1440p Ruined Me

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For me personally, I went from 1080p to 1440p a little of a year ago. Ever since, it's hard to look at PC gaming in the same way. Graphics cards need a certain amount of power, some deals are harder to recognize and appreciate. 1440p might have ruined me. What about you?

0:00- 1440p good, I bad?
0:46- Sponsor Segment
1:25- 1440p Explained
2:35- Why I'm Broken
3:22- Sunk Costs
5:25- Unrealized Costs
6:47- Technical work-arounds
7:20- VRAM
8:25- A new normal
9:40- 1440p too good
13:34- If you want to upgrade...

[Aurummorituri]

I feel that in 4K. Trying to keep up with the supporting hardware can be stressful when your "monster rig" from a few years ago starts to slip. I have a 3090, so the only "reasonable" upgrade is a 4090. Everything else is cut down in some way.

[sarijen]

THEORY: If you expeirenced 1440p and regret it, you can try this: Give yourself a break for a while, then playing at 720p (I know terrible), but after some time you can switch back to 1080p so then you will see the improvement again and feel how sharp the image is. (May or may not work)

[SB-pfrc]

i grew up with 640x480. seeing pixels really doesn't bother me, especially for games. i confess i've been using 1440p monitors since 2011 though. i only get annoyed with 1080p when i'm doing graphic design work or anything involving text.

i think there's a significant generational factor in play; if you grew up looking at CRTs your values are different.

[matthewa]

Can confirm that this exact thing happened to me when I realized the monitor I was using was 1440p and I decided to upgrade my graphics card and then had to upgrade my processor, then my motherboard bricked itself so I had to buy a new motherboard and then I needed faster ram because I was at a too much of a ram bottle neck. And then my case was a hot box so I had to upgrade that... so I can say that I basically overhauled my entire computer because of the 1440p monitor

[tony_T_]

Imo, getting a 1440p monitor is a fantastic upgrade, and one that I never regretted. Despite the higher costs for hardware, the extra clarity and sharpness is literally game changing. The overall experience is just so much better than 1080p, and I don't think I could ever go back to trying to ignore the pixels.

[chlM]

I upgraded to 1440p in 2019 and it's been great for me. What you are saying here is basically the reason why I didn't go for 4K. The GPU requirements grow more when going 1440p->4K than when going 1080p ->1440p. So I would have to spend much more on a GPU and possibly even upgrade more often to maintain 4K, whereas 1440p is reasonably easy to maintain.

[crugg]

One little upside of 1440p many people forget about is the added real estate for apps if you use 100% scaling. Needs some getting used to, but in complex professional software like editing tools, gasme engines, etc., this can be super useful. Also good for having 4 windows open at once

[chloe-sunshine]

I think moving to 165hz was a much bigger problem for me. Before I was always aiming for 60fps. Chasing 165fps 1440p on a 1060 was simply not happening. My new 6700xt is working great though. I'm overall happy with the move.

[spycat_]

what allowed me to go from 1440p down to 1080p again was getting a monitor with 240hz + ULMB. the small difference i felt from a worse resolution was largely offset from everything looking so much smoother.

[thusano]

I feel this, it gets so expensive, being into PCs is a hedonistic treadmill of spending that's very difficult to get off. Sometimes you have to just appreciate what you've got tho, being able to game in 1440p or 4k at these frame rates was unimaginable when I first started getting into this hobby. I was gassed when I could get Star Wars Jedi Academy to run at 1024x768 hahaha.

[JettzCG]

Being out of the loop for years, I'm surprised that 1080p is as brushed off to the side in the benchmark conversation as it is

[stertheder]

I upgraded to a 1440p monitor for my work, at the same size (21.5”) for the added clarity. I work in Engineering Consulting and being able to view 11x17” drawings without having to zoom in and out constantly to read text is fantastic.

[ParallelUniversity]

I'm using a 4070 super now, and still playing on 1080P 144Hz. I like just setting everything to ultra and getting around 120-144 FPS for all games. If I upgraded to 1440P, I would see a drop in framerate, and for games in the near future I would need to start dialing back the settings. I don't want to do that.

[krazycharlie]

I play retro consoles on a regular basis, so going back and forth among resolutions on screens of varying sizes isn't that big of a deal for me. What really ruined me is high refresh rate and high framerate in games, specially in modern ones. I have a really hard time playing games that are below 60 FPS. I guess that i can play anything at 30 FPS as long as the framerate and frame pacing are consistent and stable but anything that's poorly optimized and poor performing, I tend to avoid it.

[ccotunai]

I upgraded from 1080p to 4k and it brought a tear to my eye when i saw the bill :)) jokes aside, though, the texture quality and detail in scenes gets a noticeable increase, while aliasing decreases in most games. Texture and object pop-in is more noticeable, though, depending on the game. 1080p is still perfectly fine if the game is good though

[pvictorc]

Your upgrades are totally worth it. There is nothing about it for you to regret. As you said, 1440p is the sweet spot. If you were trying to run in 4k, you'd probably be wasting a ton of money and not necessarily getting the proportional performance gains...

[eriknorman]

The biggest problem with 1080p is TAA looks so awful on them. it’s so blurry and smudged but when you turn it off the dithering looks just as bad

[microsoul]

I upgraded from a 1080p to a 1440p build when I built my first pc on my own in 2019. Like you said it is really hard to go back to 1080p ( I learned this the hard way when I played some JRPGS that were stuck in this resolution).
I can't say I regret the upgrade though, as I don't really play modern AAA titles anymore.

[natalieisabutt]

I've never regretted going to 1440p. I already had a full PC upgrade on the cards so I was keen on moving up in resolution. Still stuck on finding a GPU deal (hopeful that a decently priced 6800 XT comes my way lol) but my 2070 Super is still going strong for now

[dankvader]

I've a similar "issue" with gaming on 144 Hz. I was abroad for a year and was using my notebook for pretty much everything, including gaming, and it's got a 144 hz display. When I recently came back home and started using my desktop again (which is on 2 60 Hz monitors), I felt as if every game I played was on 45-50 fps (you know, that point where a game is running smooth but not butter-smooth), even though my average fps is at the 100s. I guess I ruined myself so I might be preparing for an upgrade on the desktop.