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southrncomfortjm
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Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 8:25 am

Hey Gerbils,

I've been wanting an OLED TV for a very long time. Would definitely prefer a 1080p screen, but that's just not really possible anymore. I'm betting/hoping that 4K 65 inch OLEDs will get really close to $2000 this Black Friday, and if they do, I may not be able to resist anymore.

Assuming I get something like the 65inch LG C7, and stick with my RX 480 for gaming, what kind of experience am I looking at if I run most games at 1080p resolution instead of native 4K? Would running games at 720p (or maybe 540p would be best since it is half the vertical resolution as 1080p) give me a good approximation of what games would look like? Just want to know if everything will be really soft/fuzzy looking and if there is anything that I will be able to do to make the image look better.

Thanks all.
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Waco
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 9:51 am

It depends on the TV set whether it will interpolate for you or not. 1080p generally works pretty well on most 4K sets without too much hassle, 720p is similar since they're both integer divisions of the full resolution (1/2 and 1/3, respectively). The slight blurring that it may do for interpolation is actually somewhat pleasing to look at, at least on my Samsung and Vizio sets.

You should be able to force your GPU to do the scaling internally and still output at 4K image to your TV as well. It's fairly picky for Nvidia cards, but I don't have a modern AMD GPU to test with to verify if that feature still works as intended.
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Pagey
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 9:54 am

Rtings.com gives the C7 a great review, across the board: http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/lg/c7-oled

It scores an 8.8 out of 10 in video game usage. They also mention, specifically, that it upscales 1080p content very well.
 
AustinW
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 9:58 am

It's going to look just as sharp as 1080p on a native 1080p display of the same size. Maybe even a little sharper, considering the C7 has built-in 4K upscaling.
 
southrncomfortjm
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 10:10 am

Right on. It really is a sweet TV. My 60 inch LB5900 is doing fine, but I just hate that the black levels are pretty lame.
Gaming: i5-3570k/Z77/212 Evo/Corsair 500R/16GB 1600 CL8/RX 480 8GB/840 250gb, EVO 500gb, SG 3tb/Tachyon 650w/Win10
 
blahsaysblah
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:30 pm

Just double check some gaming feature doesnt require actual 1080p mode and force usage of said bad scalar. I tried out a cheap 4k with 120Hz@1080p but the scalar made things look so washed out that it wasnt worth it, even for competitive play.
 
southrncomfortjm
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:47 pm

blahsaysblah wrote:
Just double check some gaming feature doesnt require actual 1080p mode and force usage of said bad scalar. I tried out a cheap 4k with 120Hz@1080p but the scalar made things look so washed out that it wasnt worth it, even for competitive play.


Scalar being the one built into a TV/monitor? I don't do competitive play, so 60fps is just fine with me. I don't even care about 4K, I just want OLED and HDR, hopefully without sacrificing image quality when displaying 1080p content.
Gaming: i5-3570k/Z77/212 Evo/Corsair 500R/16GB 1600 CL8/RX 480 8GB/840 250gb, EVO 500gb, SG 3tb/Tachyon 650w/Win10
 
Vhalidictes
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:52 pm

blahsaysblah wrote:
Just double check some gaming feature doesnt require actual 1080p mode and force usage of said bad scalar. I tried out a cheap 4k with 120Hz@1080p but the scalar made things look so washed out that it wasnt worth it, even for competitive play.


blah, can't most video cards perform scaling as a driver option? That's what I normally do on displays that (in theory) could interpolate evenly.
 
EndlessWaves
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:54 pm

OLEDs have an unusual pixel structure with four subpixels instead of the usual three so you'd likely see some oddities even at full resolution (so be sure to turn off cleartype), although only if you're close enough of course.

If you don't like the TV's scaling you can always get your graphics card to do it instead. For hard-edged content like strategy games any scaling is not likely to be as good as native, but you don't have a lot of choice in 65" displays these days.
 
southrncomfortjm
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 1:04 pm

EndlessWaves wrote:
OLEDs have an unusual pixel structure with four subpixels instead of the usual three so you'd likely see some oddities even at full resolution (so be sure to turn off cleartype), although only if you're close enough of course.

