Using ASUS 2560x1600 Display in a Good Way?

[edr]

The ASUS ZenScreen MB16QHG is a portable monitor w/WQXGA (2560 x 1600) - don't have one yet but considering it. This is one of their best portable monitors because it has a fold-down base with inputs (no wires sticking out of the sides of the display) and a full-size HDMI port unlike a lot of their other ones. I have a similar one in 1080p and it's great. They don't unfortunately make a 1440p portable atm (some no-name brands do).

I'm pretty sure the answer is no but is there a chance the MiSTer would support this resolution? afaik the highest resolution the MiSTer supports currently is 2048x1536@60 (default #13). If the mister could feed 2048x1536 with additional black borders to make the output canvas 2560x1600 that would be fine too but assume that wouldn't work either.

I could have the MiSTer feed the display 1/2 res (1280x800) but the 800 doesn't scale anything very well in integer, and the display's own 2x upscaling might suck (or might not). And I wouldn't get the benefit of thin scanlines and other crt looks, it would be worse than just using a 1080p monitor.

(I'm sure the RetroTINK 4K can do 2560x1600 and anything else with the custom modelines but I don't have one and that would be one more box to add to what should be a portable setup).

[FoxbatStargazer]

Could try mode 14 (2560x1440). It has horizontal pixel doubling, but if your monitor maintains the original aspect ratio, it should be 1:1 (since 2560 will fill to the sides.)

[edr]

Could try mode 14 (2560x1440). It has horizontal pixel doubling, but if your monitor maintains the original aspect ratio, it should be 1:1 (since 2560 will fill to the sides.)

That's interesting thanks! I was probably looking at an older ini (not the latest from https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_Mi ... MiSTer.ini), which only had up to mode 13.

Might be worth a try or I might ask ASUS, because not every monitor syncs to "unusual" input resolutions ("out of range") .

(update - I'll find out on Sunday )

[breiztiger]

This kind of monitor isn’t 50hz compliant

[edr]

This kind of monitor isn’t 50hz compliant

Thanks, believe that means I won't be able to play PAL games, I'll stick to the (US) ones .

[edr]

The monitor displays and stretches any mode I feed it (1080p, and MiSTer defaults 12, 13, 14), with vsync_adjust=0 to keep things locked to 60 Hz (tried vsync_adjust=2 but it was causing the monitor to freak out and blank to black repeatedly and one time a vertical line of pixels was shimmering on the left edge).

There is unfortunately no option in the monitor menus to prevent stretching. So 2560x1440 gets vertically stretched to 1600. Oh well. Great travel monitor otherwise for laptops etc, looks sharp and only slightly lower dpi than my Macbook Air. Would be nice if they would add a no stretch option in the monitor menus because it would also make it useful for consoles that can do 1440p now like the PS5 or gaming pc's.

[edr]

Figured it out. Turns out a custom video mode for the full resolution works just fine:
video_mode=2560,1600,60

This was surprising because I thought the standard mode 14 (2560x1440 = ~ 3.7 million pixels) was pushing the max of what the MiSTer HDMI can deliver. 2560x1600 (~ 4 million pixels) is more than that, but it works.

The second best option, which I figured out earlier, is that for this monitor, the aspect ratio setting in menus becomes available ONLY if you feed it a non-wide aspect ratio. For ex. if I used something like video_mode=2300,1600,60, the menu option for aspect ratio became enabled, and I could set it to something other than Full, and this prevented the monitor from doing any horizontal stretching.

Currently using the 2560x1600 mode, with the non-integer scale setting .25, Sony PVM video preset for the scanline look, and sometime a crop in core settings. For ex. for N64, in video settings I use the crop 12 setting to chop off the top and bottom a bit and use more of the display (vertical of 216x7 rather than 240x6), which makes it fit well and it looks pretty good to me on this monitor:

ASUS Monitor w 2560x1600.jpg (1.12 MiB) Viewed 1419 times

[FoxbatStargazer]

Interesting finding. I tried it myself and I think what is happening is that the horizontal pixel doubling created to support mode 14 is being engaged. I base this on using the Nuked Genesis core to look at checkboard pattern in the 240p test suite, using no shadow mask and v-integer. At 1920x1440 the checkboard looks fairly regular and smooth, however at both 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 I see vertical jailbars that are likely scaling artifcats. This is probably because the screen width is effectively only 1280 wide in these modes.

Even at 2132x1600 I seemed to be triggering doubling/jailbars. I bet when you go over 2048 wide or a bit higher you will trigger the doubling. Although 2048x1600 would probably work fine for many cores if using integer scaling and accepting a bit of black border on the top and bottom.