Hello, gunslinging rednecks, bastard Czech nobles and galaxy saviours with pointed ears and beaded beards. Ehm. ;) I need y'all to help me pick my next monitor.

Presume RTX 3070 and (probably upgrading soon) 13700K, overclocked, moderately fast DDR4 RAM.

So far I've been able to afford neither 4K nor 144fps. Nowadays, however, I can go beyond the 1440p 75Hz/fps @ ultra that my current 32'' monitor provides me with.

I have a backlog of old games to play, including DOS1+2, Pathfinder, Ember, Outer Worlds, Borderlands or Wastelands or both, Dirt 4 (5 too, I think), Grid 1+2, Jedi: Fallen Order, Greedfall, Horizon and a bunch of others, including a slew of NWN1:EE modules. These are games older than the hardware, so I get more slack.

As new stuff comes out, I'll want to play the AAA RPG sequels that come out, maybe a year after, so that I can play them properly patched, with the expansions already included and integrated, and also purchased at a discount. By that time, I guess it's possible I might replace the GPU.

My preference is to maximize quality without sacrificing too much performance. Within reason, of course — not talking about taking a 10 fps hit for something I can't see. Playing at 40 fps is a comfort issue, but playing in high instead of ultra does feel kinda like playing a prequel or missing out on something important. Nonetheless, I'm aware that many others see this the other way round. I have no experience with >75 fps on an LCD, so I don't even know what it feels like and can't compare.

The sitting distance can be anywhere from 60 to 100 cm.

And so I wonder about a couple of things:

- choice between resolution vs framerate in my case
- HDR, 10bit, wide gamuts — do I really just want to ignore this?
- 27'' vs 32'' for immersion
- 24'' 1440p or 4K has entered my mind too, as a PPI cheat code

Alas, LCD monitors being how they are, a monitor can't be native @ both 1440p and 4K. Otherwise a 4K 144Hz monitor such as Gigabyte M28U could be the solution, as it would allow me to pick and choose between slow 4K and fast 1440p.

For the most demanding titles, 1440p would be a no-brainer, because even 60 fps would already be a struggle @ ultra with a 3070. For something like Civ or Tropico or Crusader Kings, on the other hand, if I played that exclusively, 4K would be a no-brainer because the framerate would be high enough even @ ultra. Alas, I'm somewhere in the middle. And obviously don't want to buy two monitors.

I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to play through my backlog in a higher resolution or refresh rate than I currently have, but I struggle with the choice. Plus, there's the matter of size, where 32'' feels wonderfully immersive in some situations but too big from the 80cm distance in some others. I suppose 27'' could feel wonderfully sharp in some situations and maybe not immersive enough in the sense of wrapping you in some others. I suppose the genre matters here quite a bit because in something like Starcraft you prefer to have the whole screen easily in your FOV without moving your neck or even eyes around a lot, whereas in something like Dirt or any other racer you'd rather have it as big as possible, and for The Witcher or Mass Effect it probably depends much more on individual taste.

Bottom line, don't know what to choose. Could also leave the AOC Q3279VWFD8 alone and focus on other things. It's not a bad monitor, it's just that something newer/a bit more expensive could come with a better panel and be less tiring for the eyes. Again, in this year's AAA titles played @ 1440p my 3070 would struggle to keep up with 75Hz/fps in ultra settings anyway. But it does suck to not have a 4K monitor, or a 144Hz monitor, for those games in which I could get the high resolution or frame rate.

WWYD?

That Gigabyte is not magic. It only has one native resolution.

All I'll say is that I wouldn't use 1440p on anything bigger than 27 inches. the PPI loss becomes too noticeable at that point (anything below 100 PPI) and if I ever were to go past 27 inches (which I won't), it would have to be 4K. That being said, I already feel like 27 is pretty much at the point where anything larger would be inconvenient for normal PC gaming where you sit very close to the display.

As for your points, it's all subjective but:
- I'll always pick higher frame rate over resolution. Ultimately, it's the final PPI that is important.
- Most displays that claim 10 bit are actually 8 bit + FRC, so not true 10 bit. True 10 bit ones are quite expensive and honestly, not really needed if you aren't working in photo editing/graphic design.
- HDR is a gimmick. To get the most out of it, it usually requires the display to be set to eye-searing brightness, which I can't tolerate. Part of the reason I am using a TN monitor. Because with TN, I can use 15-20% of the max brightness and still see stuff in dark areas better than a person with an IPS display and brightness nearing 100%.
- Wide gamuts - as long as you don't buy something extremely cheap, it's usually not an issue.
- PPI - as per my opening statement, it is honestly the best way to get a very good looking image. 27 inch 1440p seems like the perfect sweet spot.

If you plan on mostly playing new AAA games, 1440p will also allow you to push much higher framerates, justifying the purchase of a high refresh display. If you want 4K, there is not really much point in going past 75 Hz to be honest. 4K still is a massive resource hog first and foremost.

I am currently at 240 Hz and it's incredible in older games.