graphics 1080p ultra vs 1440p medium

[Goddess Zoe]

my question is, what would look better? 1080p at ultra settings or 1440p at medium settings?

[kelvinhall05]

Depends on the game and the size if your monitor.

[Vitamanic]

That's subjective to the user, kind of an impossible question to answer. 

[Goddess Zoe]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Depends on the game and the size if your monitor.

let's say hypothetically you're playing the witcher 3 and the monitor is 27 inches

[Applefreak]

Depends on the scaling ability of the display. If it is native 1440p and does scale perfectly, 1080p ultra would look better. However you could probably do 1440p ultra as well and drop aa to a minumum because of the increased resolution, thus regaining some performance. I prefer 1080p ultra on a native 1080p 27" IPS panel. But that comes down to personal preference in the end. If you are thinking of buying a 1440p monitor, look for a larger panel like 30 inches for example. at 27 inches that screen will be crisp, too crisp for everything else than gaming in my opinion but again, personal preference.

[VeganJoy]

generally, games are optimized for medium graphics settings as the majority of people are playing games on consoles and entry level pcs, not with titans in sli lol. really, theres not a big drop in fps from 1080p to 1440p so chances are that youd be able to get the same framerates as 1080p ultra as with 1440p high, maybe a bit of tweaking. that would almost certainly look "better"

[BuckyBallin]

I play witcher 3 pretty often at 1440p medium and it's a good experience, my 1070 ti gets ~90fps on medium, just under 80 on high, ~60 on ultra but I'd rather have more fps than max detail. TBH in some ways medium looks better, it's easier to make out certain items and characters without all the extra frills on high and ultra. Maybe you can try with and without the high res texture mod and see what works for you. IMO 1080p ultra would look better for screenshots but 1440p medium is a better gaming experience, your opinion might be different. 

[Exeon]

That's a vague question.

Is the resolution of your screen native? Or are you looking to buy a 2K monitor and will have to turn down the settings?

 

What looks better will mostly depend on the screen size here as well, higher resolution increases the pixel density, but at different sizes it might not matter much.

Getting 1440p on a 24" monitor might be way less noticable than a 27" monitor.

 

[Doobeedoo]

No point going higher than 1080p if you need to sacrifice graphics settings quality or framerate a lot.