Choosing monitor...4K or 1440p

Drojman

Drojman

Drojman

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Hey all,

Think I'm gonna grab a new monitor. Currently have a 1080p 27iiyama, love it but it's time to upgrade. I have a 295x2+290x so I should be able to push 4K but I'm also considering the 32 inch Benq 1440p monitor.

Any thoughts on what to get? I'd probably go for about £500, the super expensive 4ks are a bit much.

Love to know thoughts.

Cheers.
 
Even given the video card power to run at native 4k I'd steer clear of it until Microsoft (and the software app developers) fix the UI scaling in Windows so it actually works properly! Also I'd personally I'd rather have an IPS 1440p monitor than a TN 4k one. I bought a 24" TN monitor so I could get a faster refresh rate but next to my 20" IPS one it's colour reproduction and contrast are noticeably inferior.

I'm currently using a 24" 1080p and a 20" 16:10 1050p monitor and planning on upgrading to either a singe 27" 16:9 1440p or a 34" 21:9 1440p monitor. The 32" BenQ sounds interesting but I'm wondering whether 16:9 32" might be too large for desktop monitor I'm sitting only a couple of feet away from on my desk?
 
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If you do anything other than casual gaming go for the swift, exception being if you spend the larger mount of your time playing elite dangerous as 4K is immense in that game and almost makes up for any drawbacks.
 
Telling people to get 4K monitor at the moment for any reason is worst advice ever, let alone for gaming.

Sli'd or Cf'd top of the range cards will get you almost playable frame rates on medium settings for most current games. By the time the next crop of AAA games hit (I am thinking particularly of Witcher 3 here), you are going to have to play outwith the monitors native resolution or put up with playing a slideshow.

4K at the moment = expensive unweildy bloody mess.

I myself am in the market for a new monitor. I like the look of the new BenQ 1080p G-sync monitors which are due out, but not available as of yet. I like 1080p because I know that a 980 GTX will kill anything thrown at it with top eye candy @ 60fps+ for the next few years.

I might be tempted by the Asus 1440p swift 1440p monitor, but again, with a 980 GTX (I think I will be in the market for one of those soon enough), there are already games out which the 980 GTX cannot push above the golden 60fps mark with full eye candy enabled at this resolution. Nothing worse than spending big £££'s only to still be farting around trying to get a balance of smooth and quality performance. I have always had a preference for sacrificing resolution in favour of eye candy and/or high frame rates. The difference I suppose with the Asus swift 1440p, I suppose might be G-sync, which they tell me has the effect of making 30-60 fps games seem smooth......but yet to see it with my own eyes.
 
MatTheCat said:
Telling people to get 4K monitor at the moment for any reason is worst advice ever, let alone for gaming. WRONG

Sli'd or Cf'd top of the range cards will get you almost playable frame rates on medium settings for most current games. By the time the next crop of AAA games hit (I am thinking particularly of Witcher 3 here), you are going to have to play outwith the monitors native resolution or put up with playing a slideshow. WRONG

4K at the moment = expensive unweildy bloody mess. WRONG
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Some bad advice above, take no notice, there's plenty of 4k threads have a read for yourself. It much depends on your hardware, but if it's decent enough theres no reason you cant play all current titles over 60FPS with the settings maxed, I do, and so do most 4k owners.
 
Drojman said:
Hey all,

Think I'm gonna grab a new monitor. Currently have a 1080p 27iiyama, love it but it's time to upgrade. I have a 295x2+290x so I should be able to push 4K but I'm also considering the 32 inch Benq 1440p monitor.

Any thoughts on what to get? I'd probably go for about £500, the super expensive 4ks are a bit much.

Love to know thoughts.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Why not wait for the AOC 3440x1440?
Provides better resolution than 2560x1440 at 2" more than the 32" Benq, is 21:9 and not as demanding as 4K. (only 60% the pixel count of 4K and 34% more than 2560x1440).

As why not 4K. Only one monitor feels bit better at 4K and that is the Dell 31.5" one. And still is lacking immersion. The 28" ones, you will have more pixel count true, but to what benefit? The "real estate" is similar to a 2560x1440 27" monitor, because on general purpose you will need to zoom webpages, documents etc.

If it was a 34" 4K then we would be having a different discussion.

But is your money and there are some pretty good 4K monitors out there the 290X tri-fire will sort out, while everything is down to what you want actually.
 
