ATI: GPU upscaling

[Kelainefes]

When i installed the Catalyst 8.7, I found this nice feature i don't remember seeing before:
Digital panel>Attributes>GPU upscaling.
Basically you can leave it disabled, or enable it choosing one of the 3 operating modes:
-Maintain aspect ratio
-Scale image to full panel size
-Use centered timings

You probably know what it does by the name, but just in case:
Normally, when you use a resolution that does not exactly match the panel one, your LCD monitor will upscale to its native resolution.
This is what happens when you leave GPU upscaling disabled; but if you enable it, with the first option the GPU will always send out a resolution that matches your panel's native, whatever your settings are in the OS or in a game, and it will upscale any signal to match the monitor, maintaining the source's aspect ratio. So in my case the desktop runs at 1680x1050, but i run CoD4 at 1360x768 to get a steady 60 FPS, and while the game still renders at 1360x768, the screen is running at 1680x1050 thanks to the GPU that upscales the signal. Why this would be a good thing? well, unless your screen has a very good upscaling engine, the GPU does a better job, and you get a more detailed picture. Ofcourse, only if you are not rendering at your screen's native resolution.
Note that since you get the correct aspect ratio, any signal that does not exactly match your screen's proportions will result in black areas, like when you watch a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 TV, or vice versa.

The second option, scale image to full panel size does exactly what the first does, but it will stretch the image to the full panel resolution even if this means losing the correct aspect ratio.

The third will simply display on the screen without any upscaling when the resolution does not match the panel's, centering the image, so if you set 800x600 on your big 32 incher, youll get a palm sized picture. Dunno why one would need this, but if you do, it's there

I got a HD3870, so i guess that at least the hd3850 and the 48x0 cards should have this function with the 8.7 catalysts.
If you wanna give it a try, i'd like to know if you too feel that the GPU upscaling is better than the screen's.

Aw, by the way i didn't notice any decrease in my 3D performance at all, so even if it's using shaders to do the job it seems it does not need many.

Edit: looks like it was there from Catalyst 8.3... but i managed to miss it.
It should work for 1xx0 series cards and newer.

[Tigerboyce]

Only reason i can think for having a smaller image centred on a larger monitor was to say if you ran a laptop to display through a Big monitor... but if you have the ability to upscale, what's the point?

[IceChant]

How can I tell if I should use the option or not ?

[Kelainefes]

If you game at your monitor's native resolution, it doesn't matter if you use it or not, you will see differences only if you got, say, a 1920x1200 screen but you set the ingame resolution to 1440x900.

[IceChant]

Understood.