General 1440p advice? (G-Sync, RetroArch)

[BlackGuyRX]

I’m considering upgrading from a 1080p to a 1440p G-Sync monitor by the end of this year and I wanted some advice regarding shaders and scaling for the following cores-
-Retro consoles that support both 240p & 480i video modes (SNES, PS1, Saturn)
-Older arcade games with resolutions higher than the norm (Popeye, Sky Skipper, Paperboy)
-Consoles that mainly target 480i (Dreamcast, Gamecube)
I’m also concerned about games that switch between video modes for things like menus and title screens and having scanline shaders that line up perfectly in either mode when switching, assuming they exist at all. Any RA users have experience with a 1440p display and how well existing CRT & LCD shaders scale under 1440p? I know 4K would probably be the silver bullet but it’s outside my budget…

[RealNC]

Depends on monitor size. A 34" 1440p display has the same pixel density as a 24" 1080p one. 27" 1440p is quite a bit higher pixel density, but not quite "4K-like". 24" 1440p has very high pixel res, and is quite "4K-like" and has the same pixel res as 36" 4K.

Comparison of pixel densities:

24" 1440p = 36" 4K
27" 1440p = 40.5" 4K
34" 1440p = 51" 4K

However, when it comes to pixel-perfect scaling, 1440p has an advantage over 4K, because it perfectly matches a multiple of 480. In DOSBox, when I upscale to fullscreen, 640x480 games will display perfectly, because 480*3 = 1440. However, with that being said, console games usually aren't 480p, AFAIK. They had more wacky resolution because of the different TV standards and the need for overscan on CRT TVs.

But anyway, I'm on a 27" 1440p G-Sync display myself, and retro games do upscale much nicer than on my previous 1080p display. I'm mainly interested in DOS retro gaming. With 480p games and 320p games I get pixel perfect fullscreen. With 200p games, I use small black bars at top and botom to get pixel perfect upscaling; 200p * 7 = 1400p, so it's just black bars that are 20 pixels at the top and 20 pixels at the bottom, so they're so small, it doesn't matter to me. But even with non-integer upscaling and no black bars, the higher pixel density vs my 1080p display compensates way more for the distortion. 4K would be even better at hiding it though. But 1440p was an upgrade compared to 1080p when it comes to retro games upscaling.

I have not tried DOSBox in RetroArch yet. I only recently discovered that RA has a DOSBox module, and I have yet to set that up to test the CRT shaders. The vanilla DOSBox CRT upscalers are kinda crappy.

[Chief Blur Buster]

More resolution are certainly helpful for CRT style shaders, they get more realistic phosphor-dot emulation as you go to higher LCD resolutions.

The use of G-SYNC or FreeSync certainly makes it easy to reduce emulator lag (as long as the emulator is able to run in these modes), though RetroArch has the new RunAhead feature which is quite impressive.

That said, another factor also emerges -- motion blur -- if that is a high priority for you to eliminate. If you're also looking for (optional) motion blur reduction, most of the newer 1440p G-SYNC monitors support the ULMB 60 Hz hack, which can be useful for emulation too for the games that shine better with motion blur reduction. The use of blur reduction modes at 60Hz will flicker quite a bit though, but can be turned ON/OFF.

1440p comes in TN and IPS forms. Color quality will better on IPS. Also, IPS looks WAY better when the monitor is rotated into portrait mode, because TN panels don't work very well when rotated portrait due to gamma shift with viewing angles (left/right eye can see a noticeable picture difference). So be careful when buying a cheaper 1440p, since it may be TN. The TN 1440p are pretty good in landscape at reasonable view distance (1.5x screenwidth) and better blur reduction (less crosstalk) on them, but for emulation use I'd certainly steer to IPS instead, since the TN vs IPS pixel response doesn't matter at 60Hz.

Several overclock to 165Hz. For emulation use at 60Hz, test 60fps@144 and 60fps@165Hz -- you may find the picture better at 144Hz max VRR. you probably won't want to run 60fps@165Hz since there can still be some minor image quality degradation on some monitors at the overclocked max Hz (even at lower Hz).

You could also go for VA models too, they also come in 1440p, though some are ultrawide formats (3440x1440) which means you'll likely have wasted screen space for most emulator games unless you stretch. Unless you love the ultrawide for other purposes (e.g. development, etc)