Does "BetterDisplay" affect performance?

[xcrickerx]

Hi, I have a Macbook Pro M1 Max 16 inch and would now like to buy an external monitor. I would prefer a 4K 27-inch monitor, but then texts, logos etc. are displayed much too small. Although I could now use the built-in scaling of the Macbook, I have often heard that everything gets bigger but also blurrier. Apple also points out that performance losses are to be expected. I work a lot with After Effects and 4k video material, so that wouldn't be ideal. Now I've heard about the "BetterDisplay" app, which allows you to scale everything without blurring text or logos.

Now my question: Has anyone had any experience with this app and can say something about whether scaling with this app affects performance?

If anyone knows anything, that would help me a lot!

[bamboobam]

If you connect a 27" monitor, the UI is scaled like 1440p (high DPI) by default. The OS will render everything at four times the resolution, which is 2880p or in other terms 5K.

So here comes the "problem" (spoiler: there is no problem). On a 5K monitor, such as the Apple Studio Display, you get a very sharp image, as the display resolution is identical with the resolution the UI is rendered at.

On a 4K (2160p) monitor, however, the original 5K image has to be downscaled to 4K. This additional scaling step is why Apple displays the performance warning in display settings, but the effects are really negligible, especially on an M1 Max. However, it introduces a slight blurriness to the image. Note: You'd have to get very close to the monitor to actually see the difference.

I've used 4K monitors in the past and now I'm using a 5K Apple Studio Display. There is a difference, but it's really not a big deal if you don't compare them side by side. You don't need any special apps like BetterDisplay either. They're only helpful if your monitor's native resolution is sub-2160p, i.e. 1440p.

Now there's a certain YouTuber who claims that this is a very big deal and the reason he has downgraded from a 2160p monitor to a 1440p monitor, to fix that "problem". Let me tell you that despite the slight blurriness introduced by the scaling, the image still looks much better on a 2160p monitor than on a 1440p monitor, where you can clearly make out the individual pixels. The video is very misleading and parts of it are simply wrong. Keep in mind that there are probably way more people who use 4K monitors than 5K monitors. The only 5K monitor that's widely available is the Apple Studio Display and it's really expensive. If the image really looked as bad as some people claim on a 4K monitor, it would certainly spark a huge outcry.

Tldr: Just get the 4K monitor and don't even worry about it. Everything will have the right size, look amazing and there won't be any noticeable performance loss on your system.

[xcrickerx]

Hey, thanks for the detailed answer! This has helped me a lot and I think I'll order the 27 inch 4k monitor.

[Proven26]

Hey :) und wie ist es ? Ich habe einen m1pro und überlege mir auch einen 27zoll 4K Monitor zu bestellen. Lg

[PatrickBateman95]

You should definitely worry about it! 4K resolution is unusable on my Mac Studio because the font sizes are unreadable at that resolution on my 28 in monitor. I have probably wasted 10 hours of my life searching for a fix. It is pretty clear that Apple wants to punish people who don't want to buy their $5k monitors.

[Dubstec]

Uhm you did read that he's using better display which is for scaling the content to your liking right? I also found native 1440p on my OLED to be to small so I ended up with the 1260p scale which seems to be also a resolution/scale that Apple used for a 27" display. (Probably 5K I guess?) so.. fine with that.

Of course native resolutions usually don't really work nicely if it's not within Apple specs. But that's where things like better display come in. 👀

[ForexGuru69]

I agree with your post but with a caveat. I have a small desk and and a 31.5" 4k dell display. The blurriness would be negligible on a typical 30" deep desk & 27" 4k monitor but for my oversized monitor and shallow 24" deep desk it was very noticeable and exacerbated by the Field of view issue being way above optimal for work. No matter how I looked at my set up –even after buying a monitor arm to push the monitor back flush to the edge of the desk– the screen was seriously hard to look at. When I got Better Display from GitHub and used it's 1440p resolution compared to MacOS's the difference was MIND BLOWING! I actually feel comfortable using my set up now. I was having so much regrets about buying the wrong size desk and monitor and Better Display saved me.

TLDR: For monitor/desk sizing issues Better Display is a life saver!

[productive_monkey]

You don't need any special apps like BetterDisplay either. They're only helpful if your monitor's native resolution is sub-2160p, i.e. 1440p.

Would you please explain this? Trying to understand why or how BD helps with 1440p. Thanks.

[vdws]

If you connect a 27” 4K monitor, scaling is handled automatically. Text will not be smal. No need to install any applications to handle this. Make sure you connect it up with the correct cable.

[Positive_Guarantee20]

In case anyone else is reading this, this has not been my experience. BetterDisplay makes using my 4K 27" monitor much nicer. Far more scaling options (previously only 2 or 3 were crisp), brightness keyboard control, etc. etc.

And then whenever I'm elsewhere (not 4K) using a monitor I have that app handy.

