Just some quick tips on how to game if you have a 4k screen

Most people here will know this information already, but on a few other message boards I'm on there were a bunch for whatever reason they didn't know how or didn't know they could change their resolution so they could have the beauty of the ips 4k screen and still game with decent FPS.

(I know people will say just get a 1080p or 1440p screen, but some people want a 4k screen for work or other things then gaming)
I had the 1440p TN 120hz screen and it was garbage. It just looked horrible to me, i switched to the IPS 4k g sync screen and its just as you would imagine , friggin beautiful. The problem is even with my 8950hk undervolted @ 4.4ghz, gtx 1080p (not the max q version) most triple A games will run on ultra at around 45fps. I can honestly say 95% of people can sit down and play just fine because of g sync at that and it wouldn't even bother them. Since someone messaged me and asked i figured id post in case anyone else wanted to try. If you have a 4k screen with a nvidia graphics card just do the following. What you want to do is run whatever game your playing at 1440p and you will literally double your fps and it will look amazing. The problem for the average user is 1440p isn't listed for some reason right out in the open.

1) Open control panel.
2) click on change resolution,
3) click on customize, check the box at the bottom that says "enable resolutions not exposed by the display"
4) Now click on create custom resolution.
5) where it says horizontal pixels type "2560" vertical lines type" 1440" everything else should be set fine for you 60 hz refresh rate, 32 bpp color depth, and progressive for scan type. Save your settings.

6)Now look back on the right hand side under the display tab, click on adjust desktop size and position.

7) under apply the following settings choose scaling mode "full-screen". You will see now your screen will take up the entire display. Run whatever game you were running prior and your fps will be double what it just was and you can game all you want, and now that your custom resolution is saved you can change back and forth without restarting. I honestly just keep it at 1440p. Truth is at 17inches its really hard to tell the difference between 1440p and 2160p. You can see the difference between 4k and 1080p though, but for whatever reason alienware didn't offer a 1440p ips screen at the time i was buying it.

 

Excellent information. If my new laptop ever gets here, I'll definitely give this a shot.

 

For the games that have a screen resolution modifier, I think it is better to use that instead. Keeping the screen resolution at 2160p and using a 70% modifier, which is equivalent to 1440p more or less. Image looks much better but not all games offer this setting.

 

I would agree however for some weird reason most games won’t allow you to choose 1440p unless you “unlock” that resolution doing the steps above first. You can then switch back to 4K and you will see you have now all your resolutions plus a custom one of 1440p. Most games seem to only offer you resolutions already available. I tried doing it that way first but I could never pick that as a resolution. So if you do the steps above, then I install your game or go to settings in your game the 1440p resolution “should” be there in most cases.

To be honest I remember a way to literally launch every game at a specific resolution, gpu speed, cpu speed , battery power etc. it starts to become way to complicated for what it’s worth.

I’d much rather teach someone how to undervolt their cpu to keep thermals down and clock speeds up, overclock the gpu, turn off all the garbage that you don’t need turned on , never mind ultra on a 15 or 17 Inch 4K screeen anyway.