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1080p and 4K console game how big of a difference is it really? GOW example

Specifically talking about TVs

Using god of war 2018 as my example here on ps5 on a 4K ks8000.
As you may or may not know the game has a 1080p 60fps mode and 4K/30.

from the opening to the first boss fight I would switch between the two modes to see the difference and I legit couldn’t tell regarding the resolution. The fps however was a world of difference, the amount of detail that’s lost in motion at 30fps is staggering.
I was sat less than 8ft away maybe 7 so the distance wasn’t the issue.

I game on pc and have a 1440p 144hz monitor so I’m well versed in different resolutions .
Just make me think this 4K chase that devs do just isn’t worth it and I’d rather see better assets used and more focus on 60fps. Sure 60fps and dynamic 4K at the start of the gen is good but how long will that last until we we start seeing 30fps being the norm.

are there any console games with a clear visual difference that doesn’t take DF to zoom in.
 
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Moogle11

Banned
A lot of it it has to do with screen size and viewing distance. Higher resolution is way more noticeable sitting close to a huge screen vs. sitting far from any size screen or close to a smaller screen.

Personally I'm not that fussed about resolution or FPS--as long as stable, I don't really care about 30 or 60 (or 120). I've never really been that into the A/V enthusiast side of the hobby and games have long looked and ran good enough for me.

In general, I'd rather have more graphic effects, better lighting and so on that enhance realism or art style rather than higher resolution or frame rates as that stuff adds more directly to my enjoyment.
 
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Ulsterman

Neo Member
It's really sad when I see so much stuff about 4K it's absolutely pointless if only 1440p was the target I'm confident all games could hit 60fps this gen. But it'll never happen only way it could happen is if all the players in the games business get together and set video standards that all games must comply with and 60fps being number 1 on the list.
 

Tschumi

Member
I only have one tv, i guess if i had a 4k one I'd know better... But i do feel a fps difference between quality and performance modes with games like final fantasy 15 hmm
 

bitbydeath

Member
Pretty big. I noticed a leap in Binding of Isaac and that game looks like this:

images

Meanwhile 60fps/120fps do nothing for me.
 
It's really sad when I see so much stuff about 4K it's absolutely pointless if only 1440p was the target I'm confident all games could hit 60fps this gen. But it'll never happen only way it could happen is if all the players in the games business get together and set video standards that all games must comply with and 60fps being number 1 on the list.
I agree with this...1440p is a good balance of quality and leaves the door open for higher framerates

higher response will always beat out resolution
 

Fake

Member
Vary between games dude. Some post process really do an amazing job for dynamic resolution, so is not necessary a native resolution, instead a DRS with 60 fps in mind.
 

Tchu-Espresso

likes mayo on everthing and can't dance
1080 to 4k, it's a pretty big jump.

1440 to 4k? not that much really, sooooo lets get us some 1440p 60fps games.
Agree.

Honestly, at normal viewing distance, I cannot easily tell a difference from 1440p to 4K on my 65’ LG CX.

With today’s reconstruction and upscaling techniques, I implore developers to focus on performance and fidelity over resolution.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I could certainly tell the difference between 1080 and 4k on my older 75 inch TV and wouldn't do 1080p unless the performance struggled. Upgrading to 85 inch forced me to get a 3090 over 3080 because I want decent 4k performance for as long as I can hold out. It just makes things look smooth. Maybe 1440 would be enough and 8k is not going to make a difference to my eyes but 1080p is just a little too crappy for me.

Maybe 8k on a 100 inch screen sitting 5 feet from it would make it worth it over 4k, but I wouldn't be able to make something like that work. ... Or would I?
 

Hugare

Member
Recently bought a PS4 Pro and to me the difference was massive. And its not even capable of doing native 4k most of the time.

Maybe due to the lack of shimmering caused by 1080p in a 4k tv, every game now just looks so ... consistent

Image is way more stable. The gain in clarity was also very noticeable, even in 1440p games like TLOU 2.
 
Recently bought a PS4 Pro and to me the difference was massive. And its not even capable of doing native 4k most of the time.

