GTX 980 SC good enough for 1440p?

[platonicpotato]

Hello, I've been thinking of buying a new monitor and I was wondering if my gtx 980 will be able to handle it. I play lots of games most of which are very demanding. Do you guys think i should go ahead and upgrade the monitor or do you think that the card can't handle it?

 

[VincentP]

I have a 1440p monitor with a GTX 770. It has required a reduction in settings, but mostly ok.
Expect frame rates at 2560x1440 about 60% of what you were getting at 1920x1080 at the same settings.
You can lower settings to compensate if necessary. Certainly 2560x1440 looks a lot better by itself, and disabling anti-aliasing for instance isn't a big deal.

 

[loki1944]

If you want to max settings on demanding games you're going to need another 980 for some games like The Division, AC: Syndicate, or Crysis 3 on max settings. If you're willing to compromise and lower settings a bit, it should be alright. It took me two 780Tis and two 290Xs on two different systems to get really good image quality and performance @1440p on either of those systems with the most demanding games in 2015.

 

[platonicpotato]

If you want to max settings on demanding games you're going to need another 980 for some games like The Division, AC: Syndicate, or Crysis 3 on max settings. If you're willing to compromise and lower settings a bit, it should be alright. It took me two 780Tis and two 290Xs on two different systems to get really good image quality and performance @1440p on either of those systems with the most demanding games in 2015.

Can I achieve at least 45-50fps at 1440p Ultra settings on games that are coming out this year? I don't think I can afford a new GPU AND a new monitor too unfortunately.

 

[loki1944]

If you want to max settings on demanding games you're going to need another 980 for some games like The Division, AC: Syndicate, or Crysis 3 on max settings. If you're willing to compromise and lower settings a bit, it should be alright. It took me two 780Tis and two 290Xs on two different systems to get really good image quality and performance @1440p on either of those systems with the most demanding games in 2015.

Can I achieve at least 50fps at 1440p Ultra settings on games that are coming out this year? I don't think I can afford a new GPU AND a new monitor too unfortunately.

That's going to depend on the game, if it's something extremely demanding like the ones I mentioned, then no you won't, but for less demanding games you will. But you can just drop the settings a notch and hit decent FPS in 99% of cases. Pretty much worse case you are looking at on max/near max settings @1440p on a single GTX 980 is reflected here https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GTX_980_STRIX_OC/12.html.

Also keep in mind that if you do find the game too demanding you can always drop to 1920x1200/1080 for that game on a 1440p screen.

 

[chef7734]

No. Not on ultra. I would not expect 50-60 fps on a 980sc. I really think the 1070 is the sweet spot for 1440 gaming right now. You should be ok with high settings on most games. Check out this review on the 1060. It has several gpu's for comparison that you can look at. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sNk3blRBuQ

 

[fluffa]

depends on the games your playing, I got a 1440p on a 980ti, on some of the heavy title like say far cry primal benchmark
Min 54
Avg 66
Max 79
That's everything on full, AA off

 

[platonicpotato]

Well, guess buying a new monitor isn't a very good idea then. Like i said i can't buy both a monitor and a new GPU so i guess i'm stuck with 1080p unfortunately. Thanks for the info.

 

[loki1944]

Well, guess buying a new monitor isn't a very good idea then. Like i said i can't buy both a monitor and a new GPU so i guess i'm stuck with 1080p unfortunately. Thanks for the info.

Well, you will still be able to hit 50 FPS in a lot of games....but, like I said, for some you won't, not on max settings. Just keep in mind that you can buy the monitor and just drop the resolution from 1440p to 1080p if you find a game too taxing. Also keep in mind that you can use DSR on your current monitor as well.

 

[chef7734]

I would rather drop my quality settings from ultra to high and drop fxaa then drop from 1440 back to 1080. You should be alright for now and can save up for a second card later on or a new gpu later on.

 

[platonicpotato]

Well, guess buying a new monitor isn't a very good idea then. Like i said i can't buy both a monitor and a new GPU so i guess i'm stuck with 1080p unfortunately. Thanks for the info.

Well, you will still be able to hit 50 FPS in a lot of games....but, like I said, for some you won't, not on max settings. Just keep in mind that you can buy the monitor and just drop the resolution from 1440p to 1080p if you find a game too taxing. Also keep in mind that you can use DSR on your current monitor as well.

