4k vs AMD Virtual Super Resolution Questions about FFXIV

I just started running AMD VSR today and do not own a 4k monitor. Will be getting one sometime in the near future. Just wanted a taste of 4k with FFXIV. So far I like the idea I can fit more on screen and the edges don't look that bad but it doesn't feel 4k to me. Just smaller. Running 2560 x 1440p

On to the questions:
1) Does a true 4k look better than what I am doing with FFXIV?
2) Does FFXIV in fact have 4k textures and support the higher resolution?
3) Why when I zoom all my hud to 140% does some things seem awful tiny and I am sitting say 3 to 4 ft from monitor and still they are tiny.
4) Do font's and text really seem blurry when you go past 1080p or it is just the AMD VSR doing that?

Would be awesome if someone who has 4k and amd graphics card can comment from direct experience about the 2 technologies.

5) is 2560 x 1440p even 4k ?

Yes, native 4k would look significantly better than VSR. People wouldn't be buying expensive 4k monitors and TVs if downsampling looked the same. Downsampling is used as a sort of brute force anti aliasing the majority of the time.

I think FFXIV "supports" 4k as a resolution option, but some textures aren't even up to the HD. 4k textures are out of the question.

It's a problem with the game, I think they made all the text is a somewhat low resolution so they'd have to redo them all for proper 4k support unless the players were willing to deal with a very blurry UI. This will likely be fixed by players whenever they introduce the addon API.

True 4K Resolution 4096 x 2160
Consumer Grade 4K 3840 X 2160
Ultra HD - 2560 x 1440p
1080p - 1920 X 1080

1) If you are running virtual 4K on a 2560 X 1440p screen then running 4K on a 4K screen will be better due to higher pixel count.
2) FFXIV doesn't even have HD textures yet, so unfortunately not
3) Higher resolutions do that. The same way that your Windows desktop will appear zoomed out. It has to do with resolution scaling, I believe. The nice thing is that you can fit more stuff on the screen.
4) Font and texts are not blurry on screens that support higher than 1080p resolution. It may be a setting you can adjust, or it could just be the VSR doing it.

My advice burn it. You my friend just wasted your money on it and they are crap in an pc. Intell and nivida are compatible with ffxiv and amd is not. AMD is only good for consoles I built an amd rig and its now collecting dust. I used to love them till they started to suck. Waiting to build a intell rig and I haven't owned one since the 200 mhz revolution, intell is quality over quantity and amd is the opposite. Whilst amd is cheap so is their brands

Thanks guys for the quick and informative replies. Exactly the kind of information I wanted to see and know about. Take care.

I have Nvidia cards but the two technologies are pretty much the same.

1) True 4k resolution will always looks better than any form of DSR (Nvidia)/VSR(amd). All those technologies are doing is having the gpu process the output at the higher resolution but then display it at the monitor resolution. As for the end result you essentially get very nice anti-aliasing but are still limited by your monitor's resolution.

2) No, the textures are the resolution they are and are not 4k resolution. Most often when talking about Full HD (1080)p, QHD (2.5k), and UHD (4K), you are talking about the resolution of the display/monitor/TV and whether the content is being output at that resolution, not necessarily the assets that make up the content, such as the texture resolution in a game.
The game does support 4k resolution although I know from experience that there are issues with it when running 4k in SLI (I got constant screen flickering ingame) however this may have been fixed now. I ran into no such issue when running 4k from a single gpu.

3) Chances are yes. I found that the UI was extremely tiny at 4k, even when scaled up to max size, while sitting approx 2 ft away from a 42" display. I can only imagine it would be much worse from farther away or with a smaller display. I found QHD to be the tolerable limit for me as far as the UI size goes.

4) It is most likely the settings. I know that DSR has a "smoothing" setting that gets applied and can make the text and other UI elements look blurry. Try finding the equivalent setting and decreasing it to sharpen the image and text.

5) No, that resolution is what is known as QHD, or Quad HD as it has 4x the pixel density of standard HD (720p). 4k, or UHD (Ultra HD), is a resolution of 4096x2160 (sometimes 3840x2160). See the first part of the resolution, that is where 4k comes from.