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It seems like the reviewer is confused about what the monitor is doing at non-native resolutions. In fact, it sounds like the monitor doesn't have its own hard
by rwg 13y ago
It seems like the reviewer is confused about what the monitor is doing at non-native resolutions. In fact, it sounds like the monitor doesn't have its own hardware scaler at all.
The Windows drivers for both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs have an option that makes the graphics card scale non-native screen resolutions up to the monitor's native resolution using the graphics card's scaling hardware (instead of the monitor's, if the monitor has any). It should be possible to run games at a non-native (lower) resolution and have the GPU scale the image up to native resolution (so it fills the screen) without a noticeable performance hit.
Also, large monitors have used tiled panels internally for a long time, it's just that the recent batches of 4k monitors are the first "mass market" monitors to expose the individual tiles directly to the computer's graphics hardware instead of using a scaler in the monitor to present the tiles to the computer's graphics hardware as what looks like a single monitor.
You can see the two tiles (1280x1600 each) in my Dell 3008WFP when the monitor's scaler manages to get the scanline ordering wrong on one of the tiles, like on this composite signal from an NES:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A-OmoN1CYAAZT7x.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A-OmoN1CYAAZT7x.jpg:large
- binarycrusader 13y agoThe author is not confused about non-native resolutions; they pointedly mentioned that regardless of settings, they could not get lower screen resolutions to fill the entire panel: Regardless of panel scaling options, the UP3214Q would not fill the screen at lower resolutions. Since they were talking about the nVidia card in the context, I assume they're talking about the nVidia control panel settings for this. But it's possible they were referring to some options the display offered.
- rwg 13y agoI don't know, then. The monitor's manual describes an "aspect ratio" setting with "16:9", "auto resize", "4:3", and "1:1" options, which implies the monitor does have a scaler built-in. It sounds like they used the "1:1" setting or did something wacky with the GPU's driver such that it was centering a lower resolution screen image on native resolution output.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoIt wouldn't have anything to do with panel scaling options if they were doing what your parent suggested. They'd be using the nvidia control panel.
- binarycrusader 13y agoAs I said, it's unclear. I could construe "panel scaling" options as the nVidia ones. nVidia even refers to them in documentation as "panel scaling" options.
- Sharlin 13y agoAs you said, to the video card the monitor basically looks like two separate panels. I think the issue is that the GPU/drivers don't have a scaling mode that spans screens so that, for instance, a 1920x1080 source image is split to two, scaled to 4k, and the halves sent to the monitor separately.