Nah I'm not gonna hear this BS on resolutions just because diminishing returns is a thing. We're approaching steadfast on having uncompressed textures rendering in real-time, games as a whole will benefit from this even if it's displayed through 1080p. When you jump from a 970 to a 8K compatible card you will be gaining more than just a bump in screen resolution.

You're cool with a 27" but there's no real reason to settle for that other than space and money. I bought a 40" (guess-timation) since I wanted a standing desk setup with 6ft of space between me and the screen.
Let's not forget the amount of people that hook a PC up to a TV as well.

If 8K doesn't have a place in gaming, the one media where you can freely move about and manipulate a camera in a 3D dynamic world, then I can't imagine it having a place in any media really.

Buying GPUs annually is a fad.
Upgrading regularly because VR / 4K capabilities are announced is a fad.
Telling someone to stick with their cureent, good PC for 5 years and THEN build a creme da le creme PC is a smart move.

yes

Of course DPI will determine how the final result looks, but it is the resolution that determines the majority of the strain on your hardware.

When you jump from a 970 to a 8K card, you will be waiting for years for that to happen. And then he could be waiting for 16K and so on and so on. You could be waiting forever for the next "best" thing in the IT world.

Sitting at your desk, going beyond 27 is a bad move. I have the money, I have the space and I will not go above that. Having to move your head around just to see to the edges of your screen is a terrible experience. Especially in FPS games.

Of course that from large distances, huge screens are OK. But that doesn't change the statement I made about gaming while sitting in front of your monitor.

And just a note: I'm planning to buy 27 monitor. I still use a 21.5 1920x1080 monitor. But from having tried 27 already, I know it will take a lot of getting used to. And my main reason to upgrade is the smooth 144-165 refresh rate, not the higher resolution or display size.

It might, but not from sitting distance and on smaller monitors. And even when 8K cards come, it will take even more time before they are finally able to handle that on 144-165 Hz reasonably. I'll take framerate over overkill resolution any day.

The first part I can agree with. But the amount of waiting you should do between upgrades is entirely dependent on your needs. The moment you are not satisfied with your PCs performance, you should look for an upgrade. Telling someone to wait for some arbitrary period while he already does not have nearly the latest hardware is basically telling someone to suffer for at least a few years. Will he save money by doing that? Yes. Is it worth the trouble? Definitely not IMHO.

That strain is irrelevant if you can already easily run all your games on the highest resolution. A GTX970 e.g. can run many games in 4K resolution. It all depends on what kind of games (age/genre/...) you play.

And it also can NOT run the rest of them in 4K decently.
A 970 is completely fine for 1080p. It is also capable of outputting 4K but in newer games, the framerate will be bad unless you completely butcher the graphic options (read low-medium at best). And we are talking about struggling to reach stable 60FPS here.

Old games are fine but if you ever wanted to play anything newer, the card would struggle in 4K (unless you SLI 2 of them which has it's own slew issues).

No, not just in older games. You are talking about new AAA action type games.
Do you play strategy games? Probably not, because most new strategy games can be played easily with a GTX970 on 4K. How about isometric RPGs, like Pillars Of Eternity 2 or Original Sin 2? Etc Etc...
Just look at the system reqs on all the new titles on GOG. Plenty of them with modest graphics card recommendations. No really, LOOK THEM UP, instead of repeating the same popular opinion over and over again. (like everybody should care about this "reach stable 60 FPS" - many games play smoothly with a lot less)

True, mostly FPSes, 3rd person RPGs and maybe racing games are the main culprit here. If you purposefully avoid demanding games, I guess you will be okay.

System requirements are NOT what you need to have graphics set to high/maximum. Usually about medium.


"Like everybody should care about this "reach stable 60 FPS""
No, people should and are starting to care about reaching stable 144 or 165 FPS for much more responsive and smooth experience. And that will be extremely hard to do the higher in resolution you go. It helps that 165 is pretty much at the cap of usefulness for smoothness and there is no need to go much higher. All that remains is the hardware capable of handling 4+K resolution at this rate and we're golden. But until then, you have to prioritize. The OP asked for an upgrade and waiting 5 years for 8K @ 165 FPS is not the answer IMHO if he doesn't want to suffer in that time period

"Many games play smoothly with a lot less"
That is true only if you have some advanced sync tech in your display (FreeSync, GSync). If you don't have it, as your framerate drops lower and lower you can easily notice the picture is not completely smooth, screen tearing and other such things. And if you have one of those Sync techs, your monitor is usually capable of at least 144 Hz as they are bundled in what is marketed as "gaming" displays. Those give you a choice. Either you have capable enough hardware to reach 144-165 FPS (at which point these sync techs become pretty much pointless) or utilizing the Sync tech, they can make lower framerates feel smoother than they actually are (30 FPS on Gsync will feel a lot different than without). But low FPS counts on a standard budget displays are difficult to look at.

