4K and 1080P gaming?

So my nice wife bought me this TV for Fathers Day Sony XBR55X800B and my current PC specs are GTX 970 & I7 4790 and I have that connected to the TV using an HDMI cable.

My question is when I have the PC resolution set to 4K and a game set to 1080P ( Witcher III for example ) the game screen is so small and doesn't fill up the screen lol, so I end up having to play the game at 4K on medium settings ( looks great though )...but I would like to the option to play the game on ultra at 1080P, like I did when I had my 1080P TV....is there a workaround for this?

Also would you guys rather play a game at 4K on medium settings or 1080P on ultra? lol It was a dilemma I was struggling with yesterday :P....thought it would be interesting to get PC gamers opinion on that.

Maybe there's a 'fullscreen' option that you should turn on?

Also, I'd imagine that 4k @ medium settings would look far better than 1080 @ ultra settings, at least as far as sharpness is concerned.

I rather play at 4K and Med settings than Ultra at 1080p. Resolution + Frame Rate are priority over everything else to me.

And.....

Make sure your TV has the image on "Full" / "Full-Screen" / "Stretch" or w/e.

You can also go into the Nvidia control panel and force scaling.

@ShadowDeathX The TV is on full....but I will try the setting you posted...looks like that may fix the issue. Thanks!

I am surprised that 2 people picked the resolution over the higher settings. But I was also surprised how awesome Witcher 3 looked at 4K/medium settings.

Seeing the benefits of 4k really has nothing to do with texture resolution. Higher resolution textures show up on 1080P just as much as they do on 4k. Would a game at 4k look better with higher resolution textures? Sure, but it would look better at any resolution, so the point is moot.

All 4k offers is enhanced sharpness, which isn't super-visible if you're sitting at the proper distance from your TV. Furthermore, if you have your game settings turned down w/ the resolution up, essentially you're basically making the game uglier and then looking at it through a magnifying glass. I'd pick 1080P at Ultra settings any day of the week.

It's sort of like playing a game with all the other options turned down just to have super-sampling turned on. Essentially you've eliminated all the more important IQ features for a feature that offers really high diminished returns. I have absolutely zero understanding of this logic.

What ???

Wouldn't you want to see the game in all it's glory (with all the graphical effects) rather than just a change of resolution with effects left out?

I rather see a clearer image than a blurry one. And yes, 1080p is blurry in comparison to 4K.

I have a 4k tv with 2 970s and can almost max any game without aa on it... Just recently purchased a 1440p 144hz gsync monitor and seriously prefer it over the 4k tv. The smoothness on it is like night and day compared to the tv. But yea at 60hz i would prefer the 4k medium to high settings compared to the 1080p. 1080P is just so blurry nowadays

In comparison to 4K maybe but 1080p isn't blurry.

And if you're turning down graphics... that's when the textures becomes blurry/smooth.

I bought a 4k monitor, played with it for a week, returned it for the Swift Rog (1440/144hz) and never looked back. There's no doubt 4k is gorgeous! But that 144hz is SUCH a game changer. Anyways...thought it was fun somebody was on my page.

Just use nvidia control panel or amd equivalent to set the witcher 3 to only run 1080p

lol @ 1080P being blurry. You're not getting the full benefit of 4k unless you have your head right up to a 55" screen (sitting 2.5' away), and you're barely going to see any benefits unless you're sitting closer than 6 ft (which is considered a very close sitting distance for a TV that size) compared to just using AA at 1080P.

I mean, if you really like to sit with your face right next to a big screen, or get a 10% perceptibly sharper image just so you can get a better look at blurrier graphics with lower FPS. A preference is a preference...but to me it just seems like more of a sacrifice than a desirable feature.

can you change the tv's resolution? if so, just set it to 1080 when gaming.

my Samsung offers 720p or 1080p. would imagine a nice 2160p would also offer 1080p as an option.

that is not true. there's quite a difference even between 1440p and 1080p at the same ingame settings.

but, if getting enough fewer frames per second @ 1440p that it's noticeable than i would still choose 1080p.

i didnt know you could run witcher 3 at 4k on a 970, i barely get around 60 fps on mine at 1080p. I rather have settings turned up then turn down texture details just to run at 4k, the aliasing in witcher 3 isnt bad at all and i dont think its worth it.

i'll give it a try sometime and see how it looks at 4k. I dont have a 4k monitor but maybe with dsr 4k it'll look better, its hard to know, turning texture details down too much could make things look bad

