1440p/4K gamig worth it?

[Merkey]

Hi, so I am thinking about upgrading my monitor BUT, I have never tried any gaming above 1080p&144Hz, so I cannot say if that is really noticable. Is higher resolution and lower framerate better than high fps and low res?

[shadowbyte]

coming from 2560x1080, 1440p is quite the jump

everything is so much more crisp and 'lifelike', for lack of a better term

plus, it's not that much more taxing than 1080p ultrawide

I'd suggest a 144hz 1440p panel, such as the Dell S2716DG, which I personally own, and love. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1440p is noticeably better than 1080.

 

4K not so much. Not because performance issues, but because I don't think assets were made with that resolution in mind. Especially texture resolution. So everything looks almost the same. Maybe sharper. It may help you though if you play games where you need to identify things from very far away.

[WereCat]

Honestly, in games I can barely tell any difference at 1440p vs 1080p besides less aliasing.

On desktop, that's a whole new story.

[LooneyJuice]

As stated, 1440p is a nice bump, anything more isn't as big of a difference and is insanely taxing. 4K also makes 0 sense for me when it comes to regular sized monitors, the viewing distance coupled with the pixel density makes it completely redundant. Makes way more sense for very large displays (TVs etc).

[Narnash]

Well, it depents on monitor size, how far you sit away from your monitor and your vision of course.

From my experience is 24" enough for example, I don't really like ultrawides and 27" is to big for my taste (25" could be a sweet spot for me but there are no panels for that), because I sit only 40-55 cm away from the monitor. At the same time I say for me 1440p is enough because of the relative high pixel density I have with only 24".

If you also sit relatively near to your screen and want 27" than I guess 4k could be the reasonalbe choice.

 

 

But from my perspective 1440p and a possibly higher hz is desirable.

4K is a big factor for technical drawings, sketches and so on ... best in combination with the biggest screen possible and some kind of touch sense for scrolling, but thats a rather specific use case (man I love those big 4K screens with IR touch sensing for technical drawings

 

 

 

PS: my eye sight is normal to good on close range, I have a very small far sight error.

[Chris94_NOR]

I started on 1080p gaming, and then i went over to 1440p. Big difference. If you have the money for it, go for it. My opinion, don't waste more money on 4K, well, it's not very noticeable, and not many games are meant for it. If you would go to VR stuff, then i would of course recommend 4K, since i think VR is more designed in that direction, if i hope i am right on that subject.

[GER_T4IGA]

It alll depends on whether you can drive higher resolutions at desired framerates and also viewing distance+panelsize (the lather in combination with resolution the relative pixel density).

People sit farther or closer from their mointor so they come to conclusions of worth or not but ususally without mentioning said distance.

I have played on 1080p 60Hz 24" and 144Hz 24" and recently 1440p 27" 165Hz all at a distance of about 60cm.
1440p 27" is slightly higher PPI than 1080p 24" and still noticable at this distance. Going back to 1080p because I had to send back my 1440p monitor(another story) I notice the screen size more than the pixel density tbh. I also had the opportunity to play on a 27" 1080p screen at less tahn 50cm distance at a friend's house for a short period a long while ago. Although having low PPI and close viewing distance it wasn't really that terrible.
I hoüe one can somehow derive my conclsuion from this unstructured ramble. Said conclusion is that 1440p is worth it over 1080p although you will need at least a 1080 to achieve framerates that you were used to from 1080p144. If you get a 1440p screen get at least a 27" if your viewing distance is similar to those mentioned. People have said in reviews 4k panels should be at least 32" across. I couldn't experience that myself yet but it seems about accurate. I don't advise going back down to a 60Hz panel again ... high refreshrates are just to good!

[GER_T4IGA]

6 minutes ago, Chris94_NOR said:

I started on 1080p gaming, and then i went over to 1440p. Big difference. If you have the money for it, go for it. My opinion, don't waste more money on 4K, well, it's not very noticeable, and not many games are meant for it. If you would go to VR stuff, then i would of course recommend 4K, since i think VR is more designed in that direction, if i hope i am right on that subject.

Well Rift and Vive are 1080x1200 per eye which makes for 2160x1200 which is below 1440p in terms of resolution but I guess there is even more calculation trickery that has to be done before conventional monitors can be compared to HMDs.

[Merkey]

Thanks for all the aswers, I just looked at prices and it seems like 4K monitors are almost identically priced as 1440p in my country - no reason for 1440p then. Would the image look weird/ not sharp if I played at 1440p at 4K monitor?

[Princess Luna]

4 hours ago, shadowbyte said:

coming from 2560x1080, 1440p is quite the jump

1680x1050p to 2560x1080p was quite jump for me by itself

 

There is no way around this, the higher the resolution the more noticeable is the upgrade, worth it? It'll depend the budgets but most of the time yes it is.

 

 I personally feel 75hz+ already makes CS:GO more playable enough so IPS panels are great options, after all it is more noticeable go from 60hz to 100hz than 100hz to 144hz.

