Discussion Regarding the Correlation Between Monitor Resolution and GPU

john1911

Graduate
I have come across this advice countless times on Reddit (r/PCMR, r/gaming, etc.) and various other forums - Unless you have a high-end GPU, you should not invest in a 4K monitor. This seems to be a default response whenever someone posts a build advice for a PC with a 4K monitor and a mid-tier graphics card. While I understand that a mid-tier graphics card won't be able to run games at 4K resolution, I believe there’s an overlooked aspect of this argument. You can always lower the resolution while keeping the aspect ratio the same during gaming, allowing you to still enjoy the benefits of a higher-resolution monitor for all other tasks except gaming.

A few years ago, I often had to lower the resolution to 720p while gaming on a 1080p monitor because my GPU couldn't handle games at 1080p. But that was still a viable option. This question has been in the back of my mind for many years now, and I've had too much coffee today, so....

I understand that gaming at a monitor's native resolution is ideal, but the idea that you should avoid upgrading to a higher-resolution monitor simply because your current GPU can’t run games at that resolution doesn’t sit well with me. It’s hard to understand why this is such a common recommendation.

There are many benefits to owning a higher-resolution monitor, but the default response I keep hearing is to get a 1440p monitor unless you have a powerful GPU capable of running games at 4K. Is there some other reason behind this that I’m missing or unaware of?

TIA
 
High-end GPU is needed ONLY if you "Game in 4K". Otherwise, even a modern integrated GPU is enough to "drive" a monitor at 4K.
Hence, go ahead and buy a 4K monitor.
A practical advice: There's hardly any perceptive difference between 2K and 4K resolution in daily workloads.
There's a massive difference going from 720p to 1080p and from 1080p to 2K. However, beyond that, it is highly subjective.
Regardless, 4K monitors are an investment worth making.
 
Part of the reason is older wisdom that's being carried over today as if it's still relevant: monitors didn't have good upscalers, so a 1280x768 signal used look like a blocky mess on a 1400x900 monitor.

An LCD monitor had only one usable resolution, it's native one. So you'd need a much more powerful GPU to drive a higher resolution flat panel. This was also partly the reason why LCDs were never considered usable for gaming for many years, and why CRTs were relevant for as long as they were.

Obviously this is no longer true, otherwise console gamers wouldn't even exist or be considered mentally disadvantaged to not notice the difference, at least with gaming monitors. TVs generally had better scalers than monitors, mostly because of sports content.

You might still find some productivity centric monitors with very basic or even unusable scalers, like the stuff from South Korea a few years ago. Thankfullly sites like rtings tests these things.

Also why https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-amd-fidelityfx-super-resolution/ is so interesting.