Maybe due to the lack of shimmering caused by 1080p in a 4k tv, every game now just looks so ... consistent

Image is way more stable. The gain in clarity was also very noticeable, even in 1440p games like TLOU 2.
It must be game specific then. Give god of war a try if you can, switch between the modes.
 

Hugare

Member
It must be game specific then. Give god of war a try if you can, switch between the modes.
I did

God of War is one of the best examples, actually. It renders at an almost native 4k resolution using checkerboarding.

What's the size of your TV? And how far you sit from it?

Mine is 42' and I site about 1,5m from it

Difference in resolution is pretty clear
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
My living room screen is 70+ inches. Only 4K is an acceptable resolution with those dimensions. However, I don’t mind if the game is fun. For example, Rocket League on the Nintendo Switch has jaggies that cut, but I still play it a lot lately.
 
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I did

God of War is one of the best examples, actually. It renders at an almost native 4k resolution using checkerboarding.

What's the size of your TV? And how far you sit from it?

Mine is 42' and I site about 1,5m from it

Difference in resolution is pretty clear
Similar. 50 inch and about 1.8m
Maybe I’m a blind cunt then, I have no issue on my pc monitor.

If I’m being honest on console I’ve been playing on a pro for so long I’ve not played many of any games at 1080p. I tried mad max and it was abit blurry because that game doesn’t have a pro patch.

god of war just looks no different for some reason in the different modes ( to me)
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
There's a noticeable difference, the overall quality of detail is sharper
But if you really wanna see the difference then look into the distance, where 1080p maintains a nice detail picture in the foreground and its what you focus on the most it's is lost in the background and this applies to films too
 
From what we've seen from Insomniac and Bluepoint on PS5 so far this gen I'm really hoping there is enough power headroom in the consoles to offer a full 4k 30fps mode and a slightly stripped down dynamic 1440p~ 60fps mode.

Honestly, I feel like this should be truly possible for all games these new consoles really are beasts, especially in the CPU side. Who knows what devs will start doing to really take advantage of what they've got once the next couple of years pass.

It will also really depend on the game. I don't want to say that I'd be happy with 30fps at all anymore because I really don't think I would be but I also want to see devs really push the graphical boundaries. I just hope that we're truly seeing the end of video games infancy and 60fps can be the norm. I wish TV and movies would make the leap to 60 frames as well I can notice the judder feeling when I go from playing a 60fps+ game to watching tv or movie at 30.
 

01011001

Banned
Specifically talking about TVs

Using god of war 2018 as my example here on ps5 on a 4K ks8000.
As you may or may not know the game has a 1080p 60fps mode and 4K/30.

from the opening to the first boss fight I would switch between the two modes to see the difference and I legit couldn’t tell regarding the resolution. The fps however was a world of difference, the amount of detail that’s lost in motion at 30fps is staggering.
I was sat less than 8ft away maybe 7 so the distance wasn’t the issue.

I game on pc and have a 1440p 144hz monitor so I’m well versed in different resolutions .
Just make me think this 4K chase that devs do just isn’t worth it and I’d rather see better assets used and more focus on 60fps. Sure 60fps and dynamic 4K at the start of the gen is good but how long will that last until we we start seeing 30fps being the norm.

are there any console games with a clear visual difference that doesn’t take DF to zoom in.

the issue is, a high static resolution is only half of the equation. the temporal resolution is also important.
a 4K60 game will look very obviously better than a 1080p60 game. a 4K30 game on the other hand will only look marginally better than a 1080p60 game since the whole image will be very washed out in motion due to the low framerate.
believe me, playing a game that runs at a native 4K60 or close to 4k60 will look way better than a 1080p60 game.
I am currently playing through Immortals Fenyx Rising on Series X, and that runs at a dynamic 4K60, it is close to 4K in most non-combat/action scenes and especially inside the dungeons. and you can absolutely tell that it is 4K. it does have a quality mode as well which is locked to 30fps, and turning that on actually makes the game look way softer as soon as anything starts moving on screen.
_______________________________

