Question 2k gaming at high FPS versus 4k at lower FPS ?

[ringmany]

Hi everyone,

I've been gaming on 1080p my entire life and now I'm looking to upgrade to a higher resolution monitor. I've got an MSI 1070 GPU and I'm looking to possibly upgrade to a 4070 Ti.

I've always gamed on 1080, so i've never seen any 2k or 4k personally. I've been watching a lot of videos online for benchmarks on 2k and 4k, but it's hard to see the difference when just watching a 1080p YouTube video.

Normally I'm getting high FPS around 120+ on my current gaming rig. What do you think is going to look more impressive? A 2k gaming monitor which has higher FPS and max settings, or a 4k gaming monitor on high settings, with maybe DLSS enabled? Is lower resolution but higher FPS and game settings going to look more impressive than high resolution but having to enable DLSS and lower FPS? Is the difference between 2k and 4k really mind blowing where I'm just going to be shocked at the difference and never go back?

One of the biggest games I spent a lot of time on at the moment is RDR2.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Hi everyone,

I've been gaming on 1080p my entire life and now I'm looking to upgrade to a higher resolution monitor. I've got an MSI 1070 GPU and I'm looking to possibly upgrade to a 4070 Ti.

I've always gamed on 1080, so i've never seen any 2k or 4k personally. I've been watching a lot of videos online for benchmarks on 2k and 4k, but it's hard to see the difference when just watching a 1080p YouTube video.

Normally I'm getting high FPS around 120+ on my current gaming rig. What do you think is going to look more impressive? A 2k gaming monitor which has higher FPS and max settings, or a 4k gaming monitor on high settings, with maybe DLSS enabled? Is lower resolution but higher FPS and game settings going to look more impressive than high resolution but having to enable DLSS and lower FPS? Is the difference between 2k and 4k really mind blowing where I'm just going to be shocked at the difference and never go back?

One of the biggest games I spent a lot of time on at the moment is RDR2.

In my opinion the sweet spot for gaming is 3440x1440. You get the higher resolution without sacrificing as many FPS as you do at 4k and can get 144Hz or faster refresh rates. I have a 6700XT and get 80-85 FPS on RDR2 without using FSR2. With FSR2 I get 100-120 FPS but my monitor only has a 100Hz refresh rate.

 

[ringmany]

In my opinion the sweet spot for gaming is 3440x1440. You get the higher resolution without sacrificing as many FPS as you do at 4k and can get 144Hz or faster refresh rates. I have a 6700XT and get 80-85 FPS on RDR2 without using FSR2. With FSR2 I get 100-120 FPS but my monitor only has a 100Hz refresh rate.

Cheers for the reply,
Do you think it makes a significant difference?
Since I've always used 1080p gaming my entire life, do you think moving to 2k makes a siginicant difference? As it's gonna cost me like £250 for a 2k monitor or £350 for 4k and I'll need probably a 4070 which will cost £600. So want to make sure its worth the upgrade

 

[jeremyj_83]

Cheers for the reply,
Do you think it makes a significant difference?
Since I've always used 1080p gaming my entire life, do you think moving to 2k makes a siginicant difference? As it's gonna cost me like £250 for a 2k monitor or £350 for 4k and I'll need probably a 4070 which will cost £600. So want to make sure its worth the upgrade

The biggest difference I see in gaming at 3440x1440 vs 1080p is field of view. The added width of the ultrawide monitor makes it such that you see more on screen. Textures are all a bit cleaner as well at the higher resolution. If you do anything productivity related the higher resolution monitor makes a huge difference there. I've been working from home for 4 years now and my single ultrawide monitor can do what I needed 2 monitors for at the office. I will put out that every single person I know that has gone to an ultrawide monitor has said they won't go back to a normal dual monitor setup or single 16:9 monitor either.

I would also say to look at the Radeon cards as they offer better value than the nVidia cards. For example an RX 7800XT starts at 460 Quid and offers rasterization performance slightly ahead of the 4070 at 1440p. The RX 7900 GRE 515 Quid and is around the rasterization performance of the 4070 Super. Both the Radeons also have 16GB VRAM instead of 12GB which could help in the future.

