Teach me about 1440p

[Pebble713]

Ok so im about to buy a 1440p 144hz monitor because its on sale and i dont want to miss out on the deal. The problem is i wont be able to upgrade my graphics card for a while (possible longer if prices dont drop) and ill be gaming with my Evga gtx 960 2gb which i know will perform pretty poorly at 1440p. My (probably stupid) question is, if i leave my monitor at 1440p resolution but set in game resolution to 1080p will the image take up the entire screen and just have a lower quality or will i get that square image in the middle of the screen with the black border around? Also, is the difference between a TN monitor vs IPS that noticeable if all i do is play games and view from the front?

[Max_Settings]

it should scale up, but I would buy a GPU before I'd buy a 1440p 144hz display, because it will not improve your gaming experience at all if you are still using it with the same card.

[YedZed]

Get a new GPU, then a monitor.

[Bananasplit_00]

that 960 is going to be abysmal at 1440p and there is no way you will be able to utelize the screen in a good way with that card. as for your question it will just be a bit blury or blackbars in some games. depends on the settings and how the resolution is implemented.

[Pebble713]

1 minute ago, Abyssal Radon said:

Buy the monitor and upgrade your GPU later down the road. 

Thats the plan because im not about to drop $800 for a rx 580 right now.

[Pebble713]

Indeed it does have freesync, hense the interest in switching to an amd card.

[Glenwing]

1 hour ago, Pebble713 said:

My (probably stupid) question is, if i leave my monitor at 1440p resolution but set in game resolution to 1080p will the image take up the entire screen and just have a lower quality or will i get that square image in the middle of the screen with the black border around?

Both, you can set it to behave whichever way you want.

[Pebble713]

18 minutes ago, Glenwing said:

Both, you can set it to behave whichever way you want.

Ok cool, thanks for answering.

[ThumbWarriorDX]

1440p is super nice simply for the fact that 1080p screenshots on messageboards don't blow up your entire screen anymore.

As far as gaming, the best way to go is to run in native resolution and tweak the "Render Scale" slider down as needed.

I bought an underpowered GTX 1070 not knowing that 6 months later I would want both 144hz AND 1440p. Whoops. No regrets though. The screen real-estate is a great help for work and art and Heroes of the Storm objective timers lol.