4K at Mid/High Settings vs 1440p at Ultra

[holabola]

Currently, I have a 1440p monitor (One of those off brands you grab from eBay for like $250 xD), and I love it. I recently bought a GTX 970, and feel like I can make the jump to 4K, but don't know if I should. I really only play games that aren't very taxing like WoW and LoL, but occasionally I throw out things like Farcry and games like that. I know I'll be able to play those on Ultra. My question is, when I do want to play other games that are more taxing, will playing them on medium to get 60fps still look better than on 1440p?

 

[bumnut53]

Stick with 1440, you would need 2 970's to game at 4K. max settings at 1440 would look better than medium settings at 4K

 

[jessterman21]

Remember that 4K is more than twice as demanding as 1440p.

But feel free to try out Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution and try out Medium settings at 4K.

 

[Lorvensire]

The FPS hit will be significantly greater than the resolution increase.

 

[Demorthus]

I'm nearly in the same situation as yourself. Yet I can tell you with absolute certaintity that if you have only one 970 then 4k won't really be that great.. you'd need maybe low settings on most things just to survive an okay FPS. Stick with 1440p as you will get the better performance. If you want 4k with steady fps and higher details I'd advocate SLI. I'm planning on going 4k or 1440p @144Hz but I'm getting 980's in dual SLI ..Hope this helps as a reference!

Also bear in mind that 1440p will yeild you higher fps since there's less pixels to push so you can up more details like textures. Yet it's vice versa, with 4k you'll have more pixels to push and you won't be able to crank as many details higher with a single 970 because just the bare resolution will already drop performance, and add to that some more higher details or even textures and we're talking about a much, MUCH more demanding test.

 

[belzoth]

I wouldn't even consider 4k with a single gtx 970. Maybe if you had a second one. Going to 4k is incredibly demanding on your GPU and honestly it is hard to tell that much of a difference from a 1440p monitor. Plus there is the expense of the monitor itself. If you get a 970 in sli eventually you could do it if you really wanted to but even then it will still be very taxing on your system for triple A games.