Windows 7 displays horrible on 50 inch 4K TV

[xSpaceghostx]

I will explain this the best way i can, i recently purchased a 50 inch 4K tv and im using it as a PC monitor but it wasnt what i was expecting, windows 7 looks horrible in 1080p due to the icons being pushed off to the left side of the screen and they have a cartoony look not sharp and detailed, 1440p looks ok but when i open a webpage everything is in the middle and all this space is on the left and right, it looks awful, is there actually a good resolution for windows 7 on PC? or should i upgrade?

 

[torchwood]

have a read of this,
XPS 8500 video card upgrade to connect 4k UHD TV - Video - Desktop - Dell Community


Roy

 

[johnhoh]

the link above discusses upgrading to a new radeon r7 card which will get you native 4k resolution. If you have a dell 8500 you probably have a radeon 7870 card right now, which is less than 4k. Before you consider upgrading I suggest you first set it up perfectly and decide how you like it, because 2560x1440 is not too shabby either.

Your 4k monitor has a native resolution of 3840x2160, which is 16:9. Therefore you want your graphics card resolution to be 16:9. The radeon 7870 card has a max resolution of 2560x1600, but that's 16:10, so you'll want to use 2560x1440 instead. You will also want to use its displayport output as opposed to hdmi, which gives you double the refresh rate according to AMD.
Radeonâ„¢ HD 7800 Series Graphics Cards | AMD

Once you are set to 2560x1440 its possible your screen will still not look right (true for my set up, though my tv is not 4x) and if so you have two ways to fix it. The first is by using the TV's remote and go into display settings (note this is not accessible from windows, this is using your tv's built in menu system) and try different display options there. On my tv there is wide, normal, etc. I can't remember which one works best but I had to play with them to figure it out. The second way to get your picture right is to use the radeon graphics control panel (or whatever its called). In there will be some "scaling" settings you can play with. On my system (which is intel graphics) those are called things like adjust aspect ratio, scale to full screen, customize image). Once you set these up your picture will be great. I had to customize my scaling because otherwise the icons were off the screen but once I set it up using the graphics control panel, now its perfect.

 

[xSpaceghostx]

Thats the thing i have a Geforce GTX 960 that i just put in, i had a GT 640 before that lol

 

[johnhoh]

Even if your resolution is set correctly at 4k, the troubleshooting steps in paragraph 3 of post #3 still apply.