on top of that, God of War uses a really bad form of checkerboarding imo. the reconstruction looks really soft and lacks detail after all the post processing is done to the image. when I played it on Pro I also switched the modes back and forth and could only see a tiny difference in the overall picture, even while standing still.
Ubisoft in Watch Dogs 2 or Eidos Montreal in Deus Ex: MD had way better results in terms of image sharpness even tho these games only ran at 1800cb not 2160cb... yet they looked sharper than GoW
and then there's Insomniac who did a crazy good job in Ratchet & Clank, that game looks almost native 4k even tho it is 1440p with their temporal injection tech doing its magic. that game also looks way sharper than GoW even tho it is technically a 1440p game up-RESed to 4K
_______________________________

then there is a third possible culprit, and that is a screen with bad pixel response time. this has a similar effect to the 30fps issue, only that it affects every refresh rate if the screen is particularly bad... but that should be no issue for most modern TV from bigger brands.
 
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BeardGawd

Banned
Was GOW made with 4k in mind? That's like taking a 360 game and outputting in 1080p.

A game's textures and geometry density need to take 4k into account inorder to truly take advantage of the fidelity.

The best way to see the difference in 4k would be to take 4k mastered content and then downscale to 1080p. Not take a 1080p game and have it display at 4k.
 
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01011001

Banned
Was GOW made with 4k in mind? That's like taking a 360 game and outputting in 1080p.

A game's textures and geometry density need to take 4k into account inorder to truly take advantage of the fidelity.

that is not the issue with the game, the reconstruction is terrible and at 30fps you lose temporal detail in motion. the game would look massively better than it does if it ran at a native 4k60 or if its checkerboarding would be better.
in way less detailed games you can immediately see a difference between 1080p and 4K but here, not really, you really have to look at specific spots and you have to stand still to make out any real improvement in image quality.
 
I have 60 inch (tv) and I sit 2 meters far from it, with no doubt I can see the difference from a 1080p game and 4K game. That also to for movies.
 

leo-j

Member
I think it’s a difference. Going from 1080p to 2160p on PS5 is such an improvement and makes the games look so much cleaner.
 

Reizo Ryuu

Member
I can tell the difference, heck even supersampled or downsampled 1080p looks much cleaner than regular.
However if the choice is UHD30 or 1080p60/120, I'm always choosing 1080p; I really don't mind being a bit blurrier, that extra smoothness is worth much more.
 

HE1NZ

Banned
There is a difference but nowhere near as big as 30fps vs 60fps. I'd pick 60fps even I had to play in 720p.
 

Hugare

Member
Similar. 50 inch and about 1.8m
Maybe I’m a blind cunt then, I have no issue on my pc monitor.

If I’m being honest on console I’ve been playing on a pro for so long I’ve not played many of any games at 1080p. I tried mad max and it was abit blurry because that game doesn’t have a pro patch.

god of war just looks no different for some reason in the different modes ( to me)
Ahh, so maybe that's why. You had a Pro for a long time, so you got used to some high resolutions.

And God of War is a game that even at 1080p, it has top of the class anti alising solution, so should be harder to notice flaws in its image quality

See this video, comparing Part 2 image quality:



It can be subtle to some, but I noticed a lot of difference
 
It depends on whether you are playing on a monitor or a tv. If you have a 4K monitor then playing at 1080p will look much worse then on a 4K tv due to upscalers and the distance from the display.
My RX580 isn't powerful enough to push much past 1440p so when I play on my tv it's always in 1080 or 1440 depending on the game and it looks fine but I'm roughly anywhere from 4-8 feet from a 50" tv. Monitor wise I'm maybe 2 feet away so playing on a non-native resolution would look like shit.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Try going into your TV picture settings menu and set sharpness to 0, if its on:

ks8000-config-2-medium.jpg


If not that then there must be something thats robbing the image of detail, because I'm sure you should notice a nice difference on a 50" at 7', because thats near optimal distance (6').

In fact, also turn off "Digital Clean View" if its on and anything else that says its "reduces noise" or the like. I do think some people just don't find the difference meaningful but in this game in particular I think the texture resolution is high enough on Kratos that you should see much more detail in the textures.

Seriously though it could be your eyes, go for a free eye test, you can get cheap glasses for the price of one game.
 
