So, I just now realized that my monitor is a 1440p panel in disguise and is actually 2160p. I'm shaking. I'm sooooo happy. I had long suspected foul play and that my monitor was actually a 4K panel sold under a 2K panel nameplate but the reason I thought it mightn't be is because I tried it in 4K first about 8 months ago, it looked like text was blurry. Apparently that was Windows 10's fault not mine or the monitor's and now that I've tried it again after several Windows updates it looks 100 times clearer and better than it was at 2K. The reason I looked into this again is because I recently read this article on digital trends that talked about your 2K monitor actually being a 4K panel in disguise and funnily enough text looked worse when it was in 2K than now it is in 4K. Everything looks a billion times clearer now it is running under 4K. Another clue was when I was playing new games and went to set the graphics settings, there would always mysteriously be a 4K resolution setting available. I'm elated and this monitor was definitely money well spent. Surprisingly images look 10 times better too and I am a very happy camper right now.
I...don't know how true this is, but I am not exactly a master in monitors. My 1440p monitor also has 4K option, but that doesn't have to mean it is a 4K panel in disguise...does it?
ok this is annoying. Out of curiosity I changed the windows resolution to 4K, it auto enabled 150 zoom. I switched it to 100% and it was very hard to read. I changed back to 1440p resolution and now everything is less sharp. I double checked and the zoom was at 100%. I restarted the PC and the fonts are still blurry AF. EDIT: fixed. I went to Nvidia control panel and changed the refresh rate up to 144hz. This fixed it, even after changing back down to 60. I don't know why refresh rate would have any affect on this, but whatever.
I guess you'll have to go through Clear Type setup again. Hopefully it's that and not some weird in monitor setting. Or maybe that would be easier to do than a bunch of those "pick the text that looks best" screens.
ok this is interesting. Nvidia control panel does't list 4K resolution under PC, but only under general Ultra HD, HD, SD list. I changed the resolution to 4K (through nvidia control panel) and switched the refresh rate from 60 to 30 and back to 60. The image is MUCH clearer than when I changed resolution through Windows display resolution options. And yes I comparing without any zoom. Not going to keep it at 4K as I have no reason to, but still interesting.
Well, as the above article says, it is cheaper to manufacture 4K panels than it is 2K so basically in times of low supply or high demand manufacturers have been known to use 4K panels in monitors that are supposed to be 2K panels. And also, get this, also according to that article, running a 4K panel in 2K is results in a picture with less quality than one which is native 2K. So if you get a panel that is actually supposed to be 4K (mine is running at 165Hz btw) then you're better off sticking with 4K. Btw, if it wasn't a 4K panel, it most likely wouldn't even display anything 4K once you switched from 2K to 4K, it would have gone black, or worse yet, might have died. I know it's dicey but there you have it, I'm looking at 4K videos on youtube.com. Here have a look at this one, you should be able to tell just by looking that it is running at actual 4K. And I am running mine with the 150% recommended zoom as since this is a 27" screen and it is not that big, the zoom helps. Although it'll take a bit of getting used to how the mouse cursor looks now, a bit larger than usual. This video I found quite appealing too: Edit: I can actually see the dust on things! This is crazy, I can see what the hype of 4K was about all these years, it's a -game changer-. I can only imagine how it would look paired with true HDR (HDR 10). The color already looks so rich.
Just did some gaming in GRID (2019) and my video card held, also the game looked sooooo purty! Now just watching 4K car videos and other 4K videos on YouTube, the level of detail is mahoooosive. Another side note, you might have to restart Steam and other programs otherwise you may have overlapping menus and stuff after you change resolution. I restarted Steam and now everything is fine.
Clear Type Fonts thing, yes I ran it too and they are OK but not like crystal clear. Always had problems with the fonts.
Netflix shows at 4K look a lot better too, but certain 4K videos on YouTube look just too good. I'm really happy I found this out, and wish I had found it out sooner.
I just want to put a couple things out there 1) Just because the panel is 4K supported doesn't mean the rest of the parts are, so anyone attempting this, be careful, or rather be warned that trying to get this to work might be an exercise in futility. 2) And this is a big one... if you are using an Nvidia 900+ graphics card be aware of something called Dynamic Super Resolution (aka DSR). You might not actually be running your monitor "natively" at 4K, but instead the card is upscaling to 4K, and shrinking the screen to 1440p. So, it may seem like it's working, but you are actually being tricked by your graphics card.
don't worry calliers... it's not 4k For a number of years super resolution options have existed... on top of that, latest windows 10 updates have further improved down sampling of higher resolution content. I've already dealt with this situation with some people thinking their 4k display supports 8k... when it reality graphics cards simply are better able to support these functions or for displays to accept higher resolutions than previously supported. I in fact have one display here that from the beginning you could shove a 4k output down it's throat and it's scaler simply supported it. If you don't runn at 1:1 pixel ratio for scaling, you're not likely to see much of a problem, aside from just eating up bandwidth and reducing your refresh rate IF it's actually outputing a genuine 4k image. Suffice it to say, there is no evidence that the monitor you have was ever capable of display a 4k image.. and certainly not at 165 or 144 or 120 or 100hz. The benefit of running 4k or higher resolutions on a low res display is that it's often better than running AA at default resolution for numerous games, as simply down sampling a higher resolution will retain detail better, have potentially less of a performance hit, and remove some of the stair effects.
So basically even it isn't native 4K it is still good to keep running like this? I can see a terrific difference in picture quality, like mad difference.
I'm switching it back to 2K, the refresh rate is dismal. In Tekken 7 there was screen tearing like you wouldn't believe. In GRID there wasn't but that is different. I expect that in any fast paced game there would be terrible screen tearing.
racing games are usually very favorable for lower refresh rates... which is kind of initially odd to think about since the landscape around you is often moving fast.. but since most of your focus is on the distant terrain/track and the vehicle that doesn't move all that much on the screen, your focus away from the outside edges is far less and you don't necessarily pick up on it. Though personally i certainly can tell 60hz vs 120hz on my 65" 4k in the few racing games i've played recently (all of which are 2 decades old). side scrollers and first person shooters.. where the whole screen is likely to rapidly shift and significantly will definitely show the problems associated with lower refresh rates. though for you, being that it's g-sync.. it SHOULDN'T be tearing... just clearly lower refresh rate unless the g-sycn function becomes disabled due to the input signal falling back to capability mode for the input resolution being 4k.
Should also affect performance as the GPU is doing work to render at 4K and then scaling it back to fit the original monitor size. BTW, Cal, when running with DSR on you may want to adjust the DSR Smoothness option in the Nvidia Control Panel. Lower value = sharper image, higher = smoother but blurrier image. Should help you tweak per game issues you might be having.
So I decided to have another go at fiddling with making 4K playable on my monitor, and get this, I had forgotten that the refresh rate gets reset to 60 Hz after switching to 4K from 2K, so then I found out that it actually supports 165 Hz at 4K. Now games don't have any image tearing at all, even fast paced ones like beat em ups! Oh joy! Although it is indeed not true 4K but Dynamic Super Resolution, everything still looks 50 times better at this new resolution.
