Single-game monitor upgrade?

ergonomics · 8 Feb 2025 at 14:39

Hi folks. The only real game I play is dota2, on a 24" 144Hz 1080p monitor. I have a second 24" portrait monitor that is just useful for screen real-estate and productivity - but unfortunately that just went pop (an old Dell 2407).

I was looking at replacing it but went down the rabbit hole of investigating tons of suggestions around getting an ultra-wide main monitor and demoting my 24" to a second screen, or some suggesting to get into the 27" 1440p world for my main screen. I then run into GPU issues as I'm only running a 1050ti, and so the cost spirals and the world becomes my oyster. Is anyone still in the 1080p 24" world and happy there or should I really be looking at going bigger with a higher resolution to something that will last another 15 years before going pop? How do these screens account for typical 1080p tv/film content and managing rather basic games like dota2 on low/med settings at 1080p? I don't want to compromise and get stretched content or upscaled AI-ness if possible.

Thanks!

adrichardson81 · 12 Feb 2025 at 13:59

Personally I'd go 1440p - it's a nice upgrade from 1080p and relatively easy to drive these days. The problem is your 1050ti is a 1080p card, so you'll struggle to get playable frame rates with 1440p.

Armageus · 12 Feb 2025 at 14:25

The only way you'd get truly "nice" scaling is to move to a 4k screen, in which case if you run games at 1080P, then the pixels are just doubled in both directions.
You could do that with a 27" or 28" monitor (e.g. this or this), but imo 4K is too high a resolution for 27" screen size, so even for desktop use you'd just end up turning Windows scaling on and end up not really any better off.

Personally if you're happy at 24" 1080P, then really the logical step would be a 32" 1440P screen to maintain similar pixels per inch, but as mentioned you might need a graphics card upgrade (although I'd imagine even something like a £170 GTX 3050 or £210 RX6600 would be more than capable for Dota2)

The cheapest option invariably, would be just to get another 24" 1080P Screen

adrichardson81 · 12 Feb 2025 at 14:55

Sadly it doesn't work that well on most 4k monitors - they just see a non-native resolution and use non-integer scaling. I believe the dual resolution monitors have proper integer scaling.

Armageus · 12 Feb 2025 at 15:04

adrichardson81 said:
Sadly it doesn't work that well on most 4k monitors - they just see a non-native resolution and use non-integer scaling. I believe the dual resolution monitors have proper integer scaling.

I can't say I've tried it on that many, but I've not had any issue with any we've used at work - however they are predominately 40"/50"/55" Iiyama's where it was easier to run them at 1080P for older bespoke apps designed at 1080P Screen resolution at normal DPI.

Regardless, I don't think 4K is the answer for the OP on this occasion.

adrichardson81 · 12 Feb 2025 at 15:09

Armageus said:
I can't say I've tried it on that many, but I've not had any issue with any we've used at work - however they are predominately 40"/50"/55" Iiyama's where it was easier to run them at 1080P for older bespoke apps designed at 1080P Screen resolution at normal DPI.

Regardless, I don't think 4K is the answer for the OP on this occasion.

Probably less obvious on a lower ppi screen. But yeah, OP 4k definitely isn't for you.