this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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You're probably aware of this since you mentioned bitrate, but a lot of 4K streaming services use bitrates that are too low to capture much more detail at 4K compared to a lower resolution. A lot of games will recommend/effectively require upscaling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS) to achieve good performance at 4K. All of this is still maybe better than 1440p, but it shows 4K is still kind of hard to make full use of.
Witcher 3 is the bane of my existence at 4K. Even with DLSS it runs like ass on my 5070 ti.
I wish they didn't feel the need to fake it with upscaling. In my experience upscaling looks like shit every time, whether it's a video or game. Most of the time a good 1080p video with good bit rate will look way better than a 4k upscale.
For video, bitrate is definitely king. 4K high bitrate just gets insanely large. I opt for 1080p bluray quality when available over 4K usually. I looked into AI upscaling for video recently and it can be pretty good, but it's a technology that changes fast so I'd rather store the original resolution and upscale in real time later (if at all).
For games, I find even FSR2 upscaling from 1440p to 2160p is excellent as long as it's implemented properly (i.e. scaling the 3D world and not the UI), and FSR3/4 even better.