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 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....

@kasdeya Bummer that you're running into so many issues with 1440p. If you haven't heard of PCGamingWiki (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home), it documents a lot of known issues, including from running games at too high a resolution. If you're lucky, it might list a fix for the specific game you're trying to play.

Otherwise, if you need to run at lower than native resolution in games that don't support upscaling, you can still greatly mitigate the blurriness by applying spatial upscaling with FSR1 or NIS (Nvidia Image Scaling) combined with antialiasing. On Windows, it should be in the GPU vendor's control panel thingy. In AMD Adrenalin it's known as Radeon Super Resolution (RSR). On Linux, it's enabled by default on Proton-GE; and there's a flag in gamescope for native games. IME, it looks surprisingly good with at least 75% resolution scale (e.g. 1080p->1440p). Mileage may vary per game, and maybe because I'm at 2160p.

@mark_pc ooh, thank you! I already use PCGW a lot (it’s such a lifeline for older games or just AAA jank) but I had no idea about FSR1 or NIS! thanks a lot for telling me about that