Answer:
GPU scaling is a feature that allows you to choose how the image appears on the screen (stretched to fill the screen, with black bars, etc.).
There are a lot of new gaming monitors that offer features such as 24″ or 27″ screen modes that make the image on a 32″ or an ultrawide monitor appear smaller with black bars around it, which some FPS players might prefer.
However, you have actually been able to do this in your AMD or NVIDIA graphics card drivers for a long time via GPU scaling. Here’s what you need to know about it.
Additionally, If you are using a monitor with modern aspect ratios such as 16:9 or 21:9 but want to play older games based on a 4:3 or 5:4 ratio, GPU scaling will allow you to choose whether you want the image to be stretched, have black bars at the sides, or have black bars all around the screen.
Some old-school FPS gamers prefer having a stretched picture since it makes their targets larger and easier to hit, while the deformed image quality repulses others.
Other players might prefer black borders on the sides of the screen as it makes them more focused. It’s all up to you, and the GPU scaling feature provides you with the ability to choose using AMD or NVIDIA graphics card driver settings.
How to Enable GPU Scaling (AMD)
To enable GPU scaling on your system equipped with AMD Crimson (or later) software and a compatible AMD Radeon graphics card, follow these steps:
- Open your AMD Radeon settings
- Click on ‘Display’
- Find ‘GPU Scaling’ and enable it
There is a setting called ‘Scaling Mode’ which you can use to decide how the image should be scaled:
- ‘Preserve Aspect Ratio’ will, just like it says, preserve the aspect ratio and add black bars at the top and bottom, or at the left and right of your display
- ‘Full Panel’ will stretch the image so that it fills the screen entirely. The image might look weird as a result of this because it’s scaled from a different aspect ratio
- ‘Center’ will center the image on the screen and put black bars around it. This is useful if the image is smaller than the screen’s resolution
How to Enable GPU Scaling (NVIDIA)
In the NVIDIA Control Panel, navigate to ‘adjust desktop size and position’ and you’ll find the Scaling and Size settings. The options are the same as that of AMD’s, just with different names.
You also have the option to preview how the image will look, as well as to check that scaling will override in-game settings. Additionally, you can choose if the scaling is done by the GPU or the display.
Integer Scaling
If you have a compatible graphics card (AMD 2nd gen GCN, NVIDIA Turing, Intel Gen 11 GPUs or newer), you can enable Integer Scaling, which is perfect for playing older games as it removes blur and distortion added by other scaling methods.
Integer scaling is also useful if you have a 4K UHD monitor as you can set the resolution to 1920×1080 and get better image quality (than playing 1080p content on a 4K monitor without integer scaling) thanks to perfect 4:1 pixel mapping.
Effect on Input Lag
In the past, GPU scaling added some input latency because of the extra processing and you could choose that the scaling is done by the display instead (unless the monitor had a G-SYNC module instead of a regular scaler).
However, modern graphics cards have become so fast that there’s no meaningful increase in latency when using GPU scaling, and newer G-SYNC displays now support display scaling.
Below, you’ll find our latency tests done using OSRTT on the Xiaomi Mi 34″ 3440×1440 144Hz ultrawide VA gaming monitor (AMD RX 6600 XT GPU) with GPU scaling enabled (4.43ms) and disabled (4.51ms).
The results are within the ~0.5ms margin of error of our testing device, so it’s safe to say that there’s no perceptible difference in latency.
We also ran the same test on the AOC C24G1 24″ 1080p 144Hz VA gaming monitor using the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with different scaling options and got similar results: 3.77ms at native, 3.71ms with display scaling, 3.49ms with GPU scaling and 3.90ms when using the ‘Size’ option.
