Display scaling and CRU

[Mr1991]

Hi, this is something I have found recently and haven’t had much luck through Google search, on my set up some of my resolutions don’t seem to want to use proper display scaling, some people may know there is some guides on how to use “true” display scaling on custom resolutions, and according to them, as long as Windows, and/or your monitor is saying “active resolution” as your desired one, e.g: 1280x720 on a 19020x1080 res screen, then it should be using the display scaler

Well after following the tutorials with CRU, it did change for me, but I noticed something else on my monitor, here: https://ibb.co/4NJfXhs

As you can see, I’ve circled the option, it’s greyed out, but I found something strange, there’s about 3 or so resolutions that are already set up by Windows by default, which when set, this option comes available, here: https://ibb.co/FBhsJnV

This leads me to believe I wasn’t using display scaling all along, the only resolutions that make that option available, are the default 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768, only thing is these are 60hz by default, and when I change to 240hz, the scaling option disappears on my monitor

Another thing I found (but don’t really understand) is these resolutions that seem to use it are the ones under “Established resolutions” on CRU, circled here: https://ibb.co/v4gWzQL if I select a new one under this (1280x1024), it creates this new resolution, and again, seems to use the real display scaler, only problem is I’m limited to 60 or 75hz with these

Does anyone know what’s going on here? Is this specific to my monitor or something else? Monitor is HP Omen X 25F

[ToastyX]

You have to add every resolution + refresh rate combination that you want to use with display scaling. Any combination that's not in the EDID will be scaled by the GPU because the graphics driver can't be sure the display supports that combination.

Example: If you have 1920x1080 @ 60 and 240 Hz but only 1280x720 @ 60 Hz, then 1280x720 @ 60 Hz will be sent to the display, but 1280x720 @ 240 Hz will be scaled by the GPU.

The graphics driver also adds some common lower resolutions as GPU-scaled resolutions even if they are not defined in the EDID. I have another program that can edit the list of GPU-scaled resolutions for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs: https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thre ... Editor-SRE

If you delete all the GPU-scaled resolutions with SRE, then only the resolutions defined in the EDID will exist, but you still have to make sure that all resolutions have the same refresh rates defined if you want to completely avoid GPU scaling.

[Mr1991]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

[ToastyX]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

This is the important clue -- this determines whether or not the monitor is scaling or not.

Most of the time, I just use GPU scaling and call it a day, as RTX 3000 series does it pretty fast. Frame-based GPU scaling takes mere dozens of microseconds nowadays. It is essentially a memory bandwidth limited operation, and the RTX GPUs have scarily fast memory.

Tip: Disable GPU power management if you use GPU scaling, as low-resolutions can be quite low-GPU-utilization, triggering laggy GPU power management, and the power management is almost always bigger lag than GPU scaling lag. A game such as Quake Live capable of 1000fps, capped to only 100fps, ends up using only 10% GPU utilization, which often triggers power management between frames, which can "lag" or "jitter" the next frame unexpectedly (even 1ms jitter is visible if MPRT is less than 1ms -- where display motion blur can't mask jitter).

[TheKelz]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

This is the important clue -- this determines whether or not the monitor is scaling or not.

Most of the time, I just use GPU scaling and call it a day, as RTX 3000 series does it pretty fast. Frame-based GPU scaling takes mere dozens of microseconds nowadays. It is essentially a memory bandwidth limited operation, and the RTX GPUs have scarily fast memory.

Tip: Disable GPU power management if you use GPU scaling, as low-resolutions can be quite low-GPU-utilization, triggering laggy GPU power management, and the power management is almost always bigger lag than GPU scaling lag. A game such as Quake Live capable of 1000fps, capped to only 100fps, ends up using only 10% GPU utilization, which often triggers power management between frames, which can "lag" or "jitter" the next frame unexpectedly (even 1ms jitter is visible if MPRT is less than 1ms -- where display motion blur can't mask jitter).

I'm buying a 3060 Ti soon, so you recommend using GPU scaling in case it will not be set that way?