 

[Countess_C]

The size of the monitor matters too. What size is your current monitor?

I have a 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitor, and it was a big jump from 25" 1920x1080.

@jeremyj_83 suggested 3440x1440 and that's Ultrawide, so I guess a 34" would be as high as mine, but wider: https://www.displaywars.com/34-inch-d{3440x1440}-vs-27-inch-16x9

And I agree with him that that's a sweet spot, as it would look great and have nice FPS with a good card.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The size of the monitor matters too. What size is your current monitor?

I have a 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitor, and it was a big jump from 25" 1920x1080.

@jeremyj_83 suggested 3440x1440 and that's Ultrawide, so I guess a 34" would be as high as mine, but wider: https://www.displaywars.com/34-inch-d{3440x1440}-vs-27-inch-16x9

And I agree with him that that's a sweet spot, as it would look great and have nice FPS with a good card.

I have a 34" monitor and it has the same height as a 27" 1440p but is 33% wider.

I went from a 24" 1080p and 23" 1680x1050 setup to my ultrawide and the difference was huge.

 

[Countess_C]

I have a 34" monitor and it has the same height as a 27" 1440p but is 33% wider.

I went from a 24" 1080p and 23" 1680x1050 setup to my ultrawide and the difference was huge.

Nice! Larger in size and smaller pixels. You can't see the individual pixels when the PPI) pixels per inch) goes above ~100 and yours should be about 109 like mine. Not seeing the pixels at normal viewing distance that is.

4K would be a little sharper and smoother still (163 PPI for a 27" 16:9 or 34" Ultrawide), but maybe not worth it at the moment, with the lower FPS and lower quality setting in games with an affordable graphics card. But maybe in a couple of GPU generations... And by then maybe OLED screens with low or no burn-in will be mainstream.

 

[geofelt]

If you play fast action games, lower resolutions will allow faster graphics.
If you play games such as sims, mmo and strategy games, a 4k monitor will be wonderful.
My advice is to buy the largest 4k monitor you feel comfortable buying first.
Bust your budget if need be. A monitor will be with you for a very long time.
Buy the monitor first.
You will then get to know what you need for graphics.
You can always reduce the resolution in the short term to get better frame rates.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If we're talking about getting a monitor based on resolution between these two, I'd argue a 27" or 32" 4K monitor can let you have your cake and eat it to.

I've used a 27" 4K monitor and I'm on a 32" 4K monitor. The pixel density is such that 100% scaling is creeping up to uncomfortably small, with 125% getting better but 150% scaling at that sweet spot. While this means on the desktop, the effective resolution drops to 2560x1440, I never really have a need for more screen real estate beyond that. And if I'm multitasking by having multiple windows up to the side, I prefer a separate monitor because I don't want to hunt for a monitor that comes with software that offers better tiling solutions than what Windows provides.

In any case, the pixel density is key. While gaming looks sharp and fine at 4K, I can still drop it to 2560x1440 and barely notice that it's at that resolution because the tighter density helps blend things together. The only time I go "oh, right I'm not at native resolution" is if I see single pixel sized elements, but those tend to tend to be shimmering artifacts anyway. I did find that 2954x1662 is a nice middle ground though.

 

[ringmany]

I don't think I want a wide or curved monitor. I have 3 normal 1080p ones at the moment which are 24 inches. Looking online it seems most of the 4k ones are at least 27 inches. So I'd probably got for that size, still uncertain about the resolution, as watching many benchmark videos, it seems that a 4070 ti only gets around 50-60fps on most games at 4k max settings, but the prices cost around £700. A 4080 is also £1000.

I'm mostly playing older games, not too many new ones, but the games I play most tend to be things like:

Valorant
RDR2
The Witcher 3
Deep Rock Galactic

Plus some newer games like Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor. Anyone got any recommends or links to a monitor they'd recommend?

 

[hotaru.hino]

So I'd probably got for that size, still uncertain about the resolution, as watching many benchmark videos, it seems that a 4070 ti only gets around 50-60fps on most games at 4k max settings, but the prices cost around £700. A 4080 is also £1000.

