Has anyone gamed on a 27" 4k display?

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I was thinking about what monitor I would like to own in the future (potentially sooner rather than later, but money is always tough). Since the start, I have been saying that I would want at least a 32" 4k monitor to keep the density from getting too high and making things difficult to see/read. However, I recently decided that I want to start using Linux as my daily driver (will get around to it eventually) and only use Windows for gaming. From what I know, the scaling on Linux is much better than Windows. If that is true, then a higher dpi wouldn't be much of a problem. In fact, it would help to make things look smoother, with more information (pixels) being able to be used to basically prevent aliasing.

So in game, would a 27" 4k make sense? a 40" 4k has roughly the same dpi as my current monitor, and I definitely need anti aliasing on it, so ideally, my next monitor would have a higher density, alleviating the need for AA, and making things look smoother overall. And with all of my daily work being done in Linux (potentially), that should remove the problem of UI scaling issues (W10 should get better scaling as well, but that is neither here nor there).

Can someone please attest to the benefits of gaming on a 4k 27" monitor? Does it look significantly smoother (in terms of aliasing)? Does it need AA less so than a 40" 4k monitor? Can you possibly see the pixels (without getting <12" away) or is the dpi high enough to prevent you from ever seeing them? I know that on my ~23" 1080p monitor, during normal use, I can see the pixels in certain situations. Does that ever happen with 27" 4k?

I don't know. It just seems like for purely gaming, higher dpi would make more sense. Completely alleviating the problem of aliasing. high dpi >>>> AA

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bigger is better = always think that way.
It may feel awkward at first but things change quickly and its hard to come back to smaller.

  • 27" at 4k feels more sharp than on larger monitors. Pixels are packed more densely than on 40" monitor.
  • 40" is bigger, and bigger is better.
  • 27" you'll more likely get higher refresh rates on it, but depends on monitor...
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Bigger isn't always better. I am talking about the density affecting gaming experience. Hopefully someone with experience with both a 27" 4k and 40" 4k can weigh in and let me know.

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played on both on 27" 4k feels sharp, very sharp. On 40" 4k looks normal.

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hi oddly named fellow. I imported a 4k screen as soon as there was one available for me. Over the year or two (no idea really) of using one of them, I came to a conclusion.

yea yea, linux is "better" then windows in terms of scaling, but that wont matter it all still, for all apps that do not care for that setting. Which include a lot of stuff, most people are using. You can get those to work, and if you use one program a lot, you do not need to read any of that stuff anyway, but still, I am on 28" , usually went for really really small fonts and high resolutions and UHD just doesn't work very well for 27" 28" sizes.

26-29 is the size where 1440p ends for me. But way to small for uhd. Something like 34" would be the entry point, 40" would be nice. More then 40" imoo is to big for a viewing distance you want on a desktop.

on top of that, how many of your games have UI scaling? exactly. 27" on UHD at ingame UI's is freaking impossible to use at all.

wqhd is something out there to, possible to find at sizes between 30-40"

If you want "the best gaming experience", I would be surprised if most people would not set 144hz prior to going for anything over 1440p or even 1080p

sharp tbh, is a very loose term for that manner.

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This is the kind of first hand experience that I was hoping to hear. About linux, have you actually used linux on that monitor? I don't know much about the scaling there as I haven't used linux much lately (and never bothered with scaling when I lasted used it regularly). Everything I've heard about it is just that "linux does scaling really well." But not much more than that.

The point about in-game ui scaling is a good one. Is that often a problem that you have encountered?

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I guessed you wanted someone with long time experience, and I in fact was payed to buy a UHD screen and test it for some months as a study for a company. I myself also bought this screen for long term testing of said issues. Kind of a strange deal, but hey, to make it quick, I advised them not to.

I did use it as the main monitor for programming, for watching tv/movies, for gaming, for browsing and for maintenance on servers.

I was playing eve online a lot when I got the screen. It had some game breaking advantages. In Eve keeping an eye on the local player list is key, my visible list was more then twice as long, also, I could attach the game in window mode to use half the screen left and right, to have no monitor borders between different clients. Eve comes with good UI scaling, or it had that when I was on it. Absolutely no problems there.