The only thing that got me interested in getting rid of my 28" 4K was the Rog swift

Either are vastly superior to a regular 27" 1440 monitor

To be fair ive not tried the widescreen thing, so that could be the other option, but the widespread reports of not getting a decent one put me off even trying, that and the poor motion handling of IPS, now that there are decent TN's like the rog and the 28" 4K's

Given the choice between the two though, I have gone for keeping th rog over 4k, even with the big price difference
 
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Born_2_Kill_83 said:
Some bad advice above, take no notice, there's plenty of 4k threads have a read for yourself. It much depends on your hardware, but if it's decent enough theres no reason you cant play all current titles over 60FPS with the settings maxed !!LIES!!
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Hmm.

I have a forum tech junkie with an ingrained bias towards justifying his ludicrous tech spending habit, telling me that 4K is doable on one hand.........and bucket loads of expert reviews on the other hand telling me that it isn't even doable with tri SLI'd TITANs on the otherhand.

wHo Am I gOiNg To BeLiEve?
 
I ended up having a 4K one shipped but I think I'm returning it. The input delay is too much for me, and I think I'd be better off going at 1440p, or even waiting for Freesync.

The only thing that bothers me on my 1080p monitor is that it doesn't support downsampling, at least not forced by adding more resolutions.
 
MatTheCat said:
Hmm.

I have a forum tech junkie with an ingrained bias towards justifying his ludicrous tech spending habit, telling me that 4K is doable on one hand.........and bucket loads of expert reviews on the other hand telling me that it isn't even doable with tri SLI'd TITANs on the otherhand.

wHo Am I gOiNg To BeLiEve?
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"Experts" using frame rate killing and pointless at 4K 4xMSAA... Hmmm

Or actual end users telling me actual useful playable settings

Yeah it is a tricky one that
 
Drojman said:
I ended up having a 4K one shipped but I think I'm returning it. The input delay is too much for me, and I think I'd be better off going at 1440p, or even waiting for Freesync.

The only thing that bothers me on my 1080p monitor is that it doesn't support downsampling, at least not forced by adding more resolutions.
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What gpu do you have?
You have to make sure that the gpu driver is set to resize on the gpu, not on the monitor

If nvidia I can throw up a pic later
 
MatTheCat said:
Hmm.

I have a forum tech junkie with an ingrained bias towards justifying his ludicrous tech spending habit, telling me that 4K is doable on one hand.........and bucket loads of expert reviews on the other hand telling me that it isn't even doable with tri SLI'd TITANs on the otherhand.

wHo Am I gOiNg To BeLiEve?
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LULZ, if you believe Tri SLI Titan won't run 4k then it say it all really doesn't it :rolleyes:
 
andybird123 said:
"Experts" using frame rate killing and pointless at 4K 4xMSAA... Hmmm

Or actual end users telling me actual useful playable settings

Yeah it is a tricky one that
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If 'end users' with multi top line GPU configurations are having to dick around with settings to get 'playable frame rates', then I would suggest that 4K just isn't the way to go right now at all.

although the expert reviews I have seen were not applying 4*MSAA, I have to say that 4*MSAA is very nice and I play with it whenever I can. Makes a HUGE difference to the image quality.

From what I read, if 4K users want to be playing at 60fps, then providing they have powerful dual gfx cards and the game isn't extraordinarily demanding (such as Metro, Crysis 3), they can get their 60 fps by settling for medium settings. All the same articles also stress that maxed out 1080p gaming totally spanks compromised mid-range gaming at 4K.

I have no direct proof and can only go by what I read, but I know how much horsepower it takes to run games at 1080p, and I know that 4K requires basically 4 times the horsepower......doing relatively simple maths brings me to the same conclusion as all the expert review sites who have actually done the testing.

4K is not a viable solution to anyone with sense in their heads as far as I am concerned.
 
andybird123 said:
What gpu do you have?
You have to make sure that the gpu driver is set to resize on the gpu, not on the monitor

If nvidia I can throw up a pic later
Click to expand...

I'm AMD. In AMDS control panel I have enable GPU up-scaling. That's off, but that's what the guides for AMD say to do.
 
That's a common misconception, 4 times the resolution does not require 4 times the power, my CF290X setup used to run BF4 around 100-120FPs in 1080, in 4K it runs it at 80-100FPS not 25-30FPS as you suggested, same maxed graphical settings of course.

4XMSAA is not needed in 4k, your just throwing away FPS.

I would guess that 70% of users on this forum have no problem forking out £600 for a graphics solution every couple of years, and that price is enough to get you CF290(X)'s/Sli780(Ti)'s or 970's which will run 4k with ease.
 
No, not dick around with settings, i could play crysis 3 on high with smaa at 4k and not get dips below 60fps... If you think that 1080p on very high with 4xmsaa would look better then good luck to you
 
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