I can easily notice when something is not constant 60FPS and once I go below 50, I start reducing graphical options. I guess it depends on the person, but I can easily tell if something is not running 60 FPS.

I'm just saying that there are much more important things for gaming than higher resolution and it should be secondary to high framerate. Once there is nothing else to improve but resolution, then go ahead and buy 32K monitor if you want. But what most games (especially older ones) have problems with is UI scaling, which will only get worse and worse.

No I don't avoid them - I just don't like the crap that the big publishers are making these days. :-P

I meant: look at the system requirements to extrapolate how a game most likely will run on different/newer/older hardware and which graphics settings and/or resolution are now possible. It's not that difficult - especially if there are a few generations in between.

I also don't play a lot of new games but from time to time when I do (The Surge most recently) my HW is starting to struggle (GTX 780) on 1920x1080. 970 is a bit more powerful than that but not by much (somewhere about 3-30% depending on the game). But the 780 also overclocks like a beast so you can get it on pretty much the same or nearly the same level as 970 but it becomes an absolute power hog, giving my PSU the run for it's money.

And thanks for keeping the discussion civil. Such conversations usually quickly devolve into a hot mess.

It's like you're not even reading my posts or something. The point of me telling him to wait is to use up his current build, not so he can just get the ultra best stuff. He has a great rig already and is asking about upgrades, the only upgrades to get right now is the best stuff which will grant him access to...4K and VR, that is not worth it. Wear out the current rig for 4 or 5 years, then 8K will be the new thing and upgrading to the best of the best will be waaaay more worth it.

Once again, for the fifth time, it's not about just getting the best of the best, it's about using what you have and THEN getting the best of the best.




" But that doesn't change the statement I made about gaming while sitting in front of your monitor. "

Your statement is subjective and the way you use your monitor is subjective as well.




"Telling someone to wait for some arbitrary period"

Duh, it's a smart use of money. Holding back on an expensive purchase and using your strong computer is not settling or "suffering" lmao. That's not arbitrary.



You are not suffering, unless you are into editing, if you have a 970. You will be playing every game smoothly for the next 4 years. You talk about 8K being sooo unnecessary but act like a 970 is weak shit just because a handful of better cards are out there.

Yeah beacause Assassin's C's optimization is all over the place. Turn down the graphical settings, looks like this game runs like ass tho, it's not your GPUs fault. You don't need to drop 1k just to get the placebo effect of maxing out a game that is garbage anyways.

"This is simply not true unless your start to compromise with your graphical settings"

Soooo it is true then. Guarantee that OP will never have to go into a .ini file for the next 4 years and can just stick to low presets when the time comes, it's not a deal breaker at all.

"Now that is a perfect example of subjective"

Yeah having your editing being limited by your hardware is totally subjective lmao yeah right

"Someone might suffer the moment they drop below 60 FPS on max settings."

FPS matters. Max settings, however, is so unnoticable 90% of the time that it's a subjective difference between other graphical presets until you do side-by-side comparisons.

1. Nobody is saying he should immediately go and buy a 1080ti (or the new RTX for that matter). A single 1070 would be enough (if he doesn't upgrade his monitor).

2. It was not true based on the info that I responded to. You added the low preset thing just now. And if I could play a game smoothly only on low presets, I'd rather not play at all.

3. You put it as "you cannot suffer with 970 unless you are into editing" on which I said that it is very subjective as every person has a different threshold on where their suffering begins for when it comes to game performance. 970 will definitely not cover all the cases.

4. Graphical settings and their impact are definitely on a per game basis. I agree that you can manage for some time if you carefully and manually set all the settings. But that depends on the OP's philosophy on what he expects from his hardware and how low is he willing to go before he says "Enough!!".

That's a nice tennis match you have going on here, but I wanted to remind you the OP's already gone ahead and bought a 1070 Ti :). He also mentioned he's not much of a settings tweaker, so maybe that's why he was having performance issues on what is (still) a rather decent board for 1080p gaming.