View pics in 4k on TV (HTPC upgrade?)

[1911Shootist]

So far, I've resisted the urge to upgrade my HTPC to 4k, as none of my content is 4k, and the 4k streaming is handled by my Chromecast Ultra or TV's built in apps. I've always figured upgrading the HTPC to 4k will make me lose any upscaling the TV handles with 1080 content (which looks pretty damn good to my untrained eyes).

But, now I'm looking for a way to take advantage of the higher resolution for viewing pics occasionally. Here's my basic setup:
TV - Vizio M55-C2
HTPC - Asus P8Z77M-Pro & Ivy I3-3225 with HD4000 graphics
Chromecast Ultra
Plex on the phones and HTPC

I figure my options are:
1. USB drive in the TV. Clunky and slow navigation/loading?
2. Plex on phone -> Chromecast Ultra. Also clunky and slow?
3. Chrome Browser -> Chromecast Ultra. Clunky navigation.
4. Upgrade HTPC video card, lose upscaling for 95% of my content/viewing.

Any other thoughts/tricks? Has anyone noticed a large loss in 1080 content quality w/o upscaling?

If I upgrade, I'll likely go with a passively cooled GT 1030 2GB (Asus or EVGA).

 

[defaultluser]

You know, if you don't like how your video card handles up-scaling, you can always change the resolution back to 1080p when you're doing anything but picture viewing.

That's the magic of getting a 4k-capable video card. You are in full control. And you might be able to replace it with MadVR, if you like.

Although if you want to become that level of control freak, a GTX 1050 might be more your speed. I'm told that MadVR eats GPUs for breakfast, if you turn on all the options.

 

[1911Shootist]

I wanted to avoid that option, because I didn't want to have a discrete $70 video card collecting dust 99% of the time. However, I forgot my wife's laptop can do 4k, so we cabled that up to check out the loss of upscaling. It didn't look too bad, so we bit the bullet and ran over to Microcenter to pick up a card. I do notice a bit more artifacts now, but it's not too bad. Overall I'd say the GT 1030 does a good job. Pictures do look a lot more sharp and crisp.