Question Is a 4k upgrade worth the price over 1440p?

drakrhal

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Sep 22, 2018
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4,510
I am working on my first build in about 10 years and wanted to get the opinions of the pc community. I have not been able to personally experience 4k pc gaming or 1440p, so I wanted to know if you all think that the benefits are worth the upgrade in price.

To give you an idea of my gaming habits, I am coming from a PS5 on a Samsung 65" Q90 and enjoy the exclusive games on PS5 (Horizon, Last of Us, God of War), but hate having to choose between frame rate and quality. I play mostly single player games and sometimes will step into games like Overwatch. Going forward, I would probably play things like Cyberpunk, Diablo IV, and the newer Bethesda games, as well as whatever might come to game pass.

You can also tell from my PC building past, I am not likely to upgrade my PC every few years but would rather have similar performance for longer (ie I don't want to turn down settings to medium in 3 years to keep getting the same results).

I know with 1440p I can push high frame rates and Ray Tracing, but with 4k, I would be more limited on the frames, or have to dial down some of the settings. The cost difference is also around $800 to upgrade from a 4080 to 4090 and to upgrade to a higher monitor (MSI Optix to Migabyte M32U or M28U).

I just want to make sure before I spend $3K plus, I am not going to be disappointed with my decision to go with either option. I want it to be better than my PS5, which I assume both will be. I appreciate the advice and more experienced opinions you guys can give.
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
Well... I don't think you're going to like 4K for PC very much.
-"I hate having to choose between frame rate and quality." [There is no avoiding this. Games lean towards one or the other. Ones that can do both, are expensive to run than the other 2.]
-"I don't want to turn down settings to medium in 3 years to keep getting the same results." [Can't avoid this either. That's also asking for software/hardware development to stagnate so you don't have to change anything until you're ready to.]

Between the 3 most common resolutions(1080p, 1440, 2160p), the higher resolutions will cost you more money over time, warranting more frequent gpu upgrades as development progresses.
Dialing down settings is inevitable at all 3, but the lower ones take longer before you may need to do that.
 
You can also tell from my PC building past, I am not likely to upgrade my PC every few years but would rather have similar performance for longer (ie I don't want to turn down settings to medium in 3 years to keep getting the same results).
That pretty much sums up what you want. It's why 1080p is still popular to this day.
 

drakrhal

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Sep 22, 2018
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4,510
So my general take away from this would be to stay away from going 4k and buy a better 1440p GPU and monitor, as 1440p would take longer to be reduced in performance significantly. May need to upgrade in 5 years, not 3.

I don’t mind upgrading in general, just don’t have the disposable income every year to buy a new graphics card.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
One thing that might make it an easier decision going forward is you really can't tell the difference between 4k and 8k graphics in games.
I know you didn't ask about that, but as EU is also likely to ban 8k monitors for energy usage reasons, the max size monitors likely to get to is 4k (or maybe 5k) so just don't worry about keeping pace with monitor sizes going forward, and just find a size you like.

I had 4k before... it spent most of its time at 200% scaling meaning it was actually running at 1440p, except in games that ran at native. My GPU wasn't good enough to play games in 4k at 60hz. I now have a 1440p screen that runs at 144hz

refresh rates will increase but like 4k/8k you reach a point you don't notice the difference... so other things need to be invented to keep us buying new screens... we not there yet. But its close.