Question 1080p or 1440p advice

[Greeny962]

I need some advice on a monitor upgrade. I currently have a 23”, 1080p, 60hz monitor(hp23vx, 10yrs old). I want to upgrade to a 27” monitor with a higher refresh rate(at least 144hz-165hz). I would like to go to a 1440p monitor but am not sure if the graphics card can handle it. We have an RTX 3060 and an I7-12700.

I just use it for office work and some photo editing and want the larger screen for additional space and visibility. My son plays Fortnite on this system. Playing on “performance” settings he gets 240 fps. At these settings GPU utilization is ~35%, CPU utilization ~20%. At lowest settings we got 350fps and GPU utilization was ~20% and CPU utilization ~20%. At highest settings we get 180 fps, GPU utilization ~45%, CPU utilization -25%. Switching to highest settings on Directx 12 we got 40 fps, and 80-100% GPU utilization and 45% CPU utilization.(Sample size of 1 on these tests, we can do more testing if more accurate data is needed).

My main question is, if we have a 1440p monitor, will we be able to run Fortnite at “performance” settings (or something close) and still get at least 140-160 fps?
If not, is it worth upgrading from a 23” to 27” monitor without increasing resolution from 1080p to 1440p? Or is the drop in PPI not worth it?
Is it better to upgrade to a higher refresh rate monitor but still keep it at 23” @ 1080p? I’d prefer to upgrade size for myself not for his gaming.
Is it worth it to have lower game quality settings, but have higher game frame rate and higher monitor refresh rate on a higher resolution(1440p) monitor?
In the trade offs between monitor size, monitor resolution, game quality settings, fps, and monitor refresh rates, what is most important for Fortnite game play? He’s 13, not a pro, but looking for the settings to give him best performance.

 

[mindless1]

Get the 1440p, if not stepping up to 4K which is what I'd do. The extra real estate is a profound upgrade for non-gaming uses and the 3060, or even much older, slower cards can easily do 1440p for non-3D gaming.

Why do you feel the need for higher refresh rate for office and editing? It isn't at all beneficial for those uses.

Next you did a 180' and mentioned gaming. He doesn't need 240FPS. Try to keep minimal FSP above 30 or on a larger budget above 60. The real question is, does your son find it problematic that frame rate is dropping low? and then it follows to log, how long it is getting to cause that claim.

You do not need at least 140FPS or higher for fortnight. Is he playing competitive? If so then I would aim for at least 60FPS., but it is different can of worms whether it is better to lower graphical settings to achieve higher FPS because A) it is you money paying and it's good to know the cost:benefit ration, and B), that depends a lot on how snobbish your child is about playing at higher eyecandy levels. It is not a very demanding game, even at 1440p

It is hard to go wrong with a larger monitor for gaming and 1440p, yes that trumps any other eyecandy settings (for the most part) to see nearby objects in more detail.

I don't even understand your question since your current settings weren't even coming close to maxing out CPU or GPU.

Do not get a larger monitor without a resolution increase. Get a larger monitor WITH a resolution increase, then see of the game FPS is acceptable on high and if not, turn down the eyecandy settings a notch and test again.

Always run the higher res, larger monitor. Set game eyecandy down to where it is playable at the monitor native resolution. Get a monitor larger than 27", it's just too small for enjoyable gaming unless you live in a van down by the river so your nose is plastered right up against the screen, and then the viewing angles suffer instead.

Get a 32" or larger 1440p monitor and tweak the game settings to run well enough in FPS to make the game playable.

Even then I digress. Better to get a 40" or larger 4K monitor and the tweak whatever settings provide most performance and if it's still not enough, replace the video card. Minor incremental upgrades end up costing about as much in the long run but then you have to settle for sub-par enjoyment the whole time. Low settings on a 4K monitor that's 40" or larger, blows away highest settings at any frame rate on some little 27" 1440p monitor. 1080p? Just no. Way too low a res unless you can only do that due to scrapping together leftover parts on an extreme budget. Just one opinion.

 

[Greeny962]

Get the 1440p, if not stepping up to 4K which is what I'd do. The extra real estate is a profound upgrade for non-gaming uses and the 3060, or even much older, slower cards can easily do 1440p for non-3D gaming.

