How does 1080p look on a 4k display?

[serpretetsky]

I just ran a test, it does not.

I put single pixels black dots in paint and a 45 degree line (this 45 degree line had pixels were each pixel in the line was on its own X and Y axis). Everything looked fine on my u2711, on my LG TV, and even on my seiki set at 4k. But the moment the seiki went to 1080p its obvious its not 4:1 mapping. Each individual pixel is blurry while my 45 degree line had 'pixels' in the same x and y axis as other pixels (hence not being a real perfect pixel 45 degree line on the seiki 1080p).

That being said, its possible my 7950 is doing something funky. But if I put the mouse in any of the four corners of the 1080p res seiki the mouse seems to reach the edge normally. My seiki is also set to 0 sharp.

And on a side note: MS you fail so badly with your multiple display management on vista+ OS. Made this ultra simple easy test into a very frustrating experience.

edit: hmmm.... but my u2711 is also not scaling. Maybe this has something to do with my AMD video card drivers... but once again, win7 is making this testing extremely stressful. I am done for the night.

thx for testing it out. Keep us posted if you find out something new

 

[velis]

Thanks KingFatty for that excellent post.
I'd just like to add to this discussion the following:
1. At least the Dell UP2414Q currently has no built-in scaler which means your GPU will do the scaling
2. I cannot believe that at this date none of the gpu / monitor manufacturers offer us any option on scaler used. They choose a scaler themselves even though a GPU has pretty much all the known common scalers implemented just to support texturing in 3D. It's ridiculous that I cannot set my resolution to whatever I want (lower or higher) and then choose how to scale that to actual pixels of the display.

Though I do understand the manufacturers that they seldom settle for block scaling algorithm: it looks VERY bad on anything than perfect 1:n scaling. However, the cheap algorithms actually used also produce mediocre results at best. I must say vectorisation-supported algorithms like KingFatty has shown certainly look good, but they are computationally very expensive not to mention they are absolutely useless on photographs. Superscalers from the look of it also require multiple nearly-equal inputs to produce one great output.

Anyway, I'd very much like NV / AMD / monitor mfg give me the option of choosing the algorithm used myself.

 

[BrightCandle]

That is a real shame. Thanks for doing the test. I think this is a critical test for any 4k monitor, it tells us how it will perform when running a more playable 1080p game. The whole power of 4k is the ability to drop to 1080p for 4:1 mapping so it looks reasonable.

 

[hawtdawg]

I just ran a test, it does not.

I put single pixels black dots in paint and a 45 degree line (this 45 degree line had pixels were each pixel in the line was on its own X and Y axis). Everything looked fine on my u2711, on my LG TV, and even on my seiki set at 4k. But the moment the seiki went to 1080p its obvious its not 4:1 mapping. Each individual pixel is blurry while my 45 degree line had 'pixels' in the same x and y axis as other pixels (hence not being a real perfect pixel 45 degree line on the seiki 1080p).

That being said, its possible my 7950 is doing something funky. But if I put the mouse in any of the four corners of the 1080p res seiki the mouse seems to reach the edge normally. My seiki is also set to 0 sharp.

And on a side note: MS you fail so badly with your multiple display management on vista+ OS. Made this ultra simple easy test into a very frustrating experience.

edit: hmmm.... but my u2711 is also not scaling. Maybe this has something to do with my AMD video card drivers... but once again, win7 is making this testing extremely stressful. I am done for the night.

make sure you have GPU scaling turned off in the control panel.

 

[ComputerGuy2006]

I just ran a test, it does not.

I put single pixels black dots in paint and a 45 degree line (this 45 degree line had pixels were each pixel in the line was on its own X and Y axis). Everything looked fine on my u2711, on my LG TV, and even on my seiki set at 4k. But the moment the seiki went to 1080p its obvious its not 4:1 mapping. Each individual pixel is blurry while my 45 degree line had 'pixels' in the same x and y axis as other pixels (hence not being a real perfect pixel 45 degree line on the seiki 1080p).

That being said, its possible my 7950 is doing something funky. But if I put the mouse in any of the four corners of the 1080p res seiki the mouse seems to reach the edge normally. My seiki is also set to 0 sharp.

And on a side note: MS you fail so badly with your multiple display management on vista+ OS. Made this ultra simple easy test into a very frustrating experience.

edit: hmmm.... but my u2711 is also not scaling. Maybe this has something to do with my AMD video card drivers... but once again, win7 is making this testing extremely stressful. I am done for the night.

ok, old thread... but ill update it with my seiki test. I just re-installed my OS (new SSD drive) and things are now working a lot better (now have access to missing CCC sections). Think I may of had some sort of driver issue due to switiching back an forth from AMD to Nvidia a few times on my old install...

To get this to work I did three simple steps:
- Set TV to 0 sharpness.
- Set TV to 'just scan'
- Set overscan set to 0% in CCC.



Now all pixels are all the same size and color. THat being said, it looks ugl, but its probably win7 doing something stupid (as win7 loves to do) to the pixels, as all my paint 1:1 pixel test work.