Honestly I feel like I made a very big mistake buying a 980 to begin with. It's only been about 2 years and I already feel the need to upgrade and turn down settings even at 1080p sometimes. Now that i thought about it a little more I think buying a new monitor to use on my current rig is an even more wasteful purchase than the $500 i spent on the 980. If I buy the 1440p monitor i'll just end up having to drop the graphics to medium or the resolution from 1440p to 1080 so in the end i'll be spending more money for nothing.

 

[chef7734]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

 

[platonicpotato]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

That's exactly what i'm saying. Either I have to drop down the settings drastically or the resolution back to 1080p. Either way in the end it won't make a difference at all when it comes to image quality. The GTX 980 is barely capable of handling new games at 1080p to begin with and I don't even know what made me come up with the idea of buying a 1440p monitor if i'm still using this card. It hurts even more to see the 1060 perform better than the 980 while being about $200 cheaper.

 

[loki1944]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

It does make sense if the game/settings are too demanding for the card to hit 50-60FPS. That way you have a full 1440p experience for games the card can handle at that resolution/settings, but can still drop to 1080p if a game proves too much.

Also don't get too worked up about the GTX 1060; I have the Asus GTX 1060 STRIX in one of my spare rigs and my 780Ti MATRIX can match it or beat it, depending on the game.

You didn't waste your money getting a GTX 980; it's just that graphics card move very quickly in terms of performance increases compared to something like CPUs.

I figure that if I buy a top end card it will last me about 3 years; with newer games on that 3rd year requiring some dropping of settings or resolution to maintain good performance.

 

[chef7734]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

It does make sense if the game/settings are too demanding for the card to hit 50-60FPS.

In this case you drop the game settings. Reduce from ultra and anti anti aliasing and you should be good. YOu have smaller pixels and more of them per inch. A lower setting will look better on a 1440 monitor then it does on a 1080 monitor. Heck a high setting on a 1440 monitor usually looks better than ultra on a 1080 monitor.

Back to the op. For the most part you should be ok, but if you are in doubt, I dont blame you for not buying a 1440 monitor. I personally will never go back to a 1080 monitor.

 

[loki1944]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

It does make sense if the game/settings are too demanding for the card to hit 50-60FPS.

In this case you drop the game settings. Reduce from ultra and anti anti aliasing and you should be good. YOu have smaller pixels and more of them per inch. A lower setting will look better on a 1440 monitor then it does on a 1080 monitor. Heck a high setting on a 1440 monitor usually looks better than ultra on a 1080 monitor.

Back to the op. For the most part you should be ok, but if you are in doubt, I dont blame you for not buying a 1440 monitor. I personally will never go back to a 1080 monitor.

Well that very much depends on what you find to look better and which game; dropping to FXAA in some games looks worse on a 1440p monitor than retaining MSAA @1080p. And dropping to ultra 1080p @60FPS can most certainly look better than low 1440p @60FPS.

 

[aylafan]

It really depends on what games you play. I only have a GTX 970, but I have ultra/max graphic settings in less demanding games like Overwatch (65-80FPS), CS:GO (180-299FPS), and StarCraft 2 on a 27" 1440p monitor. Anti-aliasing is less important on a 1440p monitor than it is on a 1080p monitor so you can turn it completely off for some games to gain the extra FPS.

I will never go back to a 1080p monitor again for my home PC after using a 1440p monitor. The extra real estate really does make everything more enjoyable.

 

[platonicpotato]

The 980 was not only priced about $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform any better than either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

 

[loki1944]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

 

[platonicpotato]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

Well i meant the 980 only performs about 10% better than the 970 according to some benchmarks.

 

[aylafan]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

Well i meant the 980 only performs about 10% better than the 970 according to some benchmarks.

Well, the GTX 970 is limited to 3.5GB fast memory and performance considerably drops once it goes above that. The GTX 980 can fully use 4GB without dropping performance. I have no idea what NVIDIA was thinking. None of my games use that much VRAM yet so I'm still happy with my GTX 970.

 

[chef7734]

Why would you need to drop from 1440 to 1080? Just turn down the settings a little. If you did drop down to 1080 it would be wasteful. It makes no sense to use 1080 on a 1440 monitor.

It does make sense if the game/settings are too demanding for the card to hit 50-60FPS.

In this case you drop the game settings. Reduce from ultra and anti anti aliasing and you should be good. YOu have smaller pixels and more of them per inch. A lower setting will look better on a 1440 monitor then it does on a 1080 monitor. Heck a high setting on a 1440 monitor usually looks better than ultra on a 1080 monitor.

