1440p or 4k?

tylertoast

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 4, 2014
Messages
329
I've seen quite a bit of comparison videos and ect.

I just would like to see the community opinion on it.

Pretty much if I was to upgrade it would be the 34" LG 1440p monitor, not the curved one.

If I was to do 4k it'd be the ROG Swift TN.

The only real "need high ms refresh rate" (please dont butcher me if I sound stupid.) game I play is CS:GO.

Hell if you guys would say a 1080p 144hz monitor is a better idea all together im open to alot of things!
 
Which video card? What other games do you play? System specs?

If I was to get either of the monitors i'd be looking at an upgrade for my internal system.

My specs atm are

FX-8350
MSI-G43 AM3+ mobo
8GB Kingston Hyper Fury Ram 2133
GTX 770 SC 2GB
RM 750

I think the main thing I would want to upgrade is my mobo to get something with SLI and either get a single 970 for the 1440p display or two for the 4k display.
 
It's a judgement call dude. All 4k does is make the pixels on your screen smaller.

This does allow you in some instances to see more detail, but only if your eyesight is already super-sharp.

SIMPLE TEST: If you can see the pixels on your current monitor, and they drive you nuts, you want a higher DPI 4k display. But if you can't see them/don't care, then 1440p should be enough for you all the way up to 34"

YOU NEED TO TELL US WHAT YOUR CURRENT MONITORS ARE to really make a recommendation, and what exactly you want to do with these.
 
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The 21:9 will give you a slight advantage as you can see more on the left and right at the same FOV.
 
I would go large screen. Like 40in minimum. Its easily the biggest and dramatic change I have made to my gaming in a decade. If you don't really care about high hertz, big screen is next. The immersion is awesome!

FYI the ppi is about the same for these configs (109-110ppi)
4K at 40in = 3440x1440 @34in = 2560x1440 @27

I toiled over the whole 1440 (21:9) vs. 4K for a pretty good while. 4K is both wider and taller and you can do 21:9 custom res's anyway. So that alone to me made me think that a 21:9 34in screen was kind of limiting in that aspect. The flipside is I wouldn't really get less than a 980ti if going 4K. But since you sound like you're prepared to get 2 970's then its really not that much of a difference in terms of price, plus the extra vram will be good to have.
 
I keep debating this as well. I just want to see what Diablo 3 looks like in 4K. I am tempted to go get any 4k monitor from Best Buy just to try it out for a few minutes.
 
The 21:9 will give you a slight advantage as you can see more on the left and right at the same FOV.
If the game being played is Hor+ and supports 21:9 aspect ratio.

The Widescreen Gaming Forum is a good resource for compatibility and tools to get widescreen and multimonitor working.
http://www.wsgf.org
 
I keep debating this as well. I just want to see what Diablo 3 looks like in 4K. I am tempted to go get any 4k monitor from Best Buy just to try it out for a few minutes.
One word: Beautiful! :D

I actually replayed the entire SP campaign (D3 + ROS) when I got my 40" 4K TV because I was so impressed with the visuals. I went from a 27" 1440p to 40" 4K. Best computer purchase I've made in years.
 
Diablo 3 looks great on my 21:9. You have to run in Windowed Full Screen mode as there are no 21:9 resolutions to choose from in the menu.
D3-2billion-damage.jpg


D3-RG59-2-trillion.jpg
 
One word: Beautiful! :D

I actually replayed the entire SP campaign (D3 + ROS) when I got my 40" 4K TV because I was so impressed with the visuals. I went from a 27" 1440p to 40" 4K. Best computer purchase I've made in years.

It too have a Samsung 4k TV. I have never connected my PC to it. Usually the TV is on with my wife and kids watching shows, while I am at my desk in a far corner of the living room.
 
If you're going to go 4k do it to get a very large screen. Otherwise 1440p makes more sense on smaller screens since it requires significantly less GPU horsepower.
 
Looks good. I am not sure about 21:9. Do you find yourself looking left and right constantly? Or is the monitor far enough back that it all fits in your field of view?

my screen is arms length away and the screen fits in my field of view.
I focus on the center of the screen and occasionally glance left and right,but I am not constantly looking left and right.

bf-hardline-setup.jpg
 
I love 21:9 since I get less eye strain, and I love my Acer 34"!
acer34bfh.jpg

I'm terrible at taking photos
 
It too have a Samsung 4k TV. I have never connected my PC to it. Usually the TV is on with my wife and kids watching shows, while I am at my desk in a far corner of the living room.
If you ever hook up your computer and 4K TV, you won't give it up and the wife/kids will be watching their shows in that far corner of the living room. :p
 
Your eyesight will come into play as well. Those with 20/20 vision won't be bothered so much with the higher resolutions but if you have poor eyesight that 4k gaming may be harder for you. Remember games have text in them. Reading text on higher res screens is harder because that text is much smaller. Some games you can enlarge the text but many don't so ust keep that in mind when choosing a resolution.
 
