4K or 1440p?

Treeroy

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Jan 11, 2012
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I am looking to buy a new monitor and am wanting an upgrade from my current 1080p. I was looking at decent 1440p 28" monitors and it seems that 4K 28" monitors are almost the same price.

However the scaling issues with 4K are kind of putting me off; on the other hand, this is the sort of thing that will get better and better with time. I also don't know if 4K is worth it when the size is 28".

I mostly use it for every day use and high performance gaming. I have a good gaming rig though not good enough to do 4K and not good enough to max out at 1440p, but I am going to upgrade my system in the near future. If I had a 4K monitor, it shouldn't matter anyway as you can play at 1440p anyway.

Any idea which way I should swing? It is tempting to go 4K given it's virtually no price difference, but I don't want to be squinting at tiny buttons, especially as I have quite poor eyesight and have to strain significantly on regular scale at 1080p.
 

Treeroy

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Jan 11, 2012
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I had decided on going for higher res 60hz compared to 1080p144, but actually I can now see a monitor or two in my price range that manage 1440p144. I was kind of against 144hz as I prefer it to be a smooth consistent number, but that would at least give me options.

e.g. the Asus MG278Q seems very good and I can afford it - it's 1440p, 144hz, and freesync.

There are a lot of things to consider, but with 4K specifically I feel really unsure. In one sense i feel i would be future proofing, but on the other hand in my experience future-proofing tends to be a waste of time. like by the time I could fully utilise 4K, the monitor would be old and would break lol.

whatever I get it'll be an upgrade from this crappy 1080p 24" TV that has dead pixels, bleeds everywhere, and has all sorts of dead bugs inside it lmao.
 

WildCard999

Titan
Moderator
I feel like 1440P/144hz is the "sweet spot" for gaming with a single monitor since the release of the 1080/1070. And also depending on the games you play you could also add in additional monitors for a surround setup. Eventually I would like to get two more of my ASUS VG248QE and run 5760x1080 @144hz with two GTX 1070's in SLI :) .
 

Distance03

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May 27, 2016
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Hey Wildcard! I'm in the market for a 144Hz/1080p. What did you buy, and would your recommend the extra $100+ for a g-sync monitor? I'm not too keen on g-sync and I rather put the money elsewhere.
 

WildCard999

Titan
Moderator


The ASUS VG248QE, its a 24", 1080P monitor @144hz. Yea I would save the $100 as well not buying a G-sync monitor and put it into something better. Just make sure you video card(s) are powerful enough to be able to render @144 FPS to get the most out of it. The biggest improvement over 60hz were games like BF4 and NFS. The only issue I had with it was for the first 2-3 weeks it seemed like the color was off but I just kept using it normally and now everything looks great.
https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/VG248QE/specifications/
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/rkphP6/asus-monitor-vg248qe
 

WildCard999

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It can, that's why in some games (example: BF4) I turn V-sync off so my frames go much higher (170-199) so when then do dip it only goes down to around 130ish at the lowest so when I'm gaming I don't get that stutter.

*I see the other thread you started. If you prefer to play at 60hz then you should get a 1440P/60hz monitor.
 

Distance03

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May 27, 2016
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Well see that's the issue. 100+ FPS gaming sounds amazing, but I'm afraid it will make the occasional dip back to 60 break immersion. I mean does this happen?? I understand there is an element of subjectivity to this; I think 60FPS looks great still, but going from 80 to 60 to 75 to 100 might be distracting, no?

But unless you're running SLI or playing games like CSGO, no one can get 144fps on max settings in most games... Maybe not until the 1080 hits
 

WildCard999

Titan
Moderator
It really doesn't matter what your running for GPU's, you could be running the best out there and you will get rare dips, it happens. But sticking with a higher resolution and 60hz would probably be a better choice, especially if you like to max out settings and your running that GTX 980 ti 6gb. I like to play my single player games around 80-100 FPS with higher settings but then on games that are multi-player and competitive then I lower settings to keep my frames high.