Monitors, Graphics Cards & Resolution

Just wondering if anyone else has struggled when upgrading to a decent high resolution monitor and graphics card?

It seems there is a whole host of issues I had no idea about before purchasing an expensive high end PC.

My main issue is the recommended resolution windows wants to display my monitor at, this means that icons and text are really small, far too small to work with comfortably on a daily basis.

I understand the resolution can be changed and a custom scale can be entered which I have had to do but this does seem to be a bit of a crappy fix and defeat the whole purpose of having a top end spec, especially when running some older software, for example in my case CS5.

Anyone else experienced problems?

@Stationery Direct

You're going to get this for one very simple reason... Windows doesn't natively support Hi DPI displays until windows 10 and even then it's patchy and often relies on software to fill the gap. In the case of adobe you need the latest cs versions and windows 10 is getting better at scaling etc. In realistic terms the current best choice of resolution for windows is 27inch display with 1440p resolution at 100%, the pixel density is basically the same as a 24" 1080p display (I still work on this size at present) so your icons etc are the same size, you just have more real estate.

Now if you've got a 4k display you have a couple of options in the mean time, you can basically do what apple does and use up to 4 pixels to represent 1 pixel of resolution by setting your display resolution to 1080p resolutions, this will bring back all your icons to the correct size, use windows 10 scaling tools to scale up what it can and if the software supports it grab their hi dpi software. If none of those is available you're basically stuck with the small icons.

Personally I normally shrink my icons etc as much as possible because I've seen a gradual grab of the screen estate by icons etc due to software trying to support touch on a desktop without it....just look at how much the normal size icons take on firefox etc

Thanks for the info Levi

I have a Dell Ultrasharp U2713H and Windows 10 is saying 2560 x 1440 is recommended. At this resolution I am having to set scaling at 135% in order to have most things big enough to work with, looks ok with most programs now but CS5 unfortunately looks a bit blurry which is disappointing.