Got a 1080P monitor? Get an upgrade to 2560x1440 free, if you have a GCN video card!

[VirtualLarry]

Ok, so this is kind of stretching the spirit of the Hot Deals forum. But this is a FYI, that I just discovered tonight.

AMD's VSR technology (and I assume NV has something similar) at the desktop, can pretty-much effectively make your 1920x1080 monitor into a 2560x1440 screen... for FREE!

Just install the newest AMD Radeon Crimson drivers for Windows (16.7.2 hotfix, July 9), and enable "Virtual Super Resolution" and "GPU scaling" in their software control-panel app (Crimson).

Then right-click on the desktop, select "Display Resolution", and in my case with my 1920x1080 HDTVs, I could pump it up to 2560x1440.

And it's eminently readable! (Though, the text is a bit smaller.) This may depend on your particular monitor.

This does require an AMD GCN-based video card, I'm using an R7 260X 2GB, and an HD7950 3GB. Both work with VSR in Win7 64-bit SP1.

 

[cbn]

Very interesting.

According to this info, certain cards are needed.

Maybe RX460 will become the lowest card able to use 4K VSR on a 1080p display?

But with that mentioned, I am very interested in using 1440p on a 1080p monitor or TV for desktop. Maybe that is best balance on how text looks?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Very interesting.

According to this info, certain cards are needed.

Maybe RX460 will become the lowest card able to use 4K VSR on a 1080p display?

But with that mentioned, I am very interested in using 1440p on a 1080p monitor or TV for desktop. Maybe that is best balance on how text looks?

Interesting if true about the RX 460. I would love to try out 4K on my 1080P monitor.

I have to admit, 2560x1440 looks way better than I imagined on my current HDTV monitor.

 

[nerp]

Hmm. Neat. This would be useful for someone who needs more room in a spreadsheet or something in a pinch.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I received several replies in the VC&G sub-forum, that people have tried VSR at the desktop, and found it to be "blurry". I noticed a tiny shade of blurriness in places, but overall, it's very readable, which surprised me.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the results are a bit of a YMMV depending on your monitor.

 

[JeffMD]

yeaaa.... nvidia had this with 9x0, no where did anyone think it was going to make your 1080p system into a 4k system, and you shouldn't here either. Infact its been kind of bunk on nvidia as you were often left with a blurrier picture, and HUDs often didn't scale properly, if at all.

 

[DesiPower]

Yeah, these monitor's resolution is based on physical pixels. Anything other than native resolution will be blurry. Maybe it's ok for spreadsheet and stuff but I can't imagine it being better than native for movies or games... good to know though, good find and thanks for the info.

 

[imported_BS]

Yea, this is just a gimmick, tried this with my new 1070 and it looks like crap pushing my 1080P monitor to 4k scale. blurry and Bleh!

 

[IEC]

I guess this is a YMMV. I've found VSR on games at 3200x1800 vs 2560x1440 to be like running a higher anti-aliasing setting without most of the AA downsides.

Probably depends on seating distance, pixel pitch of monitor, etc.

 

[holden j caufield]

I've tried this and it wasn't very good on the nvidia scaling

Now here is something that does work. Google regedit logpixels it lets you change the dpi further so you can fit more info on a screen and it wasn't blurry.

 

[DesiPower]

So I hear 1 success from AMD and 2 fails from nvidia, maybe AMD finally got something right

 

[Ranulf]

Supported cards list:

Available on the following products: AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X GPU, AMD Radeon™ R9 300 Series, AMD Radeon™ R7 300 Series, AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and above GPUs, AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon™ HD 7800 Series, AMD Radeon™ HD 7790​, and AMD A-Series APUs (A6 7400K and higher)

 

[fastamdman]

Interesting, I just tried it out in Doom. On the Nvidia side it's called Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) which allows a 1080p panel to be upscaled to 4k from the sounds of it. I always wondered why geforce gaming experience was telling me to run certain games at 3840x2160 on my 1080p monitor.

It dropped my frame rate a bit, but the images looked pretty sharp. It works well in game, but not well for desktop use currently from what I just played around with. Neat feature that I need to mess around with more, thats for sure.

 

[Replay]

It is a neat trick. Been using this for a while with older games (R9 380 on a 24" 1080P).
In-game objects look great up close, very smooth and detailed. Text can become too small, mostly an issue with things like Steam overlays, or menus. When the frame rate suffers, or the text is too small, something between 1440 & 1080 may still work well.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

sub'd, does anyone know if this resolution upscaling will work with my Sapphire AMD 7950?

 

[IEC]

Yes, it will.

 

[dualsmp]

Just tried it on a 7950 and it works, however text takes a HUGE nosedive but is still readable. Photos still look quite good though. This was on a 27" 1080p monitor.

Pretty neat, but not really useable day to day. It's nice to have the option at least, guess it could come in handy for some games.

Edit: Just tried Half-Life 2 Update @ 2560x1440 and it looks an plays nice at 60 fps. This is definitely a nice feature for games.

BTW this is a free mod if you have HL2 already.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/290930/

 

[fastamdman]

Half life 2...there's a game I haven't played in a REALLY long time. Might have to give it a play through after I finish doom.