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A lot of it it has to do with screen size and viewing distance. Higher resolution is way more noticeable sitting close to a huge screen vs. sitting far from any size screen or close to a smaller screen.

Personally I'm not that fussed about resolution or FPS--as long as stable, I don't really care about 30 or 60 (or 120). I've never really been that into the A/V enthusiast side of the hobby and games have long looked and ran good enough for me.

In general, I'd rather have more graphic effects, better lighting and so on that enhance realism or art style rather than higher resolution or frame rates as that stuff adds more directly to my enjoyment.
Nobody can see over 720p at 30fps whatever the circumstances.
 
I sit at the same distance as you but with a 65 inch, and the difference is normally very clear to me. That's 75% more area than a 50 inch so it makes sense. God of War though, yeah, the difference is visible but it's relatively small in that game. The real difference comes in games with large view distances and lots of vegetation. Check the TLOU2 video a few posts above. The difference is huge to me and that's not even 4k.

A game set in small rooms and mostly in darkness like RE2? I could probably play in 720p without much issue.
 

Celcius

°Temp. member
Try Valkyria Chronicles 4. I feel there's a big difference 1080p vs 4K.
 
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Mikey Jr.

Member
I tried jedi fallen order on PS5.

I'm sorry, but I can see the difference between 1080p and 4k, especially on that first opening planet.

It was jarring at the difference. Especially shit that was far away.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Is the only difference from 1080p to 4K is image sharpness at higher screen sizes? Cause I'll play at 40"-43" going forward into the generation at like... 6 feets or so distance... Will I notice a BIG improvement?
 
Alot people don't realise but, its about the distance to the tv, and how good ur tv is, unless u have a very good tv ur not going to see much difference.also alot of tvs have very good up scaling, so its hard to tell the difference if the game has good AA. For me 1440p is good enough, don't need anything higher.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Is the only difference from 1080p to 4K is image sharpness at higher screen sizes? Cause I'll play at 40"-43" going forward into the generation at like... 6 feets or so distance... Will I notice a BIG improvement?
Well you see more detail in the image, 4 times as many pixels to represent what could only be shown with 1 pixel before, which manifests partially as a sharpness increase.

To be honest with you, no, you would need to sit 4.5 feet from a 43" 4K TV to be in the high end of optimal distance for 4K, ideally 3-5-4 feet away. Get a 50" TV and you can sit 6' away, 55" 7.5 feet, 65" 9', etc. Once you hit 85" it really starts to shoot up, since even though its the same 10" from 55" to 65" to 75" to 85" its actually increasing the area a lot more each time.

If you really can't fit bigger than 43" just now I'd ideally wait for 42" OLEDs coming at the end of/next year, that way even if you don't see all the extra detail in the image due to distance you'll still have such better contrast over an LCD that that itself will add tons of depth to the image and increase the image quality in a different way thats noticeable at much larger distances.

I know not everyone wants to spend nearly a thousand on a TV though so I'll also say: If you go for a 43" 4K LCD and sit closer you won't be able to get a high end model in that size (Those models start at 49/50" or even 55" minimum). Going to 55" and getting a high end LCD model will still be cheaper than 42" OLEDs will be when they come out so maybe that will make it feel like a better investment because you get a better looking TV than what you have currently in terms of resolution, contrast and brightness (For HDR, I don't mean how bright the screen is generally, you can still control that) AND it will be bigger.
 
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You are using same tv to check differences? That will not give accurate results.

You need 1080p and 4k tvs displaying native resolutions side by side to see difference.

4k is clear upgrade and would be hard to go back once you get used to it.
 

Zeeed

Member
IMO, the only "real" way to see the difference is to push a 1080p TV right beside a 4K TV and you will notice the difference.

You can't show a 1080p source on a 4K TV and say "see, I can't really tell a difference."

Some TV even have built in technology that will auto-upscale the 1080P source as best they can to 4K(with mixed results of course, you will never get close to native 4k look).

Edit: Doh, just noticed someone said the same thing above me. But maybe saying it twice will emphasize this fact to people who keep asking this question.
 
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