Let's Discuss 4k vs 1080p on a laptop.

Oh yeah, it defnitely is, even for non competitive gamers. The feeling when playing on high fps and refreshrate is very different. The game is much more responsive and is more fun overal.
Also you don't really lose image quality, if anything, on many titles the image quality on 1080 / 1440P is better when you consider a couple of things. Some games have lower resolution shadows and particle effects which really look extremely bad on 4k, since not everything scales to 4k, not only that but not all games can run at 4k, no matter your setup as well, unless you plan on playing with low settings.

the 1080p sharpness can be improved by adding mods to your games, which enhance your sharpness, shaders, colors etc. The game looks overall much better than 4k vanilla, if implemented on 4k, your FPS will suffer extremely and overall you would have a slideshow.

Some examples of reshade etc.:


Witcher 3 mod @ 4k (mid 20ish FPS)






Not to mention, you don't really care about the graphics anymore at a certain point. The more you move around, the less you notice details and honestly the less you care.

Honestly it's somethinng every gamer should try. If you have a friend with a high refreshrate monitor and a decent enough rig, try it out yourself. From experience, people are always saying "once 120+ FPS, you never go back", this was also in my case.

 

It really depends on the individual and the games he/she plays. For me, the lower resolution is noticeable and annoying--even on a 15" laptop. It is all the more pronounced on a 40" monitor.

 

If I owned a 40" 4k 16:9 60Hz monitor, the first thing I would do is overclock it.
Even a small overclock can be notice-able, and with some luck, after overclocking, the overall smoothness might be "good enough".
The second thing I would do is, set the resolution to the highest supported 21:9.
Anyone try running 21:9 on a 16:9 4k monitor? How does it look?

This is an old video, but you can see Linus instantly fell in love with 21:9 when he first used it.
youtu.be/KnrxNfxRK_4?t=216

 

Agreed, I actually want a 21:9 monitor at some point.

Black bars on 16:9 will give a cinematic feel to it, I'd imagine games like witcher 3 would look awesome on it.
Do we have 21:9 1080/1440p 120+Hz monitors btw?
If you know a good budget one you could recommend I'd be happy to see it

 

I just googled 21:9 120Hz and the top two links are this monitor (seems LG is buying ad's on google)

https://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-34UC79G-B
https://www.amazon.com/LG-34UC79G-B-34-Inch-21-UltraWide/dp/B01LW5CGIS

I own a 29" LG 29UM58. It's only 2560x1080 and 60Hz, but colors are beautiful and it overclocked to 67Hz (less than I hoped).
which is not much but I can see a small difference between 60Hz and 67Hz.

Years ago, I had a 3D vision setup with a poor-image-quality 120 Hz monitor.
I personally, am happy with 90 Hz or more, but even 75Hz is significantly better than 60Hz.

if I were buying a new monitor today, I would seriously consider this monster.

Is it too wide? LoL

 

I loathe 21:9. 16:9 was a horrible enough pill to swallow--only made more palatable by resolutions > WUXGA. Anything with a pathetic 1080p horizontal is ****e I will never intentionally buy.

p.s.
32:9. Cripes. 35" horizontal is already about the limits of peripheral for me. 47" horizontal would require placing the screen further away to get within my peripherals...which defeats the purpose. And that vertical is 6" shorter than mine. I hate the "Squished" feel to screens. Which again would be all the worse if I had to range the monitor to be just on the edge of peripheral...and therefore have considerable "shrinkage" in vertical display area.

And oh yeah, way less cost this way.

 

Well people like me who like a cinematic experience and love the extra space for productivity combined with the great speed 120hz+ find this option way more appealing than what you have.

I think oversized 4k monitors are garbage for low performance, ugly pixalated games due to low ppi, extremely slow responsie time and bad refreshrate which makes my games less smoother. Might as well play on a tv and console at that point. The garbage 4k resolution isn't even playable for some of my games, even with GTX 1080 TI in SLI the FPS are so bad even on lowest settings that it's pathethic. Not to mention that 4k monitors are absolute garbage when it comes to price/performance ratio. Using a 4K monitor for PC gaming is torture imo.

There are people who value productivity, especially in the multimedia industry, ultrawides are a new standard.

 

You must play some really old games.

 

Last time I checked games from 2018 are not considered old, but I do also play games such as Dota 2 and CS:GO, which you could consider old.

 

As it has now been 2 years since the thread started, i wanted to know how is the state of Windows scaling currently?
I heard Win10 Creators Update brought major changes.

I ask because I want to purchase the Lenovo X1 Extreme (15.6"), but unsure whether to go for 1080 or 4K display.

Will use for web surfing, productivity apps, Visual studio coding, running multiple VMs (has 64GB RAM)...

Also will be using remote desktop to servers, some of which are still running Win 2008R2 -> Will this be scaled?

Any feedback welcome.

Thank you


PS, i have never used a 4k display.. I only use a laptop.