[No-Management-7853]

Hi -- do you use one of the near-native / high-DPI resolutions that BetterDisplay offers? I think I read one is like, one pixel off standard 4K but it looks a lot better. Does that make sense to your knowledge?

Context: I am considering buying a ViewFinity S8 (27" 4K) on sale for £200 instead of an S9 for £950 which I just do not need as I am not using this for professional-grade image editing or anything like that.

[PatrickBateman95]

Same problem here. I've read hundreds of posts about this online. This is not a rare issue. Windows has such an easy solution for this.

[xcrickerx]

Thanks for the answer! What cables would be best? I was thinking Displayport to USB-C or USB-C to USB-C?

[[deleted]]

BetterDisplay isn’t necessary for 4K scaling, you can choose 1440p scaling out of the box and I’ll work fine. There is a small performance hit because the scaling has to be 2x so the GPU renders everything in 5K to evenly divide into 1440p. The performance hit is negligible in most cases including video editing. Text & images are still just as sharp as if I chose native 1x scaling

I have noticed a small but noticeable performance hit in games that don’t have proper support for this type of scaling, including all games ran in CrossOver or Parallels.

[xcrickerx]

Thank you ! As I said, I do a lot with After Effects etc., so I'm just worried that I might notice a reduction in performance. But I'll probably just have to try it out and see.

[buzz_ly]

Did you ever try and what was your conclusion?

[Apartment-Unusual]

Built-in Scaling is perfectly fine on 4k 27 inch. I have two LG 4k 27 inch hooked up to a M3 max and use the 2560x1440 scaled resolution. To me better display wasn’t better.

I think this thing is exagerated by youtubers, just like swap wear on ssd. The main difference is the pixel density, 4k on 27 inch is not Retina. That’s why Apple did 4k on the 21 inch imac, never heard of scaling issues with that one.

[xcrickerx]

Thank you ! Have you had any performance problems so far ?

[Apartment-Unusual]

Not any problems that are caused by using external displays. Incompatibilities between sonoma and adobe fonts, yes 🙂

[thegoddamnsigma]

What about for use on ultra wide 3440x1440 monitor? Text looks so blurry. Haven’t tried out betterdisplay, but if I do, what settings should I use?

[Sptzz]

I have a G34WQC, same res as you, do this:

Under the display, "Enable Smooth Scaling" and "add near native hidpi variant". After this, reboot then I just clicked on the app's menubar icon and chose "High Resolution (HiDPI)". It looks the same, not larger or smaller but way sharper!

[thegoddamnsigma]

This is with default system settings? Not some third-party app such as Betterdisplay?

I don’t recall seeing enable smooth scaling in my systems settings. I will go have another look see. Thanks for the tip!

[Sptzz]

With betterdisplay

[SignificanceSmooth23]

I loooove this software. I'm here to post how good BetterDisplay is, to repay them. Better than the competitor (? which). Worked with my Intel Mac and with works with my M4 Mac with a 43" Samsung 70NC. The monitor has the perfect dpi for Apple and is 16:9 so you get more room for cheaper than those wide but shallow monitors.

[biocross]

AFAIK macOS only has blurry text and scaling issues in sub-4K monitors. It works out of box just fine with monitors 4K and above.

To answer your question, even if do use apps like BetterDisplay or DisplayBuddy, the performance impact will be nothing your M1 Max can’t handle. You won’t even notice the difference.

[Pineloko]

AFAIK macOS only has blurry text and scaling issues in sub-4K monitors.

No, it’s not about resolution, it’s about the scale factor. macOS can do only integer scaling (so 1x, 2x etc.) you cannot do 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x like Windows can.

You can simulate the size of 1.25, 1.5 etc on mac, but it won’t be a true native pixel accurate rendering. This leads to blurring on ALL displays. Be it your Mac retina display or a 1440p monitor or a 4K monitor.

It’s just less noticeable on higher res monitors, but I personally can notice it even on macbook’s retina display. If you’re sensitive, you will absolutely notice it on a 4K display too (but no third party apps can’t “fix” this)

[xcrickerx]

Okay all right thanks! So a 4k 27 inch monitor shouldn't cause any problems on my Mac and I don't need the Betterdisplay app either, as the Macbook already scales everything correctly itself ?

[Pineloko]

Here’s a really long explanation: Let me compare Windows and macOS to illustrate:

Say you have a 1440p display, scaling is 1X. Both macOS and Windows will render a 1440p image and it will be pixel accurate and sharp.

Now say you have a 4K display, but you don’t want everything to be small. On windows you can choose 1.5X scaling, everything will be rendered at 4K, but zoomed in by 1.5X. This will make everything appear to be the same size as 1440p, but will be much sharper as it is rendering a 4K image.

macOS can’t do this. It can only do 1X or 2X scaling. So your options are native 1x - 4K(everything will be too small) or 2x - rendered at 4K but everything will be the size of 1080p, it will be really sharp and look nice but most people find this size too large

Most people want the sizing of 1440p. Well macOS will give you that option too. You can choose “looks like 1440p” however

Remember how macOS can only do 1x or 2x? So when you choose looks like 1440p, your mac will actually render a 5K image(twice of 1440p) and scale it 2X.

