Blur Busters Forums

Chief Blur Buster wrote:

RealNC wrote:There will most probably be no display scaling. These are g-sync displays. G-sync does not support scaling.

Generally correct, but it depends.

This was true for the most part, but not always in newer GSYNC displays:

You can connect an external 1080p gaming console to most newer 1440p GSYNC displays (the ones that now has HDMI inputs nowadays) -- and it works.

Example display: Dell S2417DG G-SYNC display has an HDMI input that supports external game consoles.

By necessity, this uses display scaling.

I assume people are interested in using high refresh rates and g-sync with these displays. 60Hz non-gsync operation is not something you'd want to get one of these displays for.

I was able to trick my 1440p g-sync into doing display scaling and keep g-sync active, but it's still limited to low refresh rates (which defeats the purpose of running lower resolutions, namely to get higher FPS): viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3313

Of course the g-sync module in these new monitors could be implementing display scaling at all times, but somehow I really doubt it... I hope to be proven wrong.

GPU scaling can theoretically be made superior in image sharpness

There's so much shader processing power to put to use to improved scaling algorithms.

It's already done with some video player software.

Too bad this isn't available for simply scaling the Windows/game output (At this time).

Instead, we get skimpy GPU scaling quality, while putting all that lovely GPU horsepower only to the game itself.

For lag critical situations and such -- some of us would happily give up 1% of framerate to get massively better GPU scaling -- and it'd still be much higher framerate than doing at native resolution.

Chief Blur Buster wrote:Too bad this isn't available for simply scaling the Windows/game output (At this time).

Instead, we get skimpy GPU scaling quality, while putting all that lovely GPU horsepower only to the game itself.

For lag critical situations and such -- some of us would happily give up 1% of framerate to get massively better GPU scaling -- and it'd still be much higher framerate than doing at native resolution.

NVidia/AMD are still using a fixed-circuit scaler on their graphics cards. It's non-programmable, doing bilinear filtering only. (Pro-grade GPUs like the Quadro do much better scaling, including bicubic.)

However, they could bypass the circuit if they wanted. They've shown with DSR/VSR that you can have quality scaling. But unfortunately, they've only done it for downscaling. Also, the NVidia linux driver allows for bypassing the card's scaler and you can do nearest neighbor upscaling. They did not bring that feature to the Windows driver.

There has been pressure to improve their upscaling, but I suspect this would go against their interests. If you get high quality 1080p on your 1440p or 4K monitor, some people would not buy new GPUs (I always keep my tinfoil hat near me.)

Edit:
Btw, upscaling on the desktop is not going to work well. LCD sub-pixel rendering ("ClearType") results in poor text rendering when upscaling. This really is just for games.

RealNC wrote:Btw, upscaling on the desktop is not going to work well. LCD sub-pixel rendering ("ClearType") results in poor text rendering when upscaling. This really is just for games.

You do have to disable ClearType, but you still have this problem regardless of whether you scale by GPU or scale by monitor, and the monitor's scaler is often better. So you'd still get "better".

RealNC wrote:I was able to trick my 1440p g-sync into doing display scaling and keep g-sync active, but it's still limited to low refresh rates (which defeats the purpose of running lower resolutions, namely to get higher FPS): viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3313

Of course the g-sync module in these new monitors could be implementing display scaling at all times, but somehow I really doubt it... I hope to be proven wrong.

Is display scaling so rare on G-SYNC monitors? Because, unless I'm missing something, I've been able to, and over DisplayPort, on my XB271HU since day 1:



Not that I use it; I usually only use native resolution with "No scaling > Display."

You can select it of course in the NVCP, but it just doesn't do anything. Display scaling can only be used for modes the monitor reports in its EDID. If a mode is selected that is not in the EDID, GPU scaling is used. You can't switch the monitor to a mode that it doesn't support.

The "Display Scaling" setting in the NVCP means "switch the monitor to the selected mode if it supports it; if not, use GPU scaling."

Note that "mode" refers to both resolution as well as refresh rate. If in CRU you see that the monitor supports 1280x720@60Hz for example, when you switch to 1280x720@60Hz, the monitor will indeed be switched to that mode (and thus you get display scaling.) If however you switch to 1280x720@144Hz, and that mode isn't in the EDID (and it most probably isn't), then GPU scaling has to be used.

jorimt wrote:

RealNC wrote:I was able to trick my 1440p g-sync into doing display scaling and keep g-sync active, but it's still limited to low refresh rates (which defeats the purpose of running lower resolutions, namely to get higher FPS): viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3313

Of course the g-sync module in these new monitors could be implementing display scaling at all times, but somehow I really doubt it... I hope to be proven wrong.

Is display scaling so rare on G-SYNC monitors? Because, unless I'm missing something, I've been able to, and over DisplayPort, on my XB271HU since day 1:



Not that I use it; I usually only use native resolution with "No scaling > Display."

Using cru, you could try deleting your native resolution and see if it can scale from display.

Wow that is a major flaw that they should want to adress as 4k becomes more mainstream. A solution for videos would be to keep the desktop in 4k and find a player that does 1080p to 4k correctly. Cant really do that for video games though. Some games may support it but it would be better to just have the gpu scaler work properly so you dont have oversized frame buffers and and extra post process step. Maybe one of those graphics enhancement hooks could do it but again its just better if the gpu scaler did it proper. You might be able to get it working with youtube and such. I remember there used to be a way to stream to vlc player. Netflix amazon hulu and google play would probably be sol for sure due to hdcp.

RealNC wrote:You can select it of course in the NVCP, but it just doesn't do anything. Display scaling can only be used for modes the monitor reports in its EDID. If a mode is selected that is not in the EDID, GPU scaling is used. You can't switch the monitor to a mode that it doesn't support.

I see. I personally stopped using custom resolutions and messing with DSR settings years ago, so I wouldn't know. I will note that when I was using the XB252Q, I don't recall it even having a "Display" option in the drop down in that section of the NVCP.

It doesn't have a option



If you edit in CRU you will get a non scaled image in the middle or top-left of the screen.