[assombrosso]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

This is the important clue -- this determines whether or not the monitor is scaling or not.

Most of the time, I just use GPU scaling and call it a day, as RTX 3000 series does it pretty fast. Frame-based GPU scaling takes mere dozens of microseconds nowadays. It is essentially a memory bandwidth limited operation, and the RTX GPUs have scarily fast memory.

Tip: Disable GPU power management if you use GPU scaling, as low-resolutions can be quite low-GPU-utilization, triggering laggy GPU power management, and the power management is almost always bigger lag than GPU scaling lag. A game such as Quake Live capable of 1000fps, capped to only 100fps, ends up using only 10% GPU utilization, which often triggers power management between frames, which can "lag" or "jitter" the next frame unexpectedly (even 1ms jitter is visible if MPRT is less than 1ms -- where display motion blur can't mask jitter).

I have noticed going to smaller resolutions makes csgo more laggier than native res even tho I might get less frames on native

[andrelip]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

This is the important clue -- this determines whether or not the monitor is scaling or not.

Most of the time, I just use GPU scaling and call it a day, as RTX 3000 series does it pretty fast. Frame-based GPU scaling takes mere dozens of microseconds nowadays. It is essentially a memory bandwidth limited operation, and the RTX GPUs have scarily fast memory.

Tip: Disable GPU power management if you use GPU scaling, as low-resolutions can be quite low-GPU-utilization, triggering laggy GPU power management, and the power management is almost always bigger lag than GPU scaling lag. A game such as Quake Live capable of 1000fps, capped to only 100fps, ends up using only 10% GPU utilization, which often triggers power management between frames, which can "lag" or "jitter" the next frame unexpectedly (even 1ms jitter is visible if MPRT is less than 1ms -- where display motion blur can't mask jitter).

I have the same feeling.
The games sometimes feel smoother underclocked to the minimum than running at 2050mhz in a 3080 in CSGO with the frequency x voltage curve locked in Afterburn. The expected behavior would worsen as the render time increases and the avg render queue too. My theory is that the usage percentage increases at the minimum and then disables some type of throttling.

I suspect that a hidden power-saving feature is playing a role here. In my old Macbook Pro (2020), I had More Power Tools with tons of feature flags that change the card idle behavior beyond clocks and voltage, but I don't know any for Nvidia.

Do you have any tips on how to disable fully disable power management?

[InputLagger]

I made a 1280x720 resolution at 240hz, but the option to choose between “full screen” and “aspect ratio” on my monitor is still greyed out

What resolution does the monitor say it's receiving? It should say somewhere in the OSD.

This is the important clue -- this determines whether or not the monitor is scaling or not.

Most of the time, I just use GPU scaling and call it a day, as RTX 3000 series does it pretty fast. Frame-based GPU scaling takes mere dozens of microseconds nowadays. It is essentially a memory bandwidth limited operation, and the RTX GPUs have scarily fast memory.

Tip: Disable GPU power management if you use GPU scaling, as low-resolutions can be quite low-GPU-utilization, triggering laggy GPU power management, and the power management is almost always bigger lag than GPU scaling lag. A game such as Quake Live capable of 1000fps, capped to only 100fps, ends up using only 10% GPU utilization, which often triggers power management between frames, which can "lag" or "jitter" the next frame unexpectedly (even 1ms jitter is visible if MPRT is less than 1ms -- where display motion blur can't mask jitter).

I have the same feeling.
The games sometimes feel smoother underclocked to the minimum than running at 2050mhz in a 3080 in CSGO with the frequency x voltage curve locked in Afterburn. The expected behavior would worsen as the render time increases and the avg render queue too. My theory is that the usage percentage increases at the minimum and then disables some type of throttling.

I suspect that a hidden power-saving feature is playing a role here. In my old Macbook Pro (2020), I had More Power Tools with tons of feature flags that change the card idle behavior beyond clocks and voltage, but I don't know any for Nvidia.

Do you have any tips on how to disable fully disable power management?

You can dig into nvidiaprofileinspector power settings

[roro13200]

how do you turn off power saving?