90% of all other games tested had to be run non natively (which just sucks balls), where I would have been much better of with 1440p. Fps doesn't really cause much issues. It's not like you read anything but a server name and maybe your scores. Still might have to hug your screen for it. Rts, adventure, role playing and pretty much anything but racing and fps is terrible utter bulls***. And I did not ran into a single guy telling a different story yet.

I used the screen to monitor a bunch of vms (about 6) at once and that was a win, movies are quite ok, don't hope for anything in native reso though. Progamming and browsing the web is nice, since you can easily scale. Not really better then wqhd though...

Well, trading stocks is pretty impressive on uhd, but most of the other stuff would not likely be of interest to you I guess. Unless you really like messing around with stuff and modding windows 95/98 games to run on UHD. Pcsx2 (ps2 emulator) games were fun rendering >x5 times native resolutions.

So you see, I did about anything one could possibly need a screen for, and I would love for technology to be that far, but it ain't yet. I was pretty far on the upper front of resolutions over the last decade, running 1.5X 1080p (2048*1536>1920*1080)before windows xp was the thing, but nope, can't recommend it at these sizes.

Ever since the transition to lcds gaming and resolutions got all messed up. Having a double market for 720p(for mainstream tv, mobile and everything else) and 1440p( for development, gaming, and later on) would have made much, much more sense -especially because it is perfectly scale able. I bet that was the initial plan, but there was some stuff that had to be worked around.

what i can not give you, is a link with a screen you should take a look at, but i guess you will find help here, or yourself as you prob are pretty certain know what kind of stuff you want. Which probably either is a 40" uhd screen, or some ~30" 1440p screen.

regarding linux, I am on Ubuntu right now, waiting for some parts to build another rig for a virtualization game machine. I bet it can be worked around, but symbol bars in browsers and build in apps do not scale at all. If you got a specific question, shoot.

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You answered a lot of my questions already. I'm really glad to have found someone with actual experience with this stuff. Could save me a lot of headache later on.

So do you have any experience first hand with larger 4k monitors? 40" is what I have been looking at mostly since that is what is available. If so, how does it compare to the 28" one you have been using?

Aside from that, have you been gaming in Windows or Linux? My plan is to have Linux for daily nonsense and then a Windows install for just games. You said that rpg and the like kinds of games are a pain because the UI in the game doesn't scale well. What games have you tried out? Since higher dpi is a relatively new thing (at least extremes like 4k at 27"), I don't imagine that older games will have much support for UI scaling, but perhaps newer games might. Though, honestly, with how slowly Microsoft is coming to the scaling thing, I don't imagine that game devs have bothered putting any amount of time into it either. It seems like such an easy thing to fix though (compared to something like making a game at least). It is a shame that they don't bother with it.

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lets put the scaling thing this way: Higher resolutions exist since late windows 98. Games still do not support it. nuff said, thats all one need to know for now. Situation in a year or two might change, but that wont fix the games already out. UI is not a thing you can simply fix on a game, without being able to alter the code(or proper tools), at least not in most of the titles.

In a different way, why would you at all buy a dpi range you would have to scale around for 99% of your applications.

If there are approaches for high resos, they are mostly different throughout the games. Some games have sliders, some games have fixed resos, some games double the ui size at one point, some games use vector stuff or images of texts that can be scaled.

It ain't all that easy actually, to change the UI of something - from a design perspective at last. Look at how much time AAA games spend to the UI of ports, then ask yourself again if they care for <<5% of the user base with uhd on "small" screens?

I did not game anything on Linux, and do not have set up pass through, so the games I played were natively on windows. Lot of emulation and funky stuff though.

The games that do scale UI, Borderlands, Minecraft, Eve, ect. are outlandish and special. I don't care for BF or CoD but I did not encounter a lot of stuff that does in fact scale. Mostly those are games that have a good modding base. It is not really that hard to scale a UI, if you got the correct tools for it. For instance, something like this will def. exist for skyrim.

Anno did not have it...well, I do not feel like listing up games that do work and those that don't. You will have to change your resolution if you encounter one of these, and it is quite likely you do.

It is not a new issue, it is not a big issue, and it is one that can be worked around before and after you buy your hardware.

new AAA games will come with UHD in mind, menus and stuff however will be designed for 1080p on pretty much any game and app.