Question Should I go for a 1440p display?

[TheOnlyGoodGuy]

I recently got a new PC and currently I am wondering if I should stick with 1080p 144hz or move on to 1440p 144hz monitor with g-sync.

My current setting:
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 DUKE
CPU: I7 9700k with additional air cooling
RAM: 32gb 3200mhz DDR4
Sotrage: SSD+HDD

I know that this configuration should not have a problem with running modern games at a decent framerate on 1440p display, however I am afraid that in 1-2 years or so I will have to upgrade the hardware in order to maintain 60+ fps at max settings with modern games.

I have been looking at the RTX 2080 performance with 1440p and it looks like it holds around 100 FPS on average with current AAA games, however there are still titles where average fps is around 80 or even 60 which makes me wonder about the future performance with games yet to come. (source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-02-13-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-benchmarks-7001)

So on the one hand I feel that using 1080p is waste of my PC power, however i would also like to avoid situation when switching to 1440p display will cause a framerate drop below 60fps now or in the near future as this is something I would like to maintain.

The more research i do the more conflicted I am, and would like to ask for your opinion about this.

What would you do in my position and why?
Thanks for all your feedback in advance!

 

[menetlaus]

IMHO as 1440 is roughly 40% more pixels than 1080, by the time games are demanding enough to really be noticeable at 1440P with your hardware then struggles for ultra settings at 1080P will soon follow.

Yes 40% more pixels matters, but with g-sync on and assuming game runs 90 FPS at 1440 it would still be dropping below 144 at 1080P

Based on current brand spanking new, top end hardware... I'm guessing you tend to upgrade a fair bit and clearly have the budget for it... so that kinda skews my suggestion for you to get the new screen, enjoy the shiny especially as you went for the RTX 2080.

 

[TheOnlyGoodGuy]

IMHO as 1440 is roughly 40% more pixels than 1080, by the time games are demanding enough to really be noticeable at 1440P with your hardware then struggles for ultra settings at 1080P will soon follow.

Yes 40% more pixels matters, but with g-sync on and assuming game runs 90 FPS at 1440 it would still be dropping below 144 at 1080P

Based on current brand spanking new, top end hardware... I'm guessing you tend to upgrade a fair bit and clearly have the budget for it... so that kinda skews my suggestion for you to get the new screen, enjoy the shiny especially as you went for the RTX 2080.

Thanks a lot for your feedback! Until now it was more of a 1 bigger expense to last for longer time instead of upgrading single components more often, that is why I am a bit worried that after buying the hardware that was supposed to perform really well for years I will cut that period significantly if I will switch to higher resolution. Currently i get over 100 FPS average with modern games (Hunt Showdown, For Honor, Monster Hunter World) But there are also games like Kingdom Come Deliverance where the FPS can drop below 60 in demanding areas. I understand that the optimization for that game is not the greatest thing in the world and AAA titles should have optimization on much higher level, but it simply makes me wonder if i wont be forced to upgrade much faster than intended. initially i hoped that this setup should be able to run games for about 5 years, not sure how realistic is that though.

 

[mjbn1977]

absolutely!!! go with a 1440p WQHD. Your system is perfect for this. I have the same video card (MSI 2080 Duke) and its amazing.

 

[TheOnlyGoodGuy]

absolutely!!! go with a 1440p WQHD. Your system is perfect for this. I have the same video card (MSI 2080 Duke) and its amazing.

Great to hear that! what games do you play and what FPS do you get on average with 1440p? I assume you are running games with max settings or do you tweak them a bit in order to get good FPS?

 

[mjbn1977]

I play everything on Ultra Settings and in WQHD 1440p:

Battlefield 5 War Stories Single player with Ray Tracing (no dlss) on high: between 60 and 70fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: between 90 and 100fps
Assassins Creed Odyssey: between 60 and 75 fps
Kingdom Come Deliverance: between 60 and 80 fps (with some drops under 60fps in a few situations).
Metro Exodus with Raytracing on High and sttings in Ultra: around 70fps
Far Cry 5: between 100fps and 110fps
Wolfenstein II New Colossus: around 144fps
Witcher 3: around 95fps

Pretty much everything without tweaking. Only in Kingdom Come Deliverance I changed shadows and shaders from Ultra to Very High. And in Metro Exodus I use Ultra even so it has an better Extreme setting which nobody uses because it reduces performance by 30% with no visual improvement.

 

[TheOnlyGoodGuy]

That is what I am afraid of, if right now there are games demanding enough to have 60/70 fps I feel like in the next year or two I will have to lower the settings or buy something better in order to maintain this framerate.

 

[mjbn1977]

most of the games with 60/70 is because of ray tracing. Without it you would look at around 100 or 100+. You can always turn it off. But I would say that the listed games with ray tracing is a good indicator of near future games performance. Besides this not much will happen in terms of performance. As long no new generation of consoles will appear not much will happen to affect gaming performance. And this is not going to happen before late 2019 or early 2020.

also, not getting 1440p and basically relinquish a much better visual experience due to the almost doubled resolution, because of being worried to need to tweak games sometime in the future, is not making much sense. Why even bother with new hardware if one is just worried about it becoming obsolete.

 

[mjbn1977]

also for single player games 60fps is absolutely fine....even if its in the low 50s I don't really feel a big difference. For competitive online shooter over 100fps is desired, but those games are soo fast that you can anyway reduce quality settings because you so busy fighting that you have no time to enjoy any subtle visual improvements.....

 

[avesmart]

Definitely go for 1440p, your GPU can easily pump out high frame rates on ultra settings. I you need higher FPS then just drop the settings a little. 1440p is more future proof as well.