Might 1800p be a much better upscaling target than actual 4K?
We've heard/talked a lot about Valve's claim that Steam Machine can do 4K/60 fps (with upscaling) for all current games.
Benchmarks of similarly specced PCs show that in reality this means doing pretty heavy upscaling (Performance/Ultra Performance) at low graphics settings. Not an ideal situation.
FSR 4.1 might help out in terms of output quality of that upscaling. But you're still going to be limited to lower graphics settings. Because the performance impact of upscaling all the way up to 2160p is just that high.
So I was thinking, if you have a 4K screen and 4K is out of reach what do we then do? Native 1080p and 1440p might be much easier to get 60 fps on but might not look as good on that 4K screen. Is there an alternative?
What if we didn't focus on 4K/60 fps upscaled, but if we instead went to *1800p with upscaling* as a base?
* 4K output is pretty hard to discern from 1800p so it's a good target.
* FSR Quality you'd get good visual clarity as the input res of 1200p is pretty high.
* FSR Balanced would use an input res of 1026p. Useful if you need more power. You'd get almost the same clarity as if you were upscaling from 1080p.
I could imagine that FSR Quality from 1800p could get you Medium graphics if 4K means Low graphics. And FSR Balanced might get slightly higher settings.
Do you think 1800p with upscaling would be a better option than 4K with upscaling?