^true, 1080p didn't bother me at all until I had lasik. Now hovering around 109ppi for my preferred viewing distance is fantastic with my new Super Ultra Mega HD eyeballs.
 
Your eyesight will come into play as well. Those with 20/20 vision won't be bothered so much with the higher resolutions but if you have poor eyesight that 4k gaming may be harder for you. Remember games have text in them. Reading text on higher res screens is harder because that text is much smaller. Some games you can enlarge the text but many don't so ust keep that in mind when choosing a resolution.

Hmm. Good to know. My vision isn't the greatest. I like the size of text on my 26" 1920 x 1200 display. If I went 4k I would run 200% scaling on the desktop. I assumed that games would properly scaling text 4k. Maybe they don't.
 
I think 21:9 brings more to gaming than 4K ever will. Think about it - more pixels/detail isn't really going to help with immersion, but a wider screen definitely will. Even at 1080P, games like Witcher 3 look amazing. I'm sure 4K is an improvement but I can't imagine it being the difference that going from 16:9 to 21:9 (keeping the same height) would be. Many reviewers agree with me as well. In short, if you want a reason to buy another monitor, I think 21:9 will be be more of a step up.
 
I've seen quite a bit of comparison videos and ect.

I just would like to see the community opinion on it.

Pretty much if I was to upgrade it would be the 34" LG 1440p monitor, not the curved one.

If I was to do 4k it'd be the ROG Swift TN.

The only real "need high ms refresh rate" (please dont butcher me if I sound stupid.) game I play is CS:GO.

Hell if you guys would say a 1080p 144hz monitor is a better idea all together im open to alot of things!

What? There is no such thing as a 4k ROG Swift monitor with a TN panel. Anyways I would go 1440p 144Hz but that's because I value smoothness over eye candy.
 
I was torn between 3x 1440P screens and PLP 1080p screens with one bigass 4k screen. Ultimately my decision went down to useful desktop space. If you are gaming 1st, working 2nd (or not at all) then a good, high-refresh 1440p monitor is right for you. There is a big culture of "144hz is for CS Pros", but I've used a few 144hz monitors and I can say that the biggest benefit is the desktop smoothness. Seriously. Once you load up windows on a 144hz monitor and see how buttery smooth the desktop feels, you'll NEVER go back to 60hz. The big, veiny 144hz smoothness will ruin your neive, virgin eyes for other screens. 60hz screens will just make you feel empty. They may have nice IQ, and their resolution will be nice... but nothing can replace that 144hz sexiness... just moving windows around on the desktop feels amazing at 144hz...
 
I think 21:9 brings more to gaming than 4K ever will. Think about it - more pixels/detail isn't really going to help with immersion, but a wider screen definitely will. Even at 1080P, games like Witcher 3 look amazing. I'm sure 4K is an improvement but I can't imagine it being the difference that going from 16:9 to 21:9 (keeping the same height) would be. Many reviewers agree with me as well. In short, if you want a reason to buy another monitor, I think 21:9 will be be more of a step up.

I agree with you about 21:9 for right now. I think however 4k will take over eventually. 21:9 will always have a place in the market but 4k is the next future thing. Right now 21:9 is a good alternative to 4k. I love mine. I wish however they made them in the 40" size. Hell even a 50 inch would be cool I suppose but this is where the 4k will rule supreme. Big TVs (40+ inches) with great pictures even for gaming.
 
1440p.

4k is just not ready yet for gaming. Unless you have an absolute beast of a system, high end everything, you will struggle running current high end games at smooth framerates without turning down settings... and why would you want to compromise graphics settings with a beast of a system you spent a fortune for? It just does not make sense. 1440p is the current sweet spot for resolution and performance.
 
Please stop your ultrawidescreen propaganda -- how allegedly immersive it is.

It isn't.

If you see the framing -- cut top and the bottom -- then it ruins immersion. Here is an idea how grandeurr 40" monitor is compared to 34" ultrashort

http://www.displaywars.com/34-inch-235x1-vs-40-inch-16x9

Next, ultrawide/ultrashort is woefully cost inefficient proposition. You can pick up decent 40" UHD for as low as $500

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&item=141713915570&rmvSB=true&rmvSB=true

while the cheapest 1440p ultrawide would run you north of $850. The difference is easily one extra GTX970 card; more than enough to cover almost twice the pixels that UHD brings in.

