Multi monitor DPI scaling issue

I got a tech to respond in the Microsoft forums. After going back and forth with him a bit, it turns out a lot of applications use the primary display as their scaling baseline. They then re-scale according to the scaling percentage on whatever monitor they happen to be on. So if I made one of my HD monitors (which have scaling at 100%) the primary display, then Chrome would look fuzzy on my UHD display, which is using 150%. I tried it and sure enough, that's what happened. Basically it's exactly what pxl8 discovered, and the tech apparently indicates there isn't a viable solution apart from all applications switching to using vector graphics.

It's not a solution, but it's a better technical understanding of what's happening.

So what we have here is a failure for scaling to allow monitors to display properly if they have different dpi's. My 15.6" UHD monitor has a much larger dpi than my 27" HD monitor. Many applications don't perform well at scaling other than 100%. QuickBooks winds up with infinite field widths for some columns. So the best solution seems to be running at a lower resolution and scale at 100%. Even then, the second monitor doesn't look so hot.

I'm experiencing the same issue as pxl8 and Belisarius with my new Dell P2715Q (4K UHD) and a 1920x1200 display on the side. When I set the 4K display as my main monitor, everything in the side monitor becomes blurry, with the exception of File Explorer and Metro/Modern-style applications (so yeah, basically everything I want to use, even Microsoft Office 2016 suffers from this issue!), as well as old legacy software than wasn't designed with HiDPI displays on mind. And when I set the 1920x1200 display as my main monitor, then everything is blurry on the 4K one.

This thread is now about 4 months old, has anyone found a solution or workaround? I feel like I've tried everything, even setting some kind of downsampling on the NVIDIA Control Panel with a custom resolution (1.5*1200x1.5*1920 to make up for the 150% scaling factor) so I could use both displays at an effective 150% scaling, but that didn't seem to work either.

Any help would be appreciated,

As near as I can tell, Windows 10 does not support dual monitors with differing resolutions. I gave up. I use a separate computer for the other monitor. Its a nuisance, because of the hassle of transferring files from one to the other. Not what I was expecting when I bought the new machine. And after 6 months, there still appears to be no progress on this issue. Microsoft will most likely wait until Apple has done something cool that handles this, then they will rush out to copy it.

I gave up as well, the scaling issues combined with a problem resuming from sleep meaning I would randomly have either no signal or drop in resolution was too much grief to deal with. I'm now running a single Dell UP2516D @ 2560x1440 without scaling and all is well. It's a lovely monitor so I might add a second - anyone wanna buy a slightly used 4K Dell? :)

NotSoFast said:

As near as I can tell, Windows 10 does not support dual monitors with differing resolutions. I gave up. I use a separate computer for the other monitor. Its a nuisance, because of the hassle of transferring files from one to the other. Not what I was expecting when I bought the new machine. And after 6 months, there still appears to be no progress on this issue. Microsoft will most likely wait until Apple has done something cool that handles this, then they will rush out to copy it.

Well, damn, that sucks... and btw, if Microsoft was waiting on Apple to get it workin, well... it looks like they already have, because on the same PC, OS X 10.10 (hackintosh) works like a charm in terms of scaling, everything looks as sharp as it should.

pxl8 said:

I gave up as well, the scaling issues combined with a problem resuming from sleep meaning I would randomly have either no signal or drop in resolution was too much grief to deal with. I'm now running a single Dell UP2516D @ 2560x1440 without scaling and all is well. It's a lovely monitor so I might add a second - anyone wanna buy a slightly used 4K Dell? :)

Yeah, so it looks 1440p might be the sweet spot if we have to stay at 100% scaling... About that 4K monitor, would you be willing to trade it for a 1920x1200 display? hahha

Anyway, thanks for letting me know... will come back to you if i figure out something else.

Well if Apple OS X 10.10 can do it, why can't Microsoft pull it off? I know that the Apple philosophy is different: don't release a beta product, make sure that everything looks crystal clear. And they have more control over their applications. But you would think that after 6 months Microsoft could have caught up with them. Windows 10 has been out for a good while now.

So ok, I've found a way to get it working at least to the point where I can use both displays comfortably on Windows. This is only for NVIDIA graphics cards, but I'm sure there's a way to achieve something similar with AMD or Intel.

Also, this involves pushing a higher resolution to the lower resolution monitor (1920x1200 in my case) than the display is capable of, so do this at your own risk.

Anyway, what you wanna do is go to the NVIDIA Control Panel > Change resolution and choose the non-4K monitor(s). Then, you'll go into "Customize..." and enable custom resolutions. Next, with everything else stock, create a resolution that is:

Code:

1.5*width x 1.5*height

where width and height are the horizontal and vertical number of pixels, and 1.5 is whatever scaling factor you're using for the 4K display.

Next, once you've tested it and seems to be working, apply it, and then go to (Windows) Settings > System > Display > Advanced display settings, and there select the custom resolution you've just created for the corresponding monitor.

And that's it.

Now, pretty much every application that didn't look great before will look much better (and that includes Office 2016, LyX, Spotify, Chrome, Visual Studio, ...). However, the applications that did indeed appear to look better before (basically File Explorer, Settings, and other Metro apps you might have) will now look kinda blurry. For me, however, that's a trade-off I'm willing to accept.

Good luck, and let me know how it works for you if you get it running,