Gaming with 4k or an ultrawide

[maflynn]

I'd like to get some input on people's opinions. I'm in the market for a new monitor, and I was all set to jump into the deep end of the 4k pool - mostly because my laptop is 4k, and I thought it would be nice to have consistent resolution sizes. I'm considering a 27" 4k form factor, if that matters.

I then had a thought - what about an ultra-wide setup and having a 34" WQHD resolution - that would be more useful for my day to day stuff but one question remains - how's the gaming?

On the 4k front, I'm not looking to play games in 4k, so I can see altering the resolution to something lower. If I do that will things look to fuzzy in the games? I'd imagine they would. My Thinkpad X1E, has a GTX 1050TI which isn't bad, but it clearly won't drive a 4k monitor playing games.

Would an ultrawide provide a better experience? Would games be playable at 3440x1440 or would they be stretched?

I usually like to play some RPG games, some older FPS, nothing too crazy and then some older games like fallout 4.

Any thoughts, opinions, and musings on gaming + display (and resolution) sizes will be welcome.

 

[Falhófnir]

In my experience with my (admittedly older) Windows gaming laptop, it has a 1080p screen, but I don't find that setting the game to a non 1080p resolution makes it look materially worse. Depending on what you're playing, you'll possibly appreciate getting a decent frame rate more than having the resolution turned up or the graphics settings maxed out (in games with a lot of fast movement/ tracking; like fallout) the opposite might be true for a game with lots of detail but where you don't move much or as quickly (Civ series; Total War)?

 

[gkarris]

It's gonna depend of course, on the GPU, Monitor, and Game.

I have an older AMD RX 470 and just use 1080p/Epic/60+fps and it is quite nice, looks great on a Samsung 40" 4K UHD set. What ends up happening is the GPU upscales the 1080p to 4K for the monitor.

Doom (2016) and EVERSPACE look great...

The game also has to, of course, support ultra-wide resolutions and an increased FOV...

People on YT show their triple monitor setups with certain games if you want to research more.

 

[TopherMan12]

Why do you want a 4K monitor if you are going to game at a lower resolution? You could definitely see a fuzzy image on a 4K monitor gaming at lower resolutions, but that depends on the monitor. If it were me then I would rather have a monitor that is designed for the resolution I am targeting.

I have an older AMD RX 470 and just use 1080p/Epic/60+fps and it is quite nice, looks great on a Samsung 40" 4K UHD set. What ends up happening is the GPU upscales the 1080p to 4K for the monitor.

That's actually the TV that is doing the upscaling rather than the GPU.

 

[ActionableMango]

Would an ultrawide provide a better experience? Would games be playable at 3440x1440 or would they be stretched?

I think so, yes.

Nearly all modern games are playable in ultrawide. If you go back like 3-4 year then most games are compatible, but maybe with some quirks. Go back another 3-4 years and you need to check for compatibility on a title-by-title basis.

Here is a good resource for checking compatibility:

WSGF | "Wider is Better"

www.wsgf.org