[i_build_nanosuits]

4 hours ago, Merkey said:

Hi, so I am thinking about upgrading my monitor BUT, I have never tried any gaming above 1080p&144Hz, so I cannot say if that is really noticable. Is higher resolution and lower framerate better than high fps and low res?

1440p 144/165hz with variable refresh rate (gsync or freesync depending which GPU team) is worth every penny...4K is really not worth it unless you're talking a big ass TV in your living room.

[i_build_nanosuits]

54 minutes ago, Merkey said:

Thanks for all the aswers, I just looked at prices and it seems like 4K monitors are almost identically priced as 1440p in my country - no reason for 1440p then. Would the image look weird/ not sharp if I played at 1440p at 4K monitor?

yes it would, doN,t buy 4K it's crap for gaming, you'll end up playing at 1080p on it most of the time anyways.

IMHO, from a gaming standpoint going from 1080p 144hz to 4K 60hz on a desktop monitor is a downgrade, gaming wise.

Save until you can afford a high refresh rate 2560x1440 144hz gaming monitor with Gsync or freesync.

[Coaxialgamer]

Depends pn your hardware honee. If you have to lower settings or framerate to get there, it isn't worth it over 1080p. 

A good trick is to lower or disable AA for extra performance. Going down to fxaa at 1440p and no aa at 4k is a good tradeoff imo

[michaelocarroll007]

I see a big difference in All 3. Though a sweet middle spot if your use to high refresh rate is to go 1440p 144hz. If your not that crazy about refresh rates id reccomend 4k because 1440p is the middle ground going to be forgotten about shortly as 4k monitors are getting close to the same price as 1440p. If your worried about GPU power you can run 4k at 1440p doesnt look bad still better then 1080p IMO and or 3200x1800  Way better then 1080p but not yet Full 4k Taxing.  and youll grow into the monitor in a generation or so more of graphics cards. 

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

I haven't tried something like 1440p at <27 inches myself, but at 32" it's awesome. You might think that's too big for the resolution to make a big difference, but it's the exact same pixel density as 1080p at 24", and I sit quite far back from my monitor, so it's more of a matter of screen real estate over sharpness for me. 

 

I'm sure 27 inches will be great, too. I've always been more of a picture quality person than a framerate person, and I've yet to experience 144Hz, so I would generally recommend a 1440p 60Hz panel over a TN 144Hz, but the new 1440p 144Hz monitors look awesome.

 

I'm not buying 4K gaming, It's not really here yet. 4K is awesome for pretty much anything else, though. Playing any sort of RTS game would look great, though. 

 

For gaming, 144Hz is really the way to go (especially for FPS), but I use my PC mainly for school work, so I prefer having the extra real estate. I generally wouldn't go above 24" for 1080p, below 24" for 1440p, above 32" for 1440p, and below 27" for 4K. 

 

If you have the money, a 1440p 144Hz monitor or a Predator X34 are pretty much the best options right now.

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

Wait..what's "gamig"?

[aithos]

On 6/27/2017 at 1:18 AM, Merkey said:

Hi, so I am thinking about upgrading my monitor BUT, I have never tried any gaming above 1080p&144Hz, so I cannot say if that is really noticable. Is higher resolution and lower framerate better than high fps and low res?

The answer is: it depends.

 

If you have a system that can run 1080p 300fps and are upgrading to 1440p and getting 100+ fps then the answer is: yes, it's worth it.  The thing is that you don't want to sacrifice refresh rate on your monitor for the sake of getting a higher resolution, so as long as you're looking at a 120hz+ monitor with little to no input lag and a decent response time then you're golden.  Even if you can't max settings 150+ fps you can tweak AA to get good performance and a video card upgrade eventually will also get you there.

 

If you're talking about going to 4K at 60hz then the answer is: no, it isn't worth it.  At that point you're sacrificing smoothness, adding motion blur, likely adding input lag, ruining positional accuracy (ie: information delay) and the kicker is that games aren't even using native 4K textures so you're basically upscaling.  Will it look better?  Sure, when it isn't a blurry mess during motion. 

 

Personally, I'd take a 1440p monitor with ULMB and 120hz+ any day.  You'll see a huge bump in graphical quality, you'll retain the perks of higher refresh rates (smoother motion, less eye fatigue, better positional accuracy/registration, etc) and you'll eliminate motion blur with ULMB giving you a crisp clean picture unlike anything except the best gaming CRT monitors from back in the day. 

 

Oh, and unless you're doing 32" or higher... 4K is pretty pointless unless you're sitting too close to your monitor.  At 24" it's indistinguishable between 1440p and 4K, at 27" it's virtually indistinguishable, and at 30" most people still wouldn't notice unless they were REALLY looking for it. 

[bomerr]

3 hours ago, aithos said:

The answer is: it depends.

 

If you have a system that can run 1080p 300fps and are upgrading to 1440p and getting 100+ fps then the answer is: yes, it's worth it.  The thing is that you don't want to sacrifice refresh rate on your monitor for the sake of getting a higher resolution, so as long as you're looking at a 120hz+ monitor with little to no input lag and a decent response time then you're golden.  Even if you can't max settings 150+ fps you can tweak AA to get good performance and a video card upgrade eventually will also get you there.

