Hey everyone, I need some advice from the PC master race about screen resolution and picture quality!
Hey everyone, I need some advice from the PC master race about screen resolution and picture quality!
I'm planning my first PC build in about ten years. Right now, I'm using a used 3570K and a GTX 1070 GPU. I'm trying to decide between building something for 4K gaming with medium or high settings, or going all out for 1440p at ultra settings with ray tracing on. To understand my habits better, most of my games are story-driven ones like God of War Ragnarok, Red Dead Redemption Village, Diablo III and IV, Overwatch (sometimes), Final Fantasy titles without the 14th one, Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, and Horizon Forbidden West. Since I've mostly played on consoles recently, I'm not sure if 1440p or 4K feels better to me. If you were to help me choose, assume that I have enough money for a powerful graphics card like the RTX 4090 and a big 32-inch 4K monitor when making suggestions. I also want to keep my setup running without having to cut down on quality or lower settings within five years of buying it.
If you can afford the stuff to make it work right, go for a 4k setup with a big 32 inch screen. It's the smarter choice not just because there is tons of content in 1080p that looks good at 4k since it scales well (and 1440p is like an oddball in this group and doesn't look great with either 1080p or 4k stuff, or at least not as well). It also helps because sometimes people have trouble on multi-screen systems where one screen is 1440p but the others aren't. Plus, just because the screen is bigger at 32 inches, the picture looks better there. I've got three screens that are 1440p and honestly, while I'm very happy with them, I almost wish I'd gone for a 4k setup since the pixel density isn't great for a panel this big when you use 1440p stuff. It's not "bad," but looking at 4k screens of the same size, they just look better. If I had had a more powerful graphics card than what I have, I might have gone with it, but honestly, this thing is already pushing its limits and soon I'll need to upgrade. Just buy the best hardware you can afford once at the start and never look back.