Volitions Advocate on 27/7/2016 at 14:34
^^^ This
I'm also in the same boat with my computer hardware Malf. Not that my system is shabby just quite yet, but it's an i7 2600k which means I'll never have the fastest ram without an upgrade, which means upgrading everything but the case, hard drives, and power supply. Part of why I'm a bit leery about buying a new video card. I don't think my system could allow it to stretch it legs the way it's supposed to, and I don't have the money to buy a new computer. I had to sell some stuff to scrounge what I could for this purchase. But it'll be with me for a long time now.
TannisRoot on 27/7/2016 at 17:12
And here I am playing on an old laptop at 800x600...:wot:
Volitions Advocate on 27/7/2016 at 19:04
Desktop is the real reason I got it. Audio work, web development, video editing etc. Writing papers while keeping your citation material open... It's amazing for these things. If I can push it to 120 hz at 1080p, i'll be pretty happy for the gaming side of things.
Renzatic on 27/7/2016 at 19:15
I know this varies from monitor to monitor, but from your experiences, how well does 4k downscale to 1080?
One thing I've noticed about my SP4 is that the screen is so good, running a game at 1280x800 looks almost as good as running it at native resolution. You don't get any of the usual downscaled muddiness and lumpiness. Though I also think that the small size of the screen might be doing a good job of disguising any flaws that might show up plain as day on a 27" monitor.
Volitions Advocate on 27/7/2016 at 19:24
My particular monitor has 3 display modes which are vaguely named:
WIDE: Stretch the image across the panel
Normal: constrain image to 4:3
Point to Point: 1:1 pixel display of the resolution you are using.
Point to point gives the best picture, even though between that and "wide" at native resolution shouldn't technically be different, it is a bit.
But I can't use point to point if I'm running at 1080 because it would be a big fat black letterbox around all 4 sides, so I have to use Wide, which makes it a tiny bit fuzzy. But it still looks great. It's an issue with the panels controller more than 4K in general. Still needs some tweaks.
My laptop has a 3K screen (3200 x 1800) and playing games down to 1600 x 900 it looks really good. It's also a 13" screen so it's hard to see small defects if they exist, but so far it looks great. Text looks a little fuzzy, but that might just be because I've gotten used to ultra high resolution with scaling (I set the laptop to 175% and it's the cleanest most crisp user experience I've ever had)
Renzatic on 27/7/2016 at 19:54
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
...but that might just be because I've gotten used to ultra high resolution with scaling (I set the laptop to 175% and it's the cleanest most crisp user experience I've ever had)
Yeah, I don't think people really appreciate what a High DPI screen does for the desktop until they experience it for themselves. I can read much smaller text so much more easily on my little 12" 2736x1824 screen than I can my big 27" 1920x1080 monitor. That might seem counterintuitive, but it's true. The first thing I notice when I jump from my Surface to my big computer is how suddenly everything looks so much more fuzzy in comparison.
To illustrate my point, the top one is my SP4 at 200% scaling, the bottom my standard HD monitor at 100%.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/HiDPI.pngInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/LoDPI.png I upscaled the 2nd one so they'd be about the same size in the comparison, but you can see how one would be so much more distinct than the other, simply because the edges are so much sharper. It seems like such a little thing at a casual glance, not even worth fretting over. But once you get some hands on time with a higher def screen, it's hard to go back to standard HD def. Those PPIs do make a big difference.
Volitions Advocate on 27/7/2016 at 21:27
Well it's something you can't easily capture in a video or screenshot. A person has to see it to believe. Kind of like a high refresh rate monitor.
Malf on 27/7/2016 at 21:29
The other thing to remember about high resolution monitors is that even disregarding the reduction of aliasing and the subsequent smoothness of images on such a screen, colour depth will always be better.
Consider it this way: each individual pixel on your screen can display a different colour. The more pixels you have, the more colours you can display. Of course after a certain point, Joe Public won't really be able to appreciate the colour difference between say 4K and 8K, especially when the majority of video content is compressed to start with (and colour depth is always one of the first victims of compression). But objectively, colour depth will always be better the more pixels you can chuck at it.
heywood on 28/7/2016 at 00:21
I guess you mean higher DPI = better dithering. While true, I think that having a monitor that is color accurate and calibrated to the proper standard with good uniformity and black levels is more important for photos and video than high DPI. For text, I agree with Renz that nothing beats DPI.
