Implementations include video image processing systems, methods, and apparatus for integrated video downscale in a video core. The downscaler computes and writes a display frame to an external memory. This frame may have the same resolution as a target display device (e.g., mobile device). The target display device then reads this display frame, rather than the original higher resolution frame. By enabling downscale during encoding/decoding, the device can conserve resources such as memory bandwidth, memory access, bus bandwidth, and power consumption associated with separately downscaling a frame of video data.