Should we all be buying 1440p monitors?

[nickfil]

hey so- because I'm getting my first pvm tomorrow I've recently kind of become obsessed with resolutions of game consoles and trying to get them to fit right. Scaled correctly and easily with 2x 3x 5x etc. The pvm works perfectly for 480i down, so I've broken out all the consoles that use that format into its own PVM setup.

480p and 720p are kind of awkward for 1080p sets though. And consoles like the original xbox bounce between those two resolutions. 480p scales up to 1080 by 2.25 resolution. 720p scales 1.5x to 1080p. It is weird and uneven. With a regular 2x scale you either get black borders or larger picture than the screen.... or it has to scale it down and you risk shimmer doing that. If you want to get 480p to work with a PVM, it is possible, but you are going to be paying out the nose. Those pvm L5 sets usually go for at least a thousand on ebay. More if you get a large 20 inch version.

I was looking at the retrotink 5x for scaling up 480p to my 1080p set figuring that was the best it was going to get. In doing research I noticed my life in gaming going nuts over 1440p monitors with the 5x. 240p content scales 6 times perfectly to 1440p, which the 5x does out the box right now. I noticed this old tweet from mike chi where he was going to add features to output specifically to 1440p.

So- ok. Why 1440p instead of 1080p or 4k?
1440p-
720p? 2x scale. 480p? 3x. Fits perfectly.
4k-
720p- 3x scale. 480- 4.5x scale :/
1080p is the worst for these resolutions...
480p goes up to 1080 by 2.25 resolution. 720p scales 1.5x to 1080p

Not only do they scale evenly at 1440p, but bouncing between games that do 480p in 4:3 and 720p in 16:9 is easy. It just works!

Currently you can only get 1440p computer monitors, not tvs. They only go up to 32 inches for now and are only a couple hundred bucks brand new. I think, eventually it'll be common for retro gamers to be all over these 1440p monitors. Not only are going to be the best monitor for upscaling 480/720, but they also do 240 *easily* at 6x. It can do it all. Every console that isn't modern, putting out 1080p or 4k, will work with it. If you are trying to get the best picture out of the awkward consoles from the sixth and seventh generation of consoles I don't think you can beat the 1440p monitors.

What do y'all think?

[Gucci]

I have 1080p monitors all over the place. Office, home office, and gaming rig. All 27” but all have different stats. The reason why I have 1080p screens for the gaming rig because my 1070ti can run games at very high frame rates with pretty much max settings (for the games that came out at the time). I don’t get much benefit for anything higher that 1080p at the distance that I sit at. Also the monitors are 240hz IPS screens so everything is super smooth with nice colors.

The office stuff is 1080p because I have absolutely no need for office work. 75hz so nothing special.

I see why people want higher resolutions but I’ve been so content with what I’ve got for so long, I don’t have the need to change.

Edit: oh I forgot to mention that the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, both consoles I own, take advantage is supersampling which look amazing without taxing the consoles since it’s technically not outputting four times the resolution.

[nickfil]

Yeah I think 1080p works perfectly for pcs right now. You don't need more than that yet.

[Gucci]

With the GPUs out on the market, they are pushing for 1440p as standard. But given the fact that you can't buy those damn things, the phaseout of the 1080p displays in the gaming landscape at least, is slow.

[nickfil]

Everything is slow right now because of the chip shortage.

But yeah- I think, for 480p/720p console gaming, the 1440p monitor and retrotink 5x are going to be king.

[MrPopo]

But at the end of the day, if you're upscaling a 240p image to 1080p or higher you're not actually going to really notice a difference between 1080p being not an even multiple by 1440p being an even multiple. The base graphical fidelity limits you. It's like how in real life there isn't a magic enhance button like on cop shows.

[Gucci]

Looking back when I initially read the OPs first post, the resolution scaling and overall context didn’t register. I just started typing nonsense basically lol.

I’ll redeem myself with this super helpful image!

[ElkinFencer10]

Idk, get a good upscaler like the RetroTink5X, and I don't think it really matters all that much. I've used mine to upscale 240p and 480i content to both 1080p and 2160p, and it always looks fantastic. Like popo said, there's only so much you can do with low-resolution sources regardless of perfect scaling.

[Jmustang1968]

For PC gaming, I loved my 1440p and now my 4k monitors. The only issue with the 4k monitor is using it for anything other than gaming isn't ideal as text is super hard to read unless you enlarge it. I have my 1080P side monitors for that

[marurun]

For PC gaming, I loved my 1440p and now my 4k monitors. The only issue with the 4k monitor is using it for anything other than gaming isn6't ideal as text is super hard to read unless you enlarge it. I have my 1080P side monitors for that

Windows scaling works pretty well for all but certain legacy and bespoke apps and interfaces, so that's what I do when my own monitors are higher-res than is good for my eyes. Just scale that shit. I have to do it on my phone now that I'm starting to get middle-age vision issues.