Monitor question

BunnyJ · Feb 22, 2022

Monitor question - I have two monitors hooked up and both are 1080p.. if I replace one of them with
a 4K.. will it display at 4k and the other will stay at 1080p?

TIA
Jeff

jvickers · Feb 22, 2022

BunnyJ said:
Monitor question - I have two monitors hooked up and both are 1080p.. if I replace one of them with
a 4K.. will it display at 4k and the other will stay at 1080p?

TIA
Jeff

I'm pretty sure you can from what I saw on the Web. Some have indicated they don't play well together, though. Do you have room for a cheaper video card so you can run the 4k monitor from your Titan X card and your other monitor from the cheaper card? That's basically what I do with my three monitors. My primary monitor is hooked up to the RTX 3060 and the other two are hooked up to the GTX 1660Ti card.

BunnyJ · Feb 22, 2022

jvickers said:
I'm pretty sure you can from what I saw on the Web. Some have indicated they don't play well together, though. Do you have room for a cheaper video card so you can run the 4k monitor from your Titan X card and your other monitor from the cheaper card? That's basically what I do with my three monitors. My primary monitor is hooked up to the RTX 3060 and the other two are hooked up to the GTX 1660Ti card.

I'll look into that. I could just get a better 4k and get rid of the dual setup

jvickers · Feb 22, 2022

BunnyJ said:
I'll look into that. I could just get a better 4k and get rid of the dual setup

True. But you might miss that second screen. I know I don't go with one large monitor because I like the multimonitor setup. It's easier for me to control open programs. But I guess if you got used to a large 4k monitor, you could snap the programs in place with no problem.

BunnyJ · Feb 22, 2022

jvickers said:
True. But you might miss that second screen. I know I don't go with one large monitor because I like the multimonitor setup. It's easier for me to control open programs. But I guess if you got used to a large 4k monitor, you could snap the programs in place with no problem.

I seldom use the second monitor so having a 32" 4k would work out just fine for me.

jvickers · Feb 22, 2022

BunnyJ said:
I seldom use the second monitor so having a 32" 4k would work out just fine for me.

That's what I would go with, then. I use all three of my monitors, thus the multimonitor setup. You can't really miss what you don't use.

BunnyJ · Feb 22, 2022

https://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-VX3276-4K-MHD-Frameless-Monitor-DisplayPort/dp/B07SRDX1Z1/ref=sr_1_14?crid=1KYH3AEPU6019&keywords=4k+monitor&qid=1645566946&refinements=p_72%3A1248879011%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A3547808011&rnid=2633086011&s=pc&sprefix=4k+monitor%2Caps%2C108&sr=1-14#

jvickers · Feb 22, 2022

BunnyJ said:
https://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-VX3276-4K-MHD-Frameless-Monitor-DisplayPort/dp/B07SRDX1Z1/ref=sr_1_14?crid=1KYH3AEPU6019&keywords=4k+monitor&qid=1645566946&refinements=p_72%3A1248879011%2Cp_n_size_browse-bin%3A3547808011&rnid=2633086011&s=pc&sprefix=4k+monitor%2Caps%2C108&sr=1-14#

That's a nice monitor. I like ViewSonic. Too bad it doesn't swivel. Not sure you'd need that, though.

BunnyJ · Feb 22, 2022

jvickers said:
That's a nice monitor. I like ViewSonic. Too bad it doesn't swivel. Not sure you'd need that, though.

I don't need it to swivel.. my cat's will move it around I would get that or an Asus..

DigitalGoat · Feb 22, 2022

Something to look for these days that a lot of higher end 4K monitors can provide is a built in KVM and hardware support for PiP/ PbP and various options for displaying multiple inputs at once. An extra wide 4k screen with a built in KVM could possibly replace a multi monitor setup efficiently.
Philips have recently released such a beast (49.5" ultra wide) but of course you pay more, think that one is £1300.00.
Philips Brilliance 498P9Z 49in Ultrawide 165Hz Monitor Review - KitGuru

johnlgalt · Feb 22, 2022

BunnyJ said:
Monitor question - I have two monitors hooked up and both are 1080p.. if I replace one of them with
a 4K.. will it display at 4k and the other will stay at 1080p?

TIA
Jeff

I'm doing that now. However, there may be some caveats.

Depending upon the size of the monitor, you may need to enable High DPI Scaling in order to make text readable. If you do that, a lot of apps out there don't play nicely with monitors of varying resolutions, particularly when one has Scaling enabled and the other does not. This is also true of native Windows 11 apps - things like Settings, Task manager, etc. may break, particularly if they open on the 1080p monitor directly - but by break I simply mean they look like they are 480p coded apps from the 90s. Simply dragging the app from the 1080p monitor to the 4k monitor will usually suffice in making it look normal, and dragging it back to the 1080p will keep it looking normal.

Some apps, though,. and particularly those written using QT 5.x for UI, can break - badly. There is a set of System environment variables that I've been using for the last several months that work pretty well for these apps (Free Download Manager, KeePassXC, and a whole slew of free / FOSS apps use QT 5 for the UI in Windows, so this is more prevalent than you might think).

This Tutorial from TenForums (lovingly called 10F) covers the basics on how to add new environment variables: Set New User and System Environment Variables in Windows

You'll be particularly interested in Option 4, Option 5 or Option 6 to achieve this.

(If you use Option 4, the easiest way to get there now in Win11 21H2 is Windows Settings --> About --> click on Advanced system settings button under Device Specifications section)

When you get to the part of entering in a new variable, there are three that you will want to use:

Name: `QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR`	Value: `0`
Name: `QT_SCALE_FACTOR`	Value: `1`
Name: `QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS`	Value: `2`

NOTE: Not all QT-based apps will be fixed by these, but for the most part, it will prevent 99% of wierd scaling issues, particularly when moving from one monitor to the other.

For other apps (particularly those not built using QT), you may need to instead check for some settings. This tutorial from right here will help you adjust most apps that aren't fixed by the above environment variables.

Change Display DPI Scaling Level in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to change the DPI scaling level for all or specific displays to make everything appear smaller or larger on the display(s) for your account in Windows 11. Dots per inch (DPI) is the physical measurement of number of pixels in a linear inch of a display. DPI is a...

www.elevenforum.com

HTH

Winuser · Feb 22, 2022

Nice monitor and at a reasonable price.

bobkn · Feb 22, 2022

Looks like a good monitor for the price. It uses an MVA panel, so it has better potential contrast than an IPS panel. (VA is used for many large screen LCD TVs for that reason.) The downside is a lower viewing angle, which may not be an issue for most computer monitor users.

The oddity is that it claims to support HDR10, even though it's an 8 bit display. (The "10" is for 10 bit color, giving a billion colors for RGB. 8 bit, 16.8 million colors.) The (Maxwell) Titan supports HDR through its DisplayPort output. Not sure about HDMI, but a little Web searching indicates that it will.

Something that was pointed out to me recently: if you set Windows to 150% scaling (the default, and recommended to have readable text), then UHD videos from Youtube watched via a Web browser will be displayed full screen at 1440p X 1.5, rather than 2160p. Slightly disappointing.

Edit: typos fixed, 11 March 2022.