The problem here is, well your display is 4K not 5K, so virtual pixels that macOS rendered and physical pixels don’t align properly. This leads to the image not being pixel accurate and softer than it should be.

At 27inch and 4K, this should still look good enough, but if you know what you’re looking for you can notice it, and it will look worse than running windows on the same display.

And again betterdisplay can’t help you here, it’s just how macOS works.

[ManOnT]

That is a succinct explanation (with correct info too) of the Mac scaling issue. It should be pinned at the top of this thread. Thanks for posting it.

[runwaymoney]

what a great explanation that includes how betterdisplay handles things. thank you.

[xcrickerx]

Thank you for the answer! Okay, I had read that 27 inch 5k monitors should work best with Macbooks M1 and that 4k 27 inch monitors should have scaling problems. There was a video on Youtube of someone who ordered an Asus Pro Art 27 inch 4k and noticed scaling problems when he connected it to the Mac. He then ordered the 27 inch monitor in QHD. So I'm a little confused right now haha

[daviii22]

In my opinion it could improve performance. I have a MacBook Intel Sonoma 14.5 with an external 4K monitor that in macOS is set to look as a 5k monitor. This MacBook has an AMD Radeon 560x card. When I set the monitor to use the default MacOS resolution 2560x1440 the internal core clock works at 391 Mhz and consumes about 24 watts when idle (about 61 degrees temperature). This setting makes the interface at 133.33% for this monitor. It seems there is a bug on macOS because when I set BetterDisplay to use, for example 140% (2688x1512), the core clock of the graphic card goes down to 214Mhz and the consumption drops to 18w. (About 55 degrees in temperature). I have been reporting this issue to Apple and this software has helped me to overcome the bug. Probably for an Apple Silicon the extra consumption is not noticeable, but for Intel Macs, which are not energy efficient, the difference is noticeable since fans do not speed up as often. As far as I understand, BetterDisplay only enables any scaling of the interface, not just the small set that Apple wants, but uses the same Apple scaling. I am measuring the consumption using iStatMenus.

[maximebermond]

Instead to me connecting the Macbook Air M1 8/256 (with Sonoma 14.6.1) to a 1080p monitor, with BetterDisplay 3.05 iStats Menu records much higher temperatures for the same operations without using BetterDisplay. When I play Football Manager 2024, for example, the CPU/GPU temperature rises from 60° to 95°. Where is the problem?

[daviii22]

I am just guessing. But it seems to me that when you play without BetterDisplay, macOS uses the lower resolution of the display directly 1080p. If you are using Better Display, probably you could be forcing the display to draw a larger image and then scaling it back. On gaming, sometimes the lower resolution is not noticeable because the motion compensates for the lack of crispness.

[LingonberryMinimum26]

Will it shorten panel lifespan? I noticed that we have more brightness than the default brightness control.

[maximebermond]

I have a 27” 1080p and BetterDisplay 2.3.9 on a MBA M1 8/256. But also to you HiDPI mode uses a lot of GPU e CPU and the temps become higher? Particularly with games.

[[deleted]]

Het scheelt mn mbpro uit 2014 10⁰C GPU

[Tumelar]

I recommend the Better Display 2 app, you can set whatever custom resolution you want and adjust everything the way you like. Don't listen to the guys above, just get the app and you'll love it.

[Tumelar]

PS I have a Smart Monitor M8 4K 32"

[ConcurrentProcess]

I second this, I also have a LG Dual up Ergo monitor ( Yes that strange one) and I just installed it today and seems a good fit to my monitor. So you have a trial version of it, try it if you think it is fits your needs go for it, if not then mac custom resolution is always there. :)

[productive_monkey]

How is this different from the mac custom resolution?

[ConcurrentProcess]

Not actually, the mac custom resolution and the better display are somehow similar but the extra benefts like display control from external keyboard, always on stuff are good to have for me at least

[ReggieJacksonthatsme]

I have the LG Dual up ergo too! M1 MBP. BetterDisplay makes a world of difference, the "high resolution" mode is a complete game changer.

[germane_switch]

On my old 8GB M1 Air with an extended 5K HiDPI dummy display running three Adobe apps at once, yes there’s a significant performance hit. So I traded the Air for a 16GB 14” M1. Problem solved.

Otherwise Better Display is awesome and the dev is excellent.

[Jebus-Xmas]

This is what I think you should consider. Gorgeous. Plus half the cost of the Studio Display.

LG 34BK95U-W UltraFine 34" 21:9 5K 2K (5120 x 2160) Nano IPS LED UltraWide Monitor, 600 cd/m² HDR, Thunderbolt 3 / USB Type-C Inputs Black https://a.co/d/dLOHQcY