Going from 2560x1440 to 4K are games noticeably improved?

Jumpem

[H]ard|Gawd
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I wasn't sure where to post this.

I am curious about first hand experiences playing games at 4k. For those of you that have made the leap was the improvement readily apparent?
 
Yes. Went from 1440p to 4k in 2014. The ppi makes it much sharper and the raw pixel count helps on distance details as well.
 
Depends. I am happily playing games on my PS5 where the choice is between 4K 30 fps and 1440p 60 fps. I choose 1440p and it looks perfectly fine upscaled to my LG C9.

On PC you can see the difference in games with a lot of small details, like say RDR2. But when you are actually playing the game rather than looking at every tiny detail, it gets harder to tell the difference.

IMO chasing native 4K is a fool's errand at this point when you can barely get solid 60 fps on high end GPUs. Running a bit lower render res with image sharpening or using DLSS gives you similar results with increased framerates.
 
Depends. I am happily playing games on my PS5 where the choice is between 4K 30 fps and 1440p 60 fps. I choose 1440p and it looks perfectly fine upscaled to my LG C9.

On PC you can see the difference in games with a lot of small details, like say RDR2. But when you are actually playing the game rather than looking at every tiny detail, it gets harder to tell the difference.

IMO chasing native 4K is a fool's errand at this point when you can barely get solid 60 fps on high end GPUs. Running a bit lower render res with image sharpening or using DLSS gives you similar results with increased framerates.
I am leaning towards it simply because I figure a gaming PC should at least play at the same resolution as a console. On a PlayStation I always choose better graphics over frame rates. I also don't like first person games, which seem to benefit most from higher frame rates.
 
I have to be honest about this, for me, I'd rather take image quality and 60fps on a 4k TV for a pc monitor instead of 144hertz @ 1440p on a dedicated pc monitor. I value picture quality more than the amount of fps. I like really pretty images. But I really do like 144fps too. But def image quality over fps. For me.

But it seems on 4k tvs at 60hertz, there isn't many with VRR that I can find. That are smaller in size.
 
Had been gaming at 4k 60hz since about 2017

Bought a 1440p 144hz monitor a few months ago and for me higher refresh helps immersion a lot more than higher resolution. Like a lot more
 
I am leaning towards it simply because I figure a gaming PC should at least play at the same resolution as a console. On a PlayStation I always choose better graphics over frame rates. I also don't like first person games, which seem to benefit most from higher frame rates.

No console game plays at 4K, the internal render resolution is upscaled to 4K on output from anything as low as 720 based on engine demand and the performance of the dynamic resolution scaling.
 
No console game plays at 4K, the internal render resolution is upscaled to 4K on output from anything as low as 720 based on engine demand and the performance of the dynamic resolution scaling.
On big games open games yes, but there is some exception I think
I think there is some (well closed constant scenario like NBA 2k21):


PS4 pro even has it at 4K native with visual downgrades on that one.

And I think there is some 4K 30 fps mode in some title has well.

What we will probably not see outside 2d games is the 4k 120 fps affair some people stressed their tv with no HDMI 2.1 would have big trouble with.
 
No console game plays at 4K, the internal render resolution is upscaled to 4K on output from anything as low as 720 based on engine demand and the performance of the dynamic resolution scaling.
There were native 4K games towards the end of the last generation, and there certainly are many many more with the new generation. Yes, many ran somewhere in between HD and UHD.

I think a PC should aim for the same resolution as most PS5 games. Some are even advertising 4K 120 options, but the games must be simpler, older, or have reduced graphical settings.
 
On big games open games yes, but there is some exception I think
I think there is some (well closed constant scenario like NBA 2k21):

PS4 pro even has it at 4K native with visual downgrades on that one.

As far as I know (unless i'm mistaken) there's no way they can actually prove this just from looking at the output of the game, they can only make guesses based on how the pixels look. But hey if i'm wrong then good for consoles.

Either way, what matters is how the display looks. On a big screen you absolutely want as much pixel density as possible, 4K @ 40" has the same pixel density as 1440p @ 27".
 
Either way, what matters is how the display looks. On a big screen you absolutely want as much pixel density as possible, 4K @ 40" has the same pixel density as 1440p @ 27".
I think it is the other way around, the smaller the screen the more pixel density you tend to want, a small phone screen is probably where you want the highest density and on a movie theater where the lowest DPI can work very well (2K on giant IMAX do work quite well and it become very fast for someone with a 20/20 vision to not be able to distinguish 4K and 2K on a movie theater screen size has you go up in movie theater rows).

DPI is way more a eyes distance from the screen requirement than a screen size and the bigger the screen the farther away you tend to be.

they can only make guesses based on how the pixels look
That what they do, analyse output footage to detect pixels and they usually can make the difference between 1800p and 2160p
 
Have you looked at the setups people use here?
Even a very close oled 4K tv usage will be a bit farther away from your eye than the usual smartphone usage no ?

