Making scaling work with a 4K display

[Deltoran]

A friend of mine has recently bought an AOC 4K display. It looks great and works fairly well (Other than being limited to 30Hz at 4k due to his GPU, both displayport and DVI) Which is a 6850 I believe
Based on some research we did, it seems OSX does have a scaling option of sorts, which replaces the different resolution selections. But we seem unable to find it
I believe it main be restricted to Macs with built in retina displays

I am curious as to whether anyone has be able to access the scaling options, as everything is absolutely tiny at 4K and brining the resolution down to 1440 has quite a noticeable decrease in quality (Small but noticeable amount of blurriness, due to upscaling)
Would a new GPU that natively supports 4k (At 60Hz, the old card doesn't officially support 4k) introduce the option?

He has a 2010 Mac Pro Running Elcaptain

thanks

 

[bookemdano]

In display preferences, hold down the option key while clicking the "Scaled" radio button. That should reveal the Hi-DPI resolution choices.

 

[pastrychef]

Go to System Preferences/Displays. Then hold the Option key while you the "Scaled" button.

 

[Deltoran]

Thank you for your replys guys, But that is not quite what I am after.
While that does provide more resolution options, it is not the scaling which I was referring to, which is where the graphics card still outputs 4k (Rather than a lower resolution) but increases the size of text Icons etc.
You can see it here

Windows also has this option

 

[pastrychef]

As far as I know, OS X doesn't have an option like that.

 

[Obioban]

As far as I know, OS X doesn't have an option like that.

It does, on their retina branded products. He's asking if it's possible to enable it on a non retina product.

 

[scott.n]

That's exactly what OS X already does. I have my resolution set to 2560x1440 equivalent in OS X, but the display is receiving a 3840x2160 signal according to the OSD. If I were to open a 3000x2000-sized image, every pixel of the image could be displayed without downsampling.

Otherwise, what would be the point of using a 4K or 5K monitor?

Does your display's OSD show the resolution? What does it say?

 

[Deltoran]

That's exactly what OS X already does. I have my resolution set to 2560x1440 equivalent in OS X, but the display is receiving a 3840x2160 signal according to the OSD. If I were to open a 3000x2000-sized image, every pixel of the image could be displayed without downsampling.

Otherwise, what would be the point of using a 4K or 5K monitor?

Does your display's OSD show the resolution? What does it say?

I am slightly Confused, Do you have the scaling option like in the picture above?
Or have you selected a 1440 resolution? In which case everything would be upscaled, which means you not taking full advantage of 4k, multiple pixels are being repeated to fill the space

But I do not remember what it says it says, as it is a friends, But I do believe it would be 4K as the GPU may be doing the upscaling (Turning it from 1440 to 4k before it reaches the monitor, as opposed to the monitor making the 1440 fill the space)

 

[pastrychef]

You are not going to get that graphical menu. But when you hold the Option key, all the options are there.

What you are asking for is HiDPI and that's exactly why you hold the Option key, so that you can choose it.

I'm currently using 3200x1800@60Hz in HiDPI.

 

[bookemdano]

Yep haha I had exactly this same question. Posted a thread here about it and everything. Apparently there is no way to get that UI with the "Larger Text" -> "More Space" options unless you have one of the Macs with a built-in retina display. But as everyone is saying, by option clicking Scaled OS X will show you the same exact choices--expressed in terms of effective resolution. Just make sure you're choosing the ones that don't say "(low resolution)".