaming on a 4k screen and native 1080p gaming.

i can tell you from experience that is categorically false. If you don't like the upscale effect it is VERY PREVALENT on the 4k screen. I ended up returning the 4k model and getting a 1080p model because I didnt find it worthwhile dealing with that and frankly the lightbleed on the 4k screen was atrocious.

Take it for what it is, i have sensitive eyes and 20/20 vision, but 1080p looked like crap to me on the 4k screen.

 

NickBarbs I cannot agree with you there is no issue, and bearing in mind i've spent the last week getting my screen sorted, I can tell you if there was a issue i'd definately know about it.

 

Install the app, choose scaling 8.1 set your scaling %. Restart and settings applied automatically on startup.

 

I installed the 4k screen on my laptop some time back. When i first started using it, I was playing everything in 4k. Then when I went back to playing 1080, I thought "oh dear, this looks like crap"...... SO I went ahead and put the 1080 screen back.
Guess what. It looked even better than the native 1080 so I went ahead and popped my 4k back in.
I think 4k users get used the sharpness of the screen and therefore believe it looks awful when at 1080.

 

I also remember when I first got the 4k screen, I made a point of setting far cry 4 at 1080p just to see if there was any difference before playing any game in 4k and i remember thinking, "oh wow there is no difference"

 

what setting are you on when gaming in 4K ?

some people also says that medium in 4K looks equivalent or even better than high in 1080p, is that true ?

 

we all have different standards, but clearly there must be upscaling going on with this 4k panel running 1080p, so there will be a difference. Please dont delude yourselves into thinking otherwise.
I have had both - I'm just sharing my views - I categorically did not find games impressive on the 4k panel running at 1080p, they were blurry and blocky with the upscaling - the typical upscaling effect. This is fact.

I'm really happy with a 1080p panel (granted I needed to upgrade it myself) with 300 nits and 0 light bleed. The 980M also doesn't suffer running games at native and 1080p is a fine resolution for a 15 inch machine.

In a few years when mobile GPUs can run 4k with no problem i'll be back to 4k.

I'm just inputting in this thread - I saw a clear and obvious difference in gaming and for the scaling is noticeable plain as day. Please remember 4k buyers will also show some bias. Bottom line is - if it works for you then keep it - it didnt work for me and i went through the trouble of changing machines.

 

Having settings on medium really doesnt make much difference. I have everything on high. Its the resoultion that makes the difference to fps.

 

Just because there's upscaling, it doesn't mean the picture has to become blurry.

In general, upscaling starts by dividing the size of the screen by the size of the image. This tells you how many times bigger the image needs to be too fill the screen. For example, if you were displaying a 720p image on a 1080p screen, each pixel would need to be (1080 / 720 =) 1.5x taller and (1920 / 1280 =) 1.5x wider. If these numbers were different and you wanted to keep the aspect ratio, you'd go for the smaller value.

The image pixels are then enlarged according to this multiplier and mapped onto screen pixels. Depending on the multiplier, there will probably be places where an enlarged image pixel only covers part of a screen pixel. That screen pixel will therefore contain more than one partial image pixel. The screen has to decide what to do with that "hybrid" pixel. It could choose the dominant color (causing distortion) or a weighted average of the partial pixels (effectively a form of antialiasing, causing fuzziness).

For certain combinations of screen size and image size, the multiplier becomes a whole number. The whole number multiplier means that each image pixel maps to complete screen pixels. There are no "hybrid" pixels to deal with, so no fuzziness or distortion. With a 4K (3840 x 2160) screen, you get these exact multiples when displaying a 1080p (1920 x 1080, 2x multiplier) or 720p (1280 x 720, 3x multiplier) image.

If you're absolutely sure that you can see blurring, I can only think that either:

1. You've got an older panel, and the newer ones do a better job.
2. Your panel has issues and needs to be replaced.
3. Something about your display settings is causing the issue.
4. You're setting fuzziness because you expect it to be there, even though it may not exist.

(I'm not suggesting that the last one is true, just that it's a slim possibility.)

 

Ok I got annoyed enough to take some screenshots while playing Doom to show that there is no blurring. This pic is on my 15R2 with a 4k monitor at 1080. No blurring at all.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197973227006/screenshot/266095116623111404

 

That is because that image is 1920x1080 in size. If the image was 3840x2160 with 1080 scaled you would see the difference with your eyes. but this cannot be done in game because a screenshot will only capture the games resolution. you would need an external camera to capture the soft, scaled image.