Why it's even a question, "4k or 1440p"? If you feel there are too many pixels on 4K, then just run custom 1440p resolution, letterboxed, or windowboxed with black bars on 4K screen, end of story.
 
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Please stop your ultrawidescreen propaganda -- how allegedly immersive it is.

It isn't.

On a 21:9 display on games that support that AR you can see more of the world than on 16:9, regardless of the size of the screen. This is what people mean by more immersive.

Even the human perception naturally sees more side to side horizontally, rather than up and down vertical.
 
Honestly, I think the 4k screens are not mature enough, yet. Nor do I think the video cards are either.

I am going to wait until you can 4k game, with high settings, on the good/better games with 1 video card...
 
1440p. You can get high refresh rates and high frame rates with a high end GPU. With 4k you're limited to 60 Hz, need a very beefy system (or cutting down details) and also have to deal with possible scaling issues.

Screen size depends on viewing distance. I went from a 30" 2560x1600 screen to 27" 1440p and feel the 27" is a better fit for my view distance. With a 40" 4K I would have to keep it very far away from me to comfortably use it, in which case you are going to need scaling and will probably miss on the detail improvements in games to a degree.
 
I play games on my 40" in 21:9 format all the time. It's basically a 34" 3440x1440P for when I feel like widescreen, and regular 4K 16:9 when I feel like normal aspect. I can also do 16:9 1440P in the middle of my giant screen whenever I feel like it. There's no need to pigeon-hole myself into any type of display when I have a giant display that can emulate any one of those.
 
On a 21:9 display on games that support that AR you can see more of the world than on 16:9, regardless of the size of the screen. This is what people mean by more immersive.

This is quite popular misconception. For game engine to render the world on your screen with proper dimensions, it need to know 3 things:

1. Screen dimension
2. Viewer distance from the screen
3. Aspect ratio

Then, it would calculate scaling factor so that gamer sees the world "just right", that is objects won't appear either too small or too big.

I'm not sure if game engine knows (or cares) about #1, but it certainly doesn't have a clue about #2. So, the best it can do is guestimate: what is retina distance for that screen. Or they don't bother calculating anything at all and set default FOV to 60 degrees (Crysis 3). Then some genius comes along and exclaims: "wait a minute, shouldn't we make FOV for 21:9 screen wider"?

Once again, setting FOV just by aspect ratio along is wrong: if you sit 20" from 20" display you should have much narrower FOV compared to sitting 20" from 40" display. Even if they have the same aspect ratio.
 
Once again, setting FOV just by aspect ratio along is wrong: if you sit 20" from 20" display you should have much narrower FOV compared to sitting 20" from 40" display. Even if they have the same aspect ratio.

The FOV should be adjustable by the end-user, letting them tweak it however they want. (Within reason.) If someone wants 180-degrees horizontal FOV on a tiny monitor, I say let them do it! :) Probably the simplest way is to let the end-user specify screen size and distance from the screen and let the game engine calculate the rest, then users could "lie" to get distorted views with more/less information. Actually, I bet you could have a "viewport calibration" mode that would do it without any measuring, and could also adjust for the vertical placement of one's eyes relative to the screen.

It'd probably be wise to not allow it to be modified on the fly for multiplayer, otherwise people will be binding hotkeys to narrow FOV to let them "zoom in".
 
The FOV should be adjustable by the end-user, letting them tweak it however they want. (Within reason.) If someone wants 180-degrees horizontal FOV on a tiny monitor, I say let them do it! :) Probably the simplest way is to let the end-user specify screen size and distance from the screen and let the game engine calculate the rest, then users could "lie" to get distorted views with more/less information. Actually, I bet you could have a "viewport calibration" mode that would do it without any measuring, and could also adjust for the vertical placement of one's eyes relative to the screen.

It'd probably be wise to not allow it to be modified on the fly for multiplayer, otherwise people will be binding hotkeys to narrow FOV to let them "zoom in".

The problem with that (without getting too off-topic) is that game engines render things linearly forward, not outward. So everything becomes slightly stretched toward the center of the screen as they approach the areas exposed by the higher FOV.

