Reduce resolution; Image gets distorted?

Nachocheesemann

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Mar 10, 2014
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So I am going to get the Lenovo y50 with the 4k display, and I am wondering if I don't want my computer to waste battery or gpu clock cycles on displaying 4k, could I set it to a lower resolution with the same multiple so the pixels are bigger, the screen display does not change, and there is less stress on my gpu and battery? An example would be going from 3,840x2400 to 1920x1200 without my screen width or image changing and my fps increasing. Is this possible?


Alex
 
Solution
Changing the resolution can decrease stress on the GPU and thus the battery, but the screen may not be smart enough to just scale nicely. Every screen is different, but most will still get more fuzzy image(not unusable, but still less sharp than a proper scaling setup.).
Changing the resolution can decrease stress on the GPU and thus the battery, but the screen may not be smart enough to just scale nicely. Every screen is different, but most will still get more fuzzy image(not unusable, but still less sharp than a proper scaling setup.).
 
Solution

Nachocheesemann

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Mar 10, 2014
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What do you mean by smart enough? I'm fine with the screen getting fuzzy(in fact that may be what I want since I'm use to gaming on a low resolution), but what makes a screen "smart" so that it can rescale?
 
Some screens have better scalers than others(the scaler is like a cpu of the monitor, this calling it smart or not. some can not even change modes for non wise screen resolutions while others can. Some are better than others and some are faster).

So when you pick a perfect resolution with 2 x less height and width, you may expect each pixel to just become 4 pixels instead, but few screens do it. They all do it a bit different.

Here is an example of different software scaling setups. As you can see they all look a bit different. The first one just makes every pixel into 4. It may look good on some things, but harsh[to sharp on edges] on others.
10f1ero.jpg