Hey there. I'll have a stab at this as no one else has, especially as you ask so nicely
I think the reason you have had no replies is you ask at a really interesting time for monitors in general and gaming monitors in particular. There is more choice than ever, not just of supplier but also in the specification and design goals. In broad terms people moving beyond a standard 1920x1080 display have three ways to go:
- Increased width/immersion - "superwide"/"ultra-wide" 21:9 displays, either 2560x1080 or (recently) 3440x1440
- Increased resolution - 2560x1440 -> "UHD" "4k" (normally 3840x2160)
- Faster refresh - 120-144Hz
It's hard to give advice unless we know which camp you fall into.
Whichever you choose costs, not just for the monitor, but also for the GPU required to push those extra pixels. By my, totally unscientific, estimate it is going to be 5-7 years before GPU technology will allow us to "have it all" - a
"retinal" wide or superwide display of at least 13.5" vertical height (equivalent to a 27"/28" "good for gaming" 16:9 display) with 144Hz refresh that can be driven by a single GPU. So until then, we have to make choices - either to go for multiple SLI, with all its complexity and cost or to choose between those different design goals and decide "what kind of gamer are we"?
- Do we want the "immersion" of a superwide monitor, but are prepared to forgo the "twitch perfectness" of a high refresh rate monitor and the crisp perfectness of at least 2160p (@13.5" height)
- Do we want image quality above all else and can forgo super-wide and high refresh
- Or do we go for "ultra smoothness" for perfect competitive fps play and sacrifice some immersion and image quality.
I will assume given your budget, that you do not want to completely rejig your system to go SLI, which would require not only another GPU but probably improved power supply and/or cooling, so it does come down to which type of gamer you are and which path you want to take.
A separate decision is whether you want to join either the Freesync or G-Sync camp, for smoother gameplay when the GPU is not able to meet the refresh rate of your monitor. G-Sync monitors are already available but require an Nvidia card. Freesync are not available yet, but when they are next year will require AMD! So if that is important to you you limit your choices significantly and need to choose a GPU technology (Nvidia or AMD) for the duration you keep your monitor.
Back to the wide vs resolution vs refresh rate decision:
- If you go the superwide path your £500 will not currently stretch to a 3440x1440 monitor. You would need to go 2560x1080. 1080 height is starting to die out, at least at the enthusiast end of the market, as it is really limiting for normal PC work, so going 2560x1080 now may be shortsighted, although only you can decide. It may, just may, be better to wait 6 months - 1 year until you can get a 3440x1440 within your budget. On the other hand your current card would drive a 2560x1080 display pretty effortlessly and a 3440x1440 pretty well (at least with this year's games) so all is good there.
- If you go for "4K" there are
several good displays from Dell/AOC/Samsung in budget. You should be aware though that your current GPU will struggle when gaming @4K (desktop work fine) and you will need to turn down the graphics option in game to get satisfactory performance from a single GPU. It is likely this will still be true when the next generation of GPUs come out in the first half of next year. With a single GPU, it is likely to be 2-3 years before you will be able to use your 4K display with all the prettiness turned up, although it will be beautiful for non-gaming work, such as photo/video editing. You should also know that Windows does not scale particularly well for 4K displays at the moment. Windows 10 in about a year will hopefully do a much better job. For now you will have to put up with some very small text/buttons to press, or some fairly nasty oversized versions.
- If you choose high refresh rate there are some very nice 27"/28" 1920x1080 monitors within budget or 2560x1440 monitors that are quite close to budget. Like with superwide, it may be worth waiting until you are able to go 2560x1440, as getting another 1080p display now may be shortsighted. However, like with 4K, your GTX 970 will struggle driving 2560x1440 at high refresh rates. You should probably only go this route if you think you can upgrade your GPU inside the next year.
Hopefully, this helps a bit and may inspire some discussion with more useful information