Why do you feel the need for higher refresh rate for office and editing? It isn't at all beneficial for those uses.

Next you did a 180' and mentioned gaming. He doesn't need 240FPS. Try to keep minimal FSP above 30 or on a larger budget above 60. The real question is, does your son find it problematic that frame rate is dropping low? and then it follows to log, how long it is getting to cause that claim.

You do not need at least 140FPS or higher for fortnight. Is he playing competitive? If so then I would aim for at least 60FPS., but it is different can of worms whether it is better to lower graphical settings to achieve higher FPS because A) it is you money paying and it's good to know the cost:benefit ration, and B), that depends a lot on how snobbish your child is about playing at higher eyecandy levels. It is not a very demanding game, even at 1440p

It is hard to go wrong with a larger monitor for gaming and 1440p, yes that trumps any other eyecandy settings (for the most part) to see nearby objects in more detail.

I don't even understand your question since your current settings weren't even coming close to maxing out CPU or GPU.

Do not get a larger monitor without a resolution increase. Get a larger monitor WITH a resolution increase, then see of the game FPS is acceptable on high and if not, turn down the eyecandy settings a notch and test again.

Always run the higher res, larger monitor. Set game eyecandy down to where it is playable at the monitor native resolution. Get a monitor larger than 27", it's just too small for enjoyable gaming unless you live in a van down by the river so your nose is plastered right up against the screen, and then the viewing angles suffer instead.

Get a 32" or larger 1440p monitor and tweak the game settings to run well enough in FPS to make the game playable.

Even then I digress. Better to get a 40" or larger 4K monitor and the tweak whatever settings provide most performance and if it's still not enough, replace the video card. Minor incremental upgrades end up costing about as much in the long run but then you have to settle for sub-par enjoyment the whole time. Low settings on a 4K monitor that's 40" or larger, blows away highest settings at any frame rate on some little 27" 1440p monitor. 1080p? Just no. Way too low a res unless you can only do that due to scrapping together leftover parts on an extreme budget. Just one opinion.

Thanks for the input. That is very helpful.

Wanted to clarify a couple things since it wasn’t that clear in my original post.

I’m not looking for the higher refresh rate for my office use, just the gaming use. I’m just looking for the bigger monitor for my office use.

We want to maintain minimum 140 fps in the game as it affects reaction and response times. I don’t play but I have seen that even though it isn’t a factor of the monitor refresh rate, playing at low fps like 60 negatively impacts the game play and introduces stutter, lag and affects game reaction and response times.

His settings are fairly low on the “eyecandy”, that’s why he gets 240fps now.

I ask the question even with the low utilizations because I have read elsewhere that the rtx 3060 is not good for 1440p. I wanted to ask the question with my specific use case as I know that what I read is subjective, may not be representative for us, and is subject to people that may be full of it.

Another reason I ask the question is because: with current settings and 1080p we get ~35% GPU utilization. 1440p has 78% more pixels than 1080p. So if the relationship between GPU workload and pixel count is a direct linear relationship, theoretically we should be able to run 1440p, 240fps @ 62% gpu utilization or run 1440p, 187fps @ 35% gpu utilization. These numbers seem to me to show, like you said, that the card is fully capable of running 1440p under our desired conditions.

But I still asked because, I don’t know if the relationship between pixel count and GPU workload is in fact linear or if there are other factors that cause an increase in GPU utilization when switching from 1080p to 1440p. Or if there are, how significant are these other increases. Are they low having an insignificant additional impact on GPU utilization or are they high having a big impact on additional GPU utilization.

Again, thanks for the input it’s helpful and at this point I’ll look for a 1440p monitor.

 

[Greeny962]

Something else just occurred to me. If the CPU and GPU are underutilized at ~30% each and I increase quality settings, shouldn’t the GPU and CPU use more resources to produce the additional quality and the frame rate stay the same. I am seeing the GPU/CPU utilization go up a few percent and the fps going down.

Am I misunderstanding how this works? Is there something else limiting the frame rate instead of the GPU and CPU? Is this indicative of a bottleneck somewhere else in the system?

