4K UHD PC Monitors are now readily available

[Quartz]

A question about 4K though. On a small enough monitor, does the high pixel density now mean that you can use lower (and not necessarily 1/n^2) resolutions without it looking quite so shit?

Not on my 28" 4K at least. You need the higher resolution to provide the qualitative boost. A good analogy is the laser printer. Print some text at 75 dpi, 150 dpi, 300 dpi, and 600 dpi. If you compare the text at 75 dpi with the text at 150 dpi you can immediately see the physical difference. Comparing 150 dpi with 300 dpi and it gets a bit blurred. But comparing 300 dpi and 600 dpi you can't see the individual dot difference but you can see that there is an overall qualitative difference and the 600 dpi text looks much nicer.

 

[mauvais]

Not on my 28" 4K at least. You need the higher resolution to provide the qualitative boost. A good analogy is the laser printer. Print some text at 75 dpi, 150 dpi, 300 dpi, and 600 dpi. If you compare the text at 75 dpi with the text at 150 dpi you can immediately see the physical difference. Comparing 150 dpi with 300 dpi and it gets a bit blurred. But comparing 300 dpi and 600 dpi you can't see the individual dot difference but you can see that there is an overall qualitative difference and the 600 dpi text looks much nicer.

Yeah of course, but historically the problem with non-native resolution is that it looks disproportionately shit. If you resize an image to 50% via the crudest method, and then resize it back up, of course it looks worse, but although you've got four pixels where there used to be one, they're the same colour and in the same place.

If you do it by some factor that isn't a power of two, it doesn't scale linearly and you end up with something like this, where uniform graphics come out varied:

But, if you had high enough pixel density, there'd be more flexibility to get away with this. At some reduced viewing distance it would be the same, but for normal use it wouldn't matter. I just wonder where that point is.

 

[Quartz]

Quite right, though even if you do scale by a factor of two, if the monitor is close enough - as I have mine - you'll see the enlarged quad pixel. So it's 3840x2160 or bust for text for me. That resolution is also divisible by three for 1280x720, BTW.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Good news! My 960 GTX has arrived!
Bad news! It was a day late!
Good news! I managed to open Rome Total War II and run at 4k!
Bad news! As soon as you reboot the BIOS takes 2 mins to load, during which time it is unresponsive!
Good news! It does leave the BIOS screen!
Bad news! If it was connected to the 4k monitor it doesn't send a signal!
Good news! If you unplug the card and boot using buitin graphics it all works.
Bad news! Not really a good use of money!
Good news: The next time you use the card it works perfectly!
Bad news! ... Until you restart again...

I'm updating my BIOS to see if that fixes things.

Edit: Yes it has, wow that took a while.

 

[Crispy]

Master race

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Master race

Apparently a master race of dwarves as i've been told i now only appear to be 80% the size i used to be. When you're not the tallest person ever born that's a painful reduction.