Higher Than 1080 Gaming on Single Screen Worth Investment?

[bill77]

After going through the GTX 670 vs GTX 680 threads, and the 2gb vs. 4gb questions, I gather that "higher than 2gb RAM on a video card is only for higher than 1080 resolutions and/or multiple monitors." Got it.

Is the higher res. experience (on one monitor) worth it for most current and upcoming GPU-hogging games? Am I going to want to go higher than 1080 now or in the next couple years in this single screen setup? (Probably 24'', possibly 27'') Or is it worth it (for the gaming experience visually, and worth the extra cost of a higher-res monitor + 4gb GPU as opposed to 2gb on 1080?

I haven't been up to snuff since about 2007 as far as gaming rigs go and then I still had a nice last gen CRT screen, but now I have some extra funds to play with (carefully of course). Any advice would be appreciated. I know nothing is future proof, but I'd like some reasonable 3 year padding or so (more when it comes to the monitor). Would I regret not going higher than 1080 in that time frame (and getting a card that can handle it of course)?

We'll probably be playing at least some of the following: BF3, Dirt 3, Diablo, Far Cry 3/possibly Crysis 3, Skyrim, and modern RTS types of games out now and the upcoming ones of the next 2-3 years I'd guess. I'm mainly just tossing those titles out there for some sense of scope.

So far, I've been eyeballing the EGA GTX 670 2 or 4gb cards. Haven't really had any monitors jump out at me yet...pretty sure IPS would be overkill for me since this is mostly for reading and gaming. Also, there will be no SLI or dual screen hoopla for me. Elsewhere people keep touting the higher than 1080 experience, so I figured I'd ask around here, as I've always trusted Tom's users more than most.

 

[wanderer11]

I recently got a 27" 2560x1440 monitor. The Auria I got is $400 at microcenter. I think the extra $100 is worth it over the ebay monitors so I can return it if needed. I just have a 7870 for now, but I have never seen the vram usage come close to 2GB, I can't use much AA though. Now I plan on getting a different card this summer so future games won't be an issue, but if you plan on having the rig for a few years you might want the 4GB. I imagine that once the next generation of consoles come out we will see more demanding games.

As far as the experience, I think it is a huge improvement over 1920x1080. It really is nice how much more you can see at once. I don't play any fps, but for games like TL2, POE, Tropico 4, etc. it is wonderful.