1080p gaming on 4k TV?

So I'm about to buy a 4k TV this weekend and retire my 8 year old 1080p TV, but I'm wondering how games will look if I can't run them in 4k. Do any of you guys have experience with this? Maybe something like The Witcher 3 or Ghost Recon Wildlands, since a 1080Ti can't max those out at 4k.

Does it all depend on the upscaler of the TV or will 1080p on a 4k TV never look quite as good as 1080p on a 1080p TV?

 

it looks worse than 4k, not much to say, it's blurrier

you'll find settings you like fine, don't worry about the upscaler

 

Yeah, I figured it wouldn't look like 4k. I'm wondering if any Gurus came from a 1080p screen and only had the GPU power to play at 1080p on a new 4k screen. In that case, does it look worse than a native 1080p?

I know when I test games at 720p on my 1080p TV it looks like blurry pixelated crap, so I'm worried about demanding games after I get my 4k TV. I'm asking here on the forums because nobody in my circle of family or friends has bought a 4k screen yet, so I have no way to test this sort of thing.

 

I do game at 1080p on 4k and it's fine for me but your mileage may vary, you can't know if you'll find it an issue until you have both side by side playing the same game

You'll have more luck using 1440p, but you can't avoid not having perfect pixel match

Use game scaling when you can, set it to 4k with 50% render scale

 

Non-native res will never look as good as native res, but it can still look very good at 1080p on a good 4k tv

 

If you're on a 1080ti, you'll find that if you make custom resolutions such as 3200x1800, 3456x1944 or 3584x2016 that most of your games will run great and not look half that bad on your new screen. That's what I'm doing now(at least until I get my 2080ti).

 

This is exactly what I do with the 1080Ti I use on my LG B7, 3200x1800 still looks great and most games can still be maxed out without fps drops below 60fps.

 

Sadly, only one game I actually play has a render scale. Forza 7, but that runs maxed at 4k so no need for scaling. I will keep it in mind for the future.

I understand that it won't look as good as 4k content on a 4k screen, I'm just hoping it doesn't look worse than on my 8 year old 1080p screen.

Yeah, I remember Digital Foundry doing something like that. I'm assuming you would turn off DSR, since having a native resolution of 3840x2160 mostly negates the need for it? Then you can make the custom resolutions?

Sounds good. I'll have to mess around with some newer games, older games, emulation and my TV shows. I'm most worried about how something like Amazon 1080p The Blacklist will look on a 4k screen.

 

Yup, you're correct; I wouldn't need to use DSR for resolutions up to 3840x2160 (4k) as my display natively supports it. I could use DSR however for 8k resolutions. For these custom resolutions I am using for games (ex:3456x2016..etc), I am just creating a custom resolution in Nvidia control panel and then selecting it in-game. My display will automatically upscale it to 3840x2160 and it looks far better than 1440p or 1080p. Very much worth doing and in my opinion; better than lowering settings. At least until we have the GPU power to run games maxed at 4k (2080ti hopefully) .

 

It certainly will look blurrier, also be careful because using TV's as a monitor in general causes some blurryness.

 

1080p will indeed look blurrier on a 4K display than on a 1080p display. It might be fine though, depending on how far away from the TV you're sitting.

Input lag is probably going to be a problem though. You can solve that by using GPU upscaling which will send a native 4K signal to the TV, regardless of what resolution you run games at, but unfortunately it's blurrier than most TV upscalers. It adds no latency though. Some TVs have "game mode" upscaling, but you'd need to know that in advance, through tests/reviews. I'm not sure most reviewers test upscaling latency though. They usually only test native res latency.

 

Do you create resolutions for 90% of 4k, 80% of 4k and so on?

Yeah, I've been on an LG 1080p LCD since 2010 so I'm used to any blur a TV might have compared to a monitor.

Gonna have to test this tomorrow, since it took many hours to tear my setup down and rebuild around the new TV. I've just gotten into Windows and watched a few clips on Youtube. I'm going to try calibration and upscale testing later, but it should be pretty good. Look at the input lag section of this analysis.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/nu8000

 

Doesn't look horrible.Not as good as a monitor, but not horrible either. They say that you need a firmware update though, at least for 1440p?

 

I'm coming from an old LCD with between 80ms-130ms of input lag/response time, so this screen feels WAY more responsive to mouse and controller inputs. Just did the firmware updates and I'm trying to get HDR all setup and working.

 

1080p to 4k upscalers take one pixel and turn it into four. I have found that my C7 looks and behaves better if I set it in 1080p, instead of any in-between resolutions.

You should be fine as long as you set your TV to game mode.

 

Yeah, so far my 720p stuff looks a bit rough. 1080p videos and youtube look a bit soft, but nothing I can't get used to over time. I'll try setting the TV resolution to 1080p and then watching some stuff and see how that goes.

Game mode was the first thing I dug into after getting the TV setup. I can already feel a huge difference in games and desktop usage, but I've gone with a softer warmer dynamic setting for casual usage so my eyes don't burn out.

The things I'm having trouble with right now are HDR movies and HDR via services like YT and Prime. I spent hours fiddling with all of the NVCP, Win 10 and TV settings last night and everything still looked dull and washed out. Games seem to acknowledge and use HDR correctly (Forza 7, Gears 4, Far Cry 5) but other than that I'm pulling my hair out. I've tried VLC, MPCHC and MPCBE so far with zero luck. Anybody know how to get this HDR stuff working?

 

Don't use the windows apps for Netflix and Prime. For the rest, you just need to enable HDR in the Windows display properties and make sure you have the latest windows version and GPU driver version.

 

I never use apps for streaming, I always go to the site and use it that way. Still no luck. Will HDR not work since I'm on 1709 Win 10? I'm having to stay on this version because none of my networking functions in 1803 or Redstone 5. I've tried 397.64, 398.98 and 399.24 drivers so far and they all seem to have HDR work in games but nowhere else.

As far as enabling HDR in the Windows settings app, when I turn that on the display properties goes from RGB 8 bit (SDR?) to YCbCr422 (HDR?) and the desktop and programs are very dim and washed out. What am I doing wrong here?

 

You need 1803 (it fixes hdr issues) , and you won't get hdr from the web pages. Only from the apps on the TV or the pc.

 

Seriously? 1709 won't give me working HDR no matter what I do? Man, that would royally suck. That means I essentially have to choose between having network access on 1709 or working HDR on 1803. For now, I choose networking. I'll try RS5 on a separate SSD once it comes out to see if they fixed the networking stuff being broken.

I tried the Netflix app and still can't get HDR to work, so I'm just going to forget about it for now and enjoy my new TV in some non HDR (gasp!) games. Thanks for your help so far.