just a little PSA but for gaming I would recommend getting a monitor that’s exactly 1920x1080 and not any higher or lower res than that

I got a 2k monitor thinking that bigger number = better monitor, but the problem is:

• basically every video game is designed for 1080p or below
• which means that above 1080p the UI elements are probably going to be tiny and hard to read at best
• and you might not even be able to play certain games at a resolution above 1080p
• btw if you try to play a game that’s rendering at 1080p on a 2k screen, everything looks blurry and it’s kinda terrible
• also, some games have optimization problems that only become apparent once you try to run them above 1080p

so basically just don’t get a 2k or 4k monitor unless you want to deal with the headaches mentioned above

@kasdeya 4k scales cleanly into 1080 (at the same aspect ratio) because it's a 2160px vertical resolution (which is exactly double 1080px) — it's only 2k that has the weird fractional scaling issues because 1440 is 1.333 times as tall as 1080

@kasdeya +1 on scaling 1080p to 4k. If you’re on Linux and want to get extra fancy and have a recent-ish GPU, gamescope can do some wild tricks like upscaling via FSR (DLSS has not worked for me, but I think it’s a Wayland bug). It looks pretty fab imho.

@kasdeya I upscale a CPU bound 1280x728 game (coffin…) to 4k via FSR and it looks *crisp* and I don’t get the massive performance hit of upscaling in software. It’s magic.

@tempest omgg it does! that is really good to know. I wish I had known that when I was shopping for a new monitor lol

@tempest @kasdeya Ironically, 1440p monitors are often sold as "gaming" monitors.

I have a 1080p monitor and a 1440p monitor on my PC - but gaming is done on the former because that's also my video projector. The 1440p monitor is for making music, as DAWs like the screen real estate.

@tempest @kasdeya I realize it sounds like a distinction without a difference, but UHD (3840x2160) scales cleanly as it is twice the resolution vertically and horizontally from 1080 formats. 4K is 4096x2160, which is a full frame cinema format.

Many systems that support UHD don’t necessarily support 4K.

@kasdeya @tempest still some games will be blurry for some reason sometimes requiring setting the whole OS' resolution to 1080 qwq

@kasdeya not to mention the refresh rate on the monitors these days, especially gaming-focused ones, push well beyond 60Hz. Even at 1080p, going into 120+ FPS can put a strain on your CPU/GPU. Limiting your VSync everywhere to 60 FPS can get annoying if your monitor and game support GSync where it'll just take your monitor refresh rate instead....