Regardless if you are at 2 feet of both a 100inch or a 20 inch monitor, why would you want the pixel density of the 100inch monitor to be higher than the 20 inch monitor, not just the same pixel density ?
 
Even a very close oled 4K tv usage will be a bit farther away from your eye than the usual smartphone usage no ?

Regardless if you are at 2 feet of both a 100inch or a 20 inch monitor, why would you want the pixel density of the 100inch monitor to be higher than the 20 inch monitor, not just the same pixel density ?

Resolution is entirely about pixel density. A 100" display and a 20" display that are both the same resolution, the 100" display will look far worse because the same number of pixels are spread out over a much larger surface area. The way your post is worded I feel like i'm missing something here.
 
Resolution is entirely about pixel density. A 100" display and a 20" display that are both the same resolution, the 100" display will look far worse because the same number of pixels are spread out over a much larger surface area. The way your post is worded I feel like i'm missing something here.
Exactly the same pixel density the same result, you are shifting from same pixel density in my sentence to same resolution.

I feel like you said :
On a big screen you absolutely want as much pixel density as possible

You probably had a type or wanted to say, on a big screen to keep the same pixel density you want more pixel.
 
Quality of Pixels > Quantity of Pixels.

I moved from 1440P,144hz,GSYNC to 4K,120hz,GSYNC (+ HDR) and the difference was amazing. However, I think the difference has more to do with the 4K display being OLED than actually the resolution itself.

You want a display that can do 120hz or more and has minimal pixel smear/overshoot. This will help your experience much more than sheer resolution.
 
As far as I know (unless i'm mistaken) there's no way they can actually prove this just from looking at the output of the game, they can only make guesses based on how the pixels look. But hey if i'm wrong then good for consoles.

Either way, what matters is how the display looks. On a big screen you absolutely want as much pixel density as possible, 4K @ 40" has the same pixel density as 1440p @ 27".

It's also worth mentioning that as viewing distance increases, you will want to scale text as well. I use 120% scaling with my 4K 48" LG CX at 1m viewing distance because it gives me a more comfortable text size. 100% scaling text is a bit too small for my liking. If the display was 8K instead then maybe 100% scaling would be more viable as text would be represented by more pixels so even tiny text is fine to read. This is similar to going from the old iPhone 3G to the "retina" iPhone 4, I noticed on websites that did not scale to mobile (at the time most of them) I had to zoom a lot less to read them thanks to the higher resolution allowing me to read smaller text.

For games this does not matter so much as those scale their UI to the same size (on modern games at least) and the extra resolution mainly shows up as increased fidelity. In games I would say the smaller the screen the lower res you can get away with. For example disabling scaling on my OLED TV and running at 1080p results in something like a 24" equivalent screen and looks fine because it's small enough that I won't notice the lack of resolution so easily. But blow that up to the full 48" and it looks crap.
 
PPI aside most games I've played (on PC) scale the level of detail (LoD) depending on resolution, so one graphical benefit going from 1440p to 4K is one can ordinarily expect an increase in details such as in the distance. This is the same whether playing on a native resolution monitor or just downsampling (DSR, etc). That said the LoD improvement ime isn't as noticeable as say going from 1080p to 1440p in that regard.

Even prior to 4K monitors becoming mainstream/available there were those that would play downsampled 4K+ (particularly with titles a few years old) for the image quality benefits.
 
Quality of Pixels > Quantity of Pixels.

I moved from 1440P,144hz,GSYNC to 4K,120hz,GSYNC (+ HDR) and the difference was amazing. However, I think the difference has more to do with the 4K display being OLED than actually the resolution itself.

You want a display that can do 120hz or more and has minimal pixel smear/overshoot. This will help your experience much more than sheer resolution.
The quality of the display definitely matters. My IPS gaming monitor looks terrible compared to a quantum dot VA or OLED television.
 
PPI aside most games I've played (on PC) scale the level of detail (LoD) depending on resolution, so one graphical benefit going from 1440p to 4K is one can ordinarily expect an increase in details such as in the distance. This is the same whether playing on a native resolution monitor or just downsampling (DSR, etc). That said the LoD improvement ime isn't as noticeable as say going from 1080p to 1440p in that regard.

Even prior to 4K monitors becoming mainstream/available there were those that would play downsampled 4K+ (particularly with titles a few years old) for the image quality benefits.
I just want more polygons. A simple example would be scrolls on tables in Valhalla. They look octagon shaped at the end even at 2560x1440. These are the details that I wonder about looking better in 4K.
 
I just want more polygons. A simple example would be scrolls on tables in Valhalla. They look octagon shaped at the end even at 2560x1440. These are the details that I wonder about looking better in 4K.

That has nothing to do with resolution, it's how the assets in the game were designed.
 
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