Since I am seeing the above behavior from the system, how would I know that going to a 1440p monitor would not produce a decrease in frame rate instead of increasing utilization of the hardware?

 

[mindless1]

You seem to be making assumptions I don't agree with but it may be simpler to just suggest checking some youtube videos since Fortnight is so popular, as is the 3060.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Fortnight+3060

 

[Greeny962]

Not sure which assumptions you mean? I was asking questions about situations, calculations and comparisons and specifically asking if the assumptions that I was making with those were accurate.

But I digress, it might be simpler to just ask those questions on the relationship between pixel counts and GPU/CPU utilization and if that is a linear relationship, GPU/CPU utilization/fps/potential bottlenecking, elsewhere.

 

[mindless1]

Just watch the videos that show FPS with 3060 at 1440p, no reason to make false assumptions. Benchmarks, translated into youtube videos, are actual real world results.

Yes it is a false assumption that you need at least 140FPS, a false assumption that it scales linearly with pixels according to % utilization. Plus, you can't get over 60FPS effective on a 60Hz monitor that you stated you use. The monitor can't display more FPS than its refresh rate. It can still reduce lag a little having a GPU that outputs higher FPS than the monitor can display, but not remotely close to feeling like you are needing 140FPS or more when you are seemingly content with what is currently being displayed on a 60Hz refresh monitor.

You stated your son is not a pro (for-profit) Fortnight player. I don't even understand this topic. Get the nicer larger 1440p monitor that benefits everything. Fortnight is nicer on a larger monitor too. You will have higher effective framerate on a 1440p monitor with a higher refresh rate than 60Hz, than you do on your 1080p monitor with a 60Hz refresh rate. I hope this clarifies things.

 

[Greeny962]

I think your reading comprehension is off…
In my reply to your first comment I stated that I understood that 1440p was fine on the rtx3060 and I was going to get a larger 1440p monitor(not a 40” 4K that you ridiculously and hopefully trollingly suggested).

I didn’t say we need 140fps, that is what we want to run at for our desired performance. The game performance being subpar at 60fps is not an assumption it is a first hand observation. The linear scaling was not a false assumption, it was literally me asking if it scales linearly or not as in the theoretical calculations. I am fully aware that a 60hz monitor can not display more than 60fps and never once implied differently. That was literally the impetus for me starting down this whole journey of researching the capability of this video card. What makes you falsely assume I am content with the current 60hz monitor when my whole question here was about getting a better monitor? But again I have observed that game performance suffers below 60fps. It’s amusing that you think I hadn’t watched any of those YouTube videos prior to posting the original question. I watched several of the top results. But if you look through the videos and all the other information on the internet there is conflicting information about the capability of the rtx3060. As you should know, benchmarks can be highly dependent on individual systems and vary widely. That is why I posted on a forum with my specific use case scenario. I posted with the hope to get someone knowledgeable and helpful to answer some questions. But instead I only got you. With judgmental demeanor and hilarious opinions about a huge 4K monitor for my use case. And you who simply said go to YouTube when presented with a somewhat technical question (which I’ve since already had answered elsewhere). In fact I’ve had all my questions answered elsewhere easily and with a much more friendly demeanor. This includes the questions about gpu/cpu utilization, potential bottlenecking, etc. They not only were actually answered elsewhere, but also came with significant advice that helped improve the gpu performance. Not sure why you went back to explaining about getting the larger 1440p monitor when I stated in the first response that that is what I was going to do, instead of answering the follow up questions that I had asked, but I digress, they’ve already been answered elsewhere.

LOL 8295 posts, 4 solutions!

 

[mindless1]

If getting a larger 1440p monitor is what you're going to do, then get on with it. No reason for the topic. You can see first hand what your specific setup achieves.

 

[Sgraffite]

If framerate is the most important thing, I would say stay with 1080p resolution and go to a higher refresh rate. For competitive play higher FPS and lower frametimes would be what you are looking for. Framerate would definitely take a hit going to 1440p as that is quite a lot more pixels percentage wise.

Viewing the CPU utilization as a percentage of all cores isn't overall very useful to look at, as the game won't be able to use all cores on the CPU. It would likely at most use all of one core, and maybe some of another.