If you don't like the TV's scaling you can always get your graphics card to do it instead. For hard-edged content like strategy games any scaling is not likely to be as good as native, but you don't have a lot of choice in 65" displays these days.


Yeah, if it were up to me, I'd be perfectly happy with the LG C7, but as a 1080p screen.

Ugh... and I just realized that my A/V receiver isn't 4k compliant with HDCP 2.2 and all that stuff, so I'll have to add another $400 on top of whatever I spend on the TV. Oh well.
Gaming: i5-3570k/Z77/212 Evo/Corsair 500R/16GB 1600 CL8/RX 480 8GB/840 250gb, EVO 500gb, SG 3tb/Tachyon 650w/Win10
 
blahsaysblah
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 2:45 pm

Vhalidictes wrote:
blahsaysblah wrote:
Just double check some gaming feature doesnt require actual 1080p mode and force usage of said bad scalar. I tried out a cheap 4k with 120Hz@1080p but the scalar made things look so washed out that it wasnt worth it, even for competitive play.


blah, can't most video cards perform scaling as a driver option? That's what I normally do on displays that (in theory) could interpolate evenly.

I only had it a short while before i could return it for refund. It could have been user error :), i wasnt too happy with brightness as i was mainly using as desktop (40") for software dev. Gaming was just side bonus. I think once it detected 1080p input, no matter what, it added post processing that wasnt nice.
 
meerkt
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:38 pm

Unfortunate that most TVs don't simply draw each 1080p pixel as 2x2 on 2160p.
Whether graphics drivers have such an option, no idea.
 
LostCat
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:44 pm

southrncomfortjm wrote:
Ugh... and I just realized that my A/V receiver isn't 4k compliant with HDCP 2.2 and all that stuff, so I'll have to add another $400 on top of whatever I spend on the TV. Oh well.

yeah that was the **** part of moving to 4k for me. Mine actually was 4k60 and HDCP 2.2 compliant but didn't work with HDR.

I now have an amazing spare receiver I can't use right now! Probably eventually going to get my 290 working again with my old system for this Freesync monitor and hook everything up with some old speakers.
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Waco
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:49 pm

Maybe I'm old school, but I prefer to leave source switching to the TV and backfeed the audio via optical or ARC. Keeping up with input switching in receivers in the past 2 decades is expensive and only likely to accelerate in the future.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:51 pm

My disc player goes directly to the receiver. Everything else goes through the TV. The TV doesn't know what to do with the high bitrate streams from DVD-Audio disks.
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southrncomfortjm
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Thu Aug 24, 2017 10:07 am

Running everything though my receiver for 5.1 surround is just too convenient. Plus my current LG only has 2 HDMI ports and I need at least 3 or 4. Haven't looked to see what the C7 has, but probably not 4.
Gaming: i5-3570k/Z77/212 Evo/Corsair 500R/16GB 1600 CL8/RX 480 8GB/840 250gb, EVO 500gb, SG 3tb/Tachyon 650w/Win10
 
cynan
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Thu Aug 24, 2017 10:47 am

southrncomfortjm wrote:
Running everything though my receiver for 5.1 surround is just too convenient. Plus my current LG only has 2 HDMI ports and I need at least 3 or 4. Haven't looked to see what the C7 has, but probably not 4.


It has exactly 4, lol. All HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2.
 
LostCat
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Re: Running 4K screen at 1080p for gaming

Thu Aug 24, 2017 11:16 am

Waco wrote:
Maybe I'm old school, but I prefer to leave source switching to the TV and backfeed the audio via optical or ARC. Keeping up with input switching in receivers in the past 2 decades is expensive and only likely to accelerate in the future.

I'll be seriously disappointed if someone doesn't do a modern take on the optical port to cover multichannel uncompressed/Dolby Atmos and so on. Changing Atmos receivers every time you need a new HDMI standard/feature really doesn't work for me...not doing it again.

USB Audio 2.0 sounds like it could be a contender (for multichannel uncompressed at least) but latency might be a problem, and it's not looking like it'll show up in the general consumer market anytime soon.
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