Try this if you have a 4k screen. Download the above photo and use an image viewer to view it at 1920 x1080, then zoom it to the full screen and you will see it go softer. This is the blurring we are talking about.

Or you could set windows to a resolution of 1920x1080 scaled to full screen on the 4k . This will give the same effect.

 

Sorry I can't agree, being x4 1080 4k is the same scale.

1080 on a 4k panel is not blurry, definitely not!

I too play doom and its sharp as ****. I have tried 1080 2k and 4k all as sharp.

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It looks even better than that in real life because it's not compressed into a jpeg. I hear what you are saying but I'm telling you that there is no degradation with my monitor in 1080.

 

Mines the same

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This would be the answer I would give. I have a 1440p monitor on my desktop and when I play at 1080 it's a dull image. You can easily tell the difference.

 

Thank you sir. This is the answer I want to believe in. Looking forward meeting with my AW 15.

However, will there be fps decrease when you run 1080p on 4K compared to 1080p on 1080p ? because you are powering four times the amount of pixels compared to the regular 1920x1080 ?

 

dude, you should read the explanation about the integer scale, which doesn't apply with 1440p monitor, since 1440/1080 = 1.333 which means each image pixel is represented by 1 and a third screen pixels, and leaves one pixel with 2/3 empty part that has to be filled with whatever kind of interpolation the screen was programmed with, and that interpolation result is the thing that makes your display a mess.

 

Have you guys tested running windows 10 at 1920x1080 full screen on your 4k ?

You would need to the scaling back to 100% at 1080 aswell to get a better idea.

 

Crispy, what is your point?

 

There shouldn't be an issue. The screen itself should be doing the upscaling, separate to the generation of the frames themselves.

When upscaling an image, many image viewers and editors will interpolate the pixel boundaries by default. This is done to reduce the visibility of the individual pixels, but causes fuzziness as a result.

The screen won't do this because it's slower than a pixel resize and weighted average.

 

I am certainly standing by my point, having 4 pixels upscaled from 1 pixel on an HD screen was noticeable to me full stop.

If its not to you great.

Posting screen grabs at 1080 doesn't prove anything.

 

When you display a 720p image on a 1080p display the interpolation causes it to look worse than viewing the 720p image on a native 720p display. The ratios are not exact. However, when displaying a 1080p image on a 2160p display or a 720p image on a 1440p display, the image will look basically the same, although some will notice the difference, it's very very slight.

When you are viewing a 1080p image on a 4K display, the ratio is simply twice the size. So the math:


1920 x 2 = 3840
1080 x 2 = 2160

Starting resolution is 1920x1080
Final resolution is 3840x2160


And comparatively 720p x 2 is 1440p. Get it? Ok good!



So displaying a 1080p image on a 2160p display (4K) will simply look better than displaying a 720p image on a 1080p display.

The thing is the screen size isn't any bigger, it's still 15" (in my example) so the image is not really being *blown up*, you're still the same distance from the display when using it and the extra pixels fill in the gaps.

 

Honestly, the 980m 8gb cant keep up on 4k on most of the higher settings in the latest games. It looks better in 1080p. I personally run my desktop in 4k hd and a few games, such as Battlefield 2, and Overwatch. (Overwatch is on low settings, but i dont want higher settings)
and I play cs:go on everything "very low" on 720p. Looks great :b Nothing to complain about. Only reason I have a 4k hd is because i got it for free because my old alienware had too much issues so dell upgraded my laptop.
I do notice the resolution does matter. For example, take battlefield 2. Seeing helicopters in the distance is less "edged". You need to focus on a tiny object on the screen for the resolution to "kick in".. if it makes any sense :b

 

Well I can play mass effect 1,2,3 at 4k on Max settings.

I can play overwatch at 2k on epic

I can play battlefield 4 at 2k on ultra resolution scale 125%

Yes the 980m isn't the answer for 4k gaming at least not on recent titles but 2k or 4k I can't tell unless I'm pixel peeping. But whether or not you can play at 4k, watch high res YouTube and having that much space for photo editing is fantastic. I never thought I'd be going past 1080p so to play at 2k and occasionally at 4k is simply a bonus


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