QHD Screen

i am considering an Alienware 17 r4 and am pretty settled on a gtx 1080 but don't know which screen to look at. I currently have a 17 r3 with a gtx 980m with a 4k panel and it's really nice but am thinking a smaller panel would gain me better fps and allow me to run at higher settings. I currently run Wow at setting 5 on 4k which is fine for the most part

There are a number of posts talking about the QHD screen having problems with white lines? Is this still the case? The last info I could find was at the earlier start of the year so wondered if they had addressed this

One problem seems to be that to customise a qhd panel with comparable specs to the uhd panel costs £150 more, is there no way of speccing the uhd down to a qhd without this price impact?

How much better is the 1080 at driving the 4k screen than the 980m?

Thanks for any input

 

Hi there. I should be able to help because I have an R4 with a GTX1080 and I game at both QHD and 4K.

First thing I would mention is that if you upgrade then I would make sure you get the 7820HK CPU and not the 7700HQ CPU for QHD and 4K gaming.

The QHD issues from the start of 2017 have been completely resolved, it's why you no longer hear of any complaints with this screen. Despite it being a TN panel its one if not the best in the business and colours replicate very well once calibrated. The 120Hz G-Sync is simply beautiful!

The QHD panel is more popular I think which is why it cots more than the 4K, theres not much you can do about that but it's MASSIVELY worth it if you're a gamer.

There's a big difference between the 980m and the 1080 for 4K gaming for sure. I can run the very latest, demanding games at medium to high settings at 4K and maintain 60FPS easy. I also have an OC which can give you an extra 10-20% FPS as well because the R4 cooling and the GTX1080 used really are awesome for this.

You won't get anywhere near that with the 980m, search google and this will prove this

 

This was solved back in March and shouldn't be an issue anymore. The biggest problem people claim to have is the color seems washed out in comparison to the UHD screen but I don't find it that bad at all TBH. It is even better if you have a calibration tool to adjust it with but it isn't bad out of the box IMO. If your just playing games on it you probably won't have a problem with the QHD screen. If your watching a lot of movies with deep blacks there is a slight pixel issue due to the color reproduction but it isn't all that noticeable except in certain applications I find. Ultimately the 120hz is what sells it for me and I can't go to a non 120hz screen even for better colors.

It will do a much better job at driving 4k since your getting a full desktop 1080 and not a watered down version like the previous "M" variants were but ultimately QHD is still the sweet spot for a single 1080 IMO. Your still going to end up adjusting some settings for constant 60 FPS in 4K and longevity wise it won't hold out , although you could add a graphics amp for that I guess. Also the Windows scaling is terrible on most things I find, even with the QHD screen and so I disable it and can still read everything just fine. I imagine trying to read 4k on a smaller panel without and scaling would be irritating to say the least.

 

Thanks for the reply. I have the 4k screen scaled on Windows 10 so I guess changing to qhd won't actually look any different to me on the screen. Having no scaling makes the screen unreadable so there's that

It certainly sounds like the qhd may well be the one to go for. It sounds like high/ultra game play on 4k is still a long way off