So much misinformation and deception about 4k which is driving the nerd herds to flock to it. If your games were really developed to take full advantage of 4k, their footprint (installation size) would be much larger than they already are. But hey, if upscaling is your thing, then go for it.

to answer second question , given choice I would rather play pc games on 1080p ultra, even 1024x768 ultra on old monitor than medium on any setting, even if the game runs at 30fps. the only setting I turn off on ultra is motion blur, everything else is max, except, if consistent 30fps, very least, can't be achieved I reduce msaa from 8x to 4x to 2x to 0, dependent game msaa options, but nothing else, otherwise its budget pc component upgrade time.

same thing happened with 720p and 1080p..i can still play in standard def..I could not care less..srs..all this chasing resolution,frame rate, is like chasing pixels with cameras..its pointless..

I'm using a Samsumg 28inch 4k monitor and a GTX 970 GPU where I sit only about half a meter away from the screen. Tried with various display settings. It was very easy for me to get convinced at using 4k on mostly high settings with No hairworks over 1080p with ultra settings with the hairworks. With 4k game looks briliant and much more detailed, richer.. For me not something to compare to more pieces of moving grass and trees and some better looking hair :) When you move from 1080p to 4k you don't wanna move back, you realize the difference. But most of the graphic tweaks that you make from Medium or high setting to Ultra are barely visible in game. But of course this is just my opinion.. :)

Seriously, I have a Dell 27inch 4k monitor and I completely agree. All the people in this thread saying that a game at med/high on 4k looks worse than 1080p Ultra have clearly never played on a 4k monitor. It looks soo much better, there is just so much more detail.

1080p is definitely blurry after using a 4k monitor for a while. Now, whenever I look at my older 1920x1200 monitor I wonder how I ever thought it looked great

Depends on the size of your 1080P monitor. 1080P at 27" might be blurry...but definitely not 1440P. Toms Hardware, for example, can't tell the difference even with a 28" screen.

First off, it's hard to see a difference in clarity between the two. The pixel density is 157ppi for the 28-inch Ultra HD screen versus 109ppi for the 27-inch QHD. At a viewing distance of around 30 inches, image sharpness looks pretty much the same to us. Link

And then you're stuck at 60 Hz and less graphics options with 4k.

Really, you can't win with 4k. There are always better options.

But if your wife hooked you up with a 4k, I wouldn't complain.

AMD's R9 Fury X is a beast, but 4K gaming is still a waste

This was posted 3 days ago. i'm not convinced that shitty graphics on a 4k display are better than max graphics on a 144Hz 1080p display. i always thought the best use case for 4k displays were RTS games, a la supreme commander, where you would literally be able to see many more units and their individual info much easier. remember how warcraft 2 let you select 6 units at once using click-and-drag and you could see each portrait and healthbar in the HUD? imagine that but for hundreds of armies.

as far as gaming is concerned, 4k hasn't had its killer app yet.

My previous main monitor was a 24 inch 1920x1200 monitor.

I was also holding onto a 27inch 1440p QNIX at the time I received my 27inch 4k monitor. You can definitely tell the difference between 27inch 4k and 27inch 1440p at normal sitting distance.

Higher refresh rates with 1440p might overall be a better experience if all you want to do is game on it, but 4k is also a much better all around desktop experience. Also, 120+hz, 1440p IPS panels are really expensive. I paid $420 for my Dell, which is cheaper than any decent 1440p high refresh rate monitor. Korean monitors are cheap and potentially good, but there is a high chance you will get a dud with issues and it costs a crapton to return them, something i wasn't willing to risk.

@chikenfriedrice:

Yes like you stated of course 4k should be better than 1080p but if the frame rate is low it's not worth it. And playing at medium instead than high is surely a bad idea.

Also and unless routing, I mean the old screen move to other people instead of garbage, 1080p is enough rich. God said rich, not more rich than God.

I'll just say we agree to disagree. I'd rather take 1440P + 144Hz even for desktop use. Everything at 4k would be uber-small (image elements) unless stretched out at 27". Even at 1440P they're often small for my liking. Only exception is if I had a 50"+ TV.

1440p is also another option

it looks far better than 1080p

Well, I am assuming the guy is sitting a few feet away from the TV; at that distance, high detail would be wasted to a certain extent (i.e. the nVidia Hairworks in The Witcher 3).

If it is a monitor you're gaming on and only sitting 2-3 feet away (at most), things might be a bit different.