Back to the op. For the most part you should be ok, but if you are in doubt, I dont blame you for not buying a 1440 monitor. I personally will never go back to a 1080 monitor.

Well that very much depends on what you find to look better and which game; dropping to FXAA in some games looks worse on a 1440p monitor than retaining MSAA @1080p. And dropping to ultra 1080p @60FPS can most certainly look better than low 1440p @60FPS.

You would not need to drop to low on 1440.

 

[platonicpotato]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

Well i meant the 980 only performs about 10% better than the 970 according to some benchmarks.

Well, the GTX 970 is limited to 3.5GB fast memory and performance considerably drops once it goes above that. The GTX 980 can fully use 4GB without dropping performance. I have no idea what NVIDIA was thinking. None of my games use that much VRAM yet so I'm still happy with my GTX 970.

I thought the 3.5gb cap on the 970s was some kind of bug that they fixed and they're able to utilize 4gb of vram now. Even if that's not the case and the 970s were only intended to utilize 3.5gbs, that still does not justify paying $200 more for the 980 that has 4gb and performs about 10% better.

 

[loki1944]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

Well i meant the 980 only performs about 10% better than the 970 according to some benchmarks.

Yeah, well that depends very much on what the clock speed is really; you can get lucky and get a 970 that comes close to a 980 with overclocking; generally the performance difference between the "mid-high" end cards (70/80s) the last few years haven't been exactly huge. I have a GTX 1070 in one of my travel computers, $450 when I bought it, trades blows with one of my $737 980Tis from 2015; just the way it goes. Aim center mass on the series if you want bang for buck. But like I said, GTX 980 is still a good card, and can still beat a 1060 depending on the game. Jarred Walton had a fairly comprehensive run of cards with reference 1060/980 included and the 980 came out on top; albeit barely: http://www.pcgamer.com/geforce-gtx-1060-review/.

I'll be honest with you though; 1440p isn't really that mind-blowing; I spend a lot of time overseas using my 17.3" laptop or a hotel TV for my monitor @1080p and I don't really notice the difference for the most part. If I personally had to choose between say, a GPU and a 1440p screen, the GPU would win every time. Just not that huge a deal. In fact I prefer a big 1080p TV (obviously one without real bad input lag); 40+ inches to a 27 inch 1440p screen. Reason I use 1440p monitors is for running surround; otherwise as a standalone thing I've been pretty non-plussed vs 1080p. Sure there's a slight difference, but it's nothing amazing.

 

[chef7734]

The 980 was not only priced $200 above the 970 AND the 1060, but it doesn't even perform as well as either of them. It was a complete and utter waste of money and I wish I did some more research before i bought it. Anyways I decided to stick with what I have now because I definitely don't want to waste more money than I already have.

If your 980 is performing worse than a 970, then there may be something wrong with it.

Well i meant the 980 only performs about 10% better than the 970 according to some benchmarks.

Yeah, well that depends very much on what the clock speed is really; you can get lucky and get a 970 that comes close to a 980 with overclocking; generally the performance difference between the "mid-high" end cards (70/80s) the last few years haven't been exactly huge. I have a GTX 1070 in one of my travel computers, $450 when I bought it, trades blows with one of my $737 980Tis from 2015; just the way it goes. Aim center mass on the series if you want bang for buck. But like I said, GTX 980 is still a good card, and can still beat a 1060 depending on the game. Jarred Walton had a fairly comprehensive run of cards with reference 1060/980 included and the 980 came out on top; albeit barely: http://www.pcgamer.com/geforce-gtx-1060-review/.

I'll be honest with you though; 1440p isn't really that mind-blowing; I spend a lot of time overseas using my 17.3" laptop or a hotel TV for my monitor @1080p and I don't really notice the difference for the most part. If I personally had to choose between say, a GPU and a 1440p screen, the GPU would win every time. Just not that huge a deal. In fact I prefer a big 1080p TV (obviously one without real bad input lag); 40+ inches to a 27 inch 1440p screen. Reason I use 1440p monitors is for running surround; otherwise as a standalone thing I've been pretty non-plussed vs 1080p. Sure there's a slight difference, but it's nothing amazing.

I guess some people just cant tell a big difference. To me anything in 1080 above 24" looks like garbage. I can see a huge difference between 1080, 1440, and 4k and a huge difference between tn and ips..