Should I Choose a 1440p Monitor at Medium Settings or Stick With 1080p Ultra?
Asked by
MellowCedar42
I've never used a 1440p monitor, so I'm not sure how noticeable the upgrade would be. At 1080p, some of my games already have poor FPS, and I'm wondering whether moving to 1440p with medium or high settings would still be worthwhile compared with staying at 1080p and using ultra settings. My system has an RTX 4070 12GB, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB of RAM, and an older SSD. I mainly play single-player games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Would DLSS and frame generation make 1440p a reasonable choice?
Answers
I’d go with a 27-inch 1440p monitor rather than staying at 1080p. The extra sharpness is particularly noticeable in single-player games, and you can lower a few demanding settings or enable DLSS when needed. A 1440p monitor with around 165Hz, adaptive sync, and a good IPS panel would be a practical match for your system.
Reply to this answer
A 4070 is very capable at 1440p, especially with DLSS. In many games you should be able to target around 100–165 FPS using high settings, depending on the title. Ultra settings usually provide very small visual improvements for a noticeable performance cost, so 1440p high or medium can look better overall than 1080p ultra.
MellowCedar42: I’d like to try 1440p for the first time, so that sounds promising.
Reply to this answer
The difference between 1080p and 1440p is fairly obvious on a 27-inch display, even if it is not a dramatic upgrade in every game. Since you don’t need to run every setting on ultra, 1440p high is a better balance of image quality and performance for your RTX 4070.
Reply to this answer
Before buying anything, investigate why some games perform poorly at 1080p. Check GPU and CPU usage, temperatures, background programs, memory configuration, and whether the games are limited by the Ryzen 5 5600X. If performance is already unstable at 1080p, 1440p will not fix the underlying issue, although DLSS can help reduce the GPU workload.
BrightOak77: DLSS and frame generation may help in supported games, but they won’t solve a CPU, thermal, driver, or configuration problem causing low FPS at 1080p.
Reply to this answer
Add your answer
Answers are reviewed before publication.
MellowCedar42: I’m currently considering an LG UltraGear 27-inch IPS 1440p model.