In Real life, a wide vision angle exaggerates the sensation of 'closeness', and peripheral vision seems further away.

sigma-8-16mm-wide-angle-6.jpg


wheras in-game, a high FOV actually makes things in the perriferal seem CLOSER, and things in the centre of the screen smaller.

o9aqXyg.jpg


So, yeah, its not as simple as 'increasing the FOV'.. just try playing Skyrim with the WSGF hack on Eyefinity.
 
I was in this exact same boat before deciding on 1440p, as a combination of GPU reviews, existence of DSR and the testing I have done on it.

My previous monitor was a 27" 1080p IPS (ViewSonic VX2770SMH), and I want a replacement monitor to be as different from that as possible (the aim I was looking at was G-Sync, higher resolution and possibly higher refresh). That had left me with only two choices (at the time): Asus RoG Swift and Acer XB280HK.

I settled on 1440p. This is why:

1. 1440p can support higher than 60hz refresh, 4k can't due to displayport limitation, and newer displayport GPUs in the future cannot overcome that without replacing the monitor.

2. 1440p has a lower minimum sharp image resolution than 4k. I cannot stand the blur induced by monitors upscaling a lower resolution image to its native. I had found no monitors that could pixel double a 1080p image to a 4k, so effectively 4k was 'stuck' being a 4k. Forcing the GPU to not use scaling would make even 1440p too small on a 4k screen, let alone 1080p.

By comparison, there are ways to remove downscaling blur, even DSR as a smoothing slider that makes a non-integer downscaling sharper than it otherwise would have been.

3. Usually, 4k doesn't let you see more over 1440p. You need more details sure, but you don't see more things. At least 21:9 has more lateral FOV than a typical 16:9, assuming that the game supports that resolution.

21:9 would be ideal for movies though.

4. UI scaling. Some consider the lack of UI scaling (where UI elements appears diminutively small) a good thing, I considered it a very bad thing. UI to me as every bit part of the game as the rest. I found 1440p were still at tolerable size, but 4k were largely completely illegible. Ironically the game where larger screen resolution would benefit the most (Civ V) was a serious offender.

5. The only game I had that did not support SLI, Wolfenstein New Order, was basically unplayable at 4k, but was playable at 1440p on a single 970. This was the main dealbreaker for the 4k.

So I went with 1440p, knowing that if GPU becomes more powerful, I can DSR it up and still get some of the benefits of higher resolution while retaining my higher refresh rates.

But, this decision of mine was made 'on paper'. I had absolutely no access to either 1440p or 4k monitor on display in stores, so I had no idea if/how much better the increased DPI would look. I only ever saw 4k TVs.

As it stands though, until a 4k monitor that can display an 1080p image like a native 1080p monitor, I don't think I will ever consider 4k monitor even as a side monitor, until at least GPUs are powerful enough to handle 4k as GTX 570 was able to handle 1080p back in the day.

My very useless 2c
 
1440p without doubt. Unless you're running SLI or Crossfire you're going to have to turn the graphics settings down a lot on almost every game at 4k. I have a 27" 1440p screen and my friend has a 28" 4k screen. Our computers are pretty much the same hardware (and we're both running a GTX 970) and mine looks so much better than his in-game.
 
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...wheras in-game, a high FOV actually makes things in the perriferal seem CLOSER, and things in the centre of the screen smaller...

It is still distortion, because transformation which makes "things in the centre of the screen smaller" compared to that one on periphery is nonlinear. Your second game image simply doesn't have an object (such as railing at the first one) to make this obvious.

I admit, however, that if this railing were going through the center of the image, the distortion would be less pronounced -- the straight lines wouldn't be bent that much. Please note that it would still be distorted; for example railing posts would be smaller on the sides. Therefore, my explanation is that [ultra]widescreen masks distortion little better, because you just can't see a railing with image bottom cut off! Please, note that the railing placed on one the sides would still be badly bent (if not even worse).

The only cure for distortion free wide FOV is curved screen -- I, for one, plan to upgrade to 40" curved UHD sometime in the future. However, I would like to see a curve with practical radius for desktop usage; not a gimmick as on Samsung TVs.


1440p without doubt. Unless you're running SLI or Crossfire you're going to have to turn the graphics settings down a lot on almost every game at 4k. I have a 27" 1440p screen and my friend has a 28" 4k screen. Our computers are pretty much the same hardware (and we're both running a GTX 970) and mine looks so much better than his.

27" QHD is fine monitor. The problem is that people here suggest 1440p ultrawide which costs arms and leg -- at least three times of 27" QHD. How many GTX 970 can you buy if you stick with 27" QHD, for just 25% less screen area?
 
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I've never played on an ultrawide monitor so I can't comment on it. I'm seriously happy with QHD though.
 
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