 

If you're talking about going to 4K at 60hz then the answer is: no, it isn't worth it.  At that point you're sacrificing smoothness, adding motion blur, likely adding input lag, ruining positional accuracy (ie: information delay) and the kicker is that games aren't even using native 4K textures so you're basically upscaling.  Will it look better?  Sure, when it isn't a blurry mess during motion. 

 

Personally, I'd take a 1440p monitor with ULMB and 120hz+ any day.  You'll see a huge bump in graphical quality, you'll retain the perks of higher refresh rates (smoother motion, less eye fatigue, better positional accuracy/registration, etc) and you'll eliminate motion blur with ULMB giving you a crisp clean picture unlike anything except the best gaming CRT monitors from back in the day. 

 

Oh, and unless you're doing 32" or higher... 4K is pretty pointless unless you're sitting too close to your monitor.  At 24" it's indistinguishable between 1440p and 4K, at 27" it's virtually indistinguishable, and at 30" most people still wouldn't notice unless they were REALLY looking for it. 

Completely agree.

 

I have an older Korean  27" 1440p ~96hz monitor right now and its been good to me. If I was going to purchase a monitor right now then I would get one of the low motion blue / low response time settings to provide better picture quality while aiming. I do want to get a 40" 4k display in the future when they finally bring out gaming-grade versions with low input lag. I feel that size provides really good immersion experience but 4k at 30" or less isn't worth it. 

[aithos]

9 minutes ago, bomerr said:

Completely agree.

 

I have an older Korean  27" 1440p ~96hz monster right now and its been good to me. If I was going to purchase a monster right now then I would get one of the low motion blue / low response time settings to provide better picture quality while aiming. I do want to get a 40" 4k display in the future when they finally bring out gaming-grade versions with low input lag. I feel that size provides really good immersion experience but 4k at 30" or less isn't worth it. 

That's exactly what I had as a primary monitor before getting my PG279Q (XSTAR 2710 OC to 110hz).  The korean monitor definitely looks better because it's a glossy monitor and I despise anti-glare coating, but for gaming the Asus utterly destroys it in every other way.  The XSTAR doesn't have awful input lag, but it's noticeable (same goes for motion blur) and so removing those things was night and day in overall experience.  The only thing that could make the Asus better is removing the AG coating, which I've toyed with doing if I could find a suitable clear protector to go on the screen after removing it...

 

I'm also planning to get a 4K screen to replace the korean one as my secondary monitor, but I won't do it until someone releases a glossy one.  There was apparently an expensive Dell last fall with a glass screen but it's been out of stock and even Dell can't tell me if it's ever going to be back in stock.

[StormEye]

I have jumped from 1080P60 -> 1440P165 last year.

 

From my experience, jump in resolution (1080->1440P) does not mean any better gaming experience.

It only is beneficial if you are playing lots of MMOs that allow you to change HUD locations, giving you way more screen space options.

As for productivity / web browsing, its awesome.

 

100+fps gaming, though, is a very significant thing I am glad I got to experience and love. And since you already have a 144hz screen, you are not gonna get any WOW factor in 1440P. You are probably better off going for 4K monitor if you really want to change now.

 

However, there will be releases of 4K 144hz HDR + whatever monitor coming at the end of this year, so it would be better to wait until then. Monitors are a long term investment that can last extremely long time as long as you take care of it.

[datboi7321]

Before you do that, you need to make on sure that your PC can even run in 4K!

[Merkey]

20 hours ago, datboi7321 said:

Before you do that, you need to make on sure that your PC can even run in 4K!

Of course, I am not going to buy a new monitor now. I just want to have some refference for future upgrades, I am planning to buy a new gpu first

 

[ThumbWarriorDX]

My GPU can't push 1440 at 144hz in Overwatch, but in motion at 144hz I effectively can't see the drop in image quality that 75% renderscale causes at a normal viewing distance. I have to stop to be able to notice it.

If I'd sprung for G-sync it would be running around 110 fps and I wouldn't have to worry about it. This is on a GTX 1070 btw.

Higher res is important for some things(MOAR BLENDER PANELS), but when it comes to first-person action games(compared to say, top-down MoBA games) the high framerate is importanter.

[JabroniBaloney]

7 hours ago, ThumbWarriorDX said:

My GPU can't push 1440 at 144hz in Overwatch, but in motion at 144hz I effectively can't see the drop in image quality that 75% renderscale causes at a normal viewing distance. I have to stop to be able to notice it.

If I'd sprung for G-sync it would be running around 110 fps and I wouldn't have to worry about it. This is on a GTX 1070 btw.

Higher res is important for some things(MOAR BLENDER PANELS), but when it comes to first-person action games(compared to say, top-down MoBA games) the high framerate is importanter.

Really? I can get 144fps on ultra in Overwatch at 1440 with a 1060.