Given a 27" 4K monitor, you don't have to play at 4K if the performance is too low. You can drop the resolution and it won't really look that bad.

This is certainly not the best way to depict it, but I took a photo of a game running at 2560x1440, 2954x1662, and 3840x2160 at

https://imgur.com/a/aHRrAFa

View: https://imgur.com/a/aHRrAFa
Try not to pixel peep, but rather look at it from a general overview plus still images don't tell you how the game looks when, you know, you're actually playing it. Also I know which image is which, but I purposely did not label them because that would create bias

Or to put another way, if you have a smartphone with a high resolution (one that's 1080p or higher), watch a video between 720p and 1080p resolution and see if you actually care enough about putting a lower resolution image on a higher resolution display.

 

[thestryker]

Unless you have a need for the pixel density (gaming isn't it) buying a 4k display is just going to net you worse visuals or worse performance. Now there's a lot of non gaming stuff that can benefit from the pixel density so it really depends on your overall use. Personally nothing but my TVs are 4k and I have no plans to change that. 32" (~39" UW) is the largest display I'd get with 1440p, but 27" (34" UW) is really the sweet spot for it.

 

[Countess_C]

I don't think I want a wide or curved monitor. I have 3 normal 1080p ones at the moment which are 24 inches. Looking online it seems most of the 4k ones are at least 27 inches. So I'd probably got for that size, still uncertain about the resolution, as watching many benchmark videos, it seems that a 4070 ti only gets around 50-60fps on most games at 4k max settings, but the prices cost around £700. A 4080 is also £1000.

If you are going to use more than one monitor your graphics card will have to do more work, so if you have a 4K plus two 1080p monitors the FPS in games will be even lower. But you could play at low settings or play at lower resolution. Not sure it it's worth it, but it's up to you.

Also remember that the processor is important too. When they test graphics cards they usually have one of the best gaming CPUs, and it affects the FPS a lot.

I bought a 4070 Ti Super recently and am happy with 27" 2560x1440. Very much nicer than a 1080p, and I don't have to worry about FPS. I want to wait a couple of hardware generations before I get a 4K monitor.

 

[ringmany]

Given a 27" 4K monitor, you don't have to play at 4K if the performance is too low. You can drop the resolution and it won't really look that bad.

This is certainly not the best way to depict it, but I took a photo of a game running at 2560x1440, 2954x1662, and 3840x2160 at

https://imgur.com/a/aHRrAFa

View: https://imgur.com/a/aHRrAFa
Try not to pixel peep, but rather look at it from a general overview plus still images don't tell you how the game looks when, you know, you're actually playing it. Also I know which image is which, but I purposely did not label them because that would create bias

Or to put another way, if you have a smartphone with a high resolution (one that's 1080p or higher), watch a video between 720p and 1080p resolution and see if you actually care enough about putting a lower resolution image on a higher resolution display.

In all honesty its difficult to say from photos. On first glance, the 3 photos to me seem almost identical. The top one seems to look the best to me, but again it's barely any difference from my perspective. Deffo not worth a £400 monitor and £700+ GPU for the difference in quality there.

Sadly none of my IRL friends have a 2k or 4k monitor I can look at to compare the differences.

 

[Silas Sanchez]

2560x1440 is a massive jump over 1080p at ~30". I know why so many find it to be the goldilocks zone. Dell rocked the world with their 30" 2560x1600 monitor in 06 and playing Oblivion on that was a quantum leap over 1080p at the time, that screen res has stood the test of time, since then so many fads and gimmicks like multi screens, but all I need is a single 30", it holds its own very well. To this day, when I fire up that screen it still gives me goose bumps, so Id imagine 1440p is very similar.
Imso games simply don't warrant 4K, the frame rate gets ruined for what is really mediocre visuals, that is to be expected since games are made for consoles first. I saw Far Cry 6 and said meh...original crysis looks "almost" as good. Don't kid yourself even the 4090 which costs as much as a mid range enduro mt bike gets brought to its knees at 4K.