PG32UCDP 480Hz Dual Mode — Is Integer Scaling Potentially Possible Through Firmware?

[JAD_ISH]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been wondering about something with the ASUS ROG Strix PG32UCDP and would really appreciate the thoughts of anyone here with experience reverse-engineering monitor firmware or scaler behaviour.

The PG32UCDP has its dual mode where the monitor switches between:

* 3840×2160 @ 240Hz
* 1920×1080 @ 480Hz

The 1080p mode is obviously a perfect 2× reduction of the panel’s native 4K resolution, so theoretically it would be ideal for nearest-neighbour/integer scaling. Unfortunately, the current 480Hz mode appears to use interpolation rather than true integer scaling, which makes the image noticeably softer than it could be.

What I’m curious about is whether the scaling method could potentially be changed through the monitor’s firmware/scaler configuration.

I have the official MCM106 firmware package for the PG32UCDP, so it got me wondering whether the scaling behaviour is actually something that could be controlled by firmware, rather than being permanently fixed in the scaler hardware.

I’m not assuming this is possible — I’m mostly interested in whether people who have worked with monitor scalers think it’s technically plausible.

For example:

* Could the scaler have a selectable nearest-neighbour/bilinear scaling mode that ASUS simply doesn’t expose in the OSD?
* Could the 1080p/480Hz mode have a different scaler configuration from the normal 4K modes?
* Is the scaling algorithm likely to be hard-coded into the scaler silicon, or could it be controlled by firmware/register configuration?
* Could the firmware potentially be modified to expose or enable an existing scaler feature?
* Does anyone know what scaler IC is used in the PG32UCDP?
* Has anyone here worked with ASUS monitor firmware or similar dual-mode monitors?

I’ve seen some of the previous monitor firmware/scaler reverse-engineering projects on here, including work on MStar-based monitors, which is what made me wonder whether something similar could theoretically be investigated on the PG32UCDP.

I’m not looking to immediately flash a modified firmware or anything like that. At this point I’m just trying to understand whether this is even technically feasible and what would need to be investigated first.

If anyone has experience with this sort of thing, I’d really appreciate your thoughts.