1080p to 1440p on P3Dv4

[ckyliu 1,749]

I have a single 22.5" 1080p monitor at the moment, which I'm hoping to relegate to a second monitor that I'll just run desktop apps and video on whilst I game. I'm proposing my new main monitor as 27" 1440p.

Specs: i5-2500k@4.1GHz o/c, 16GB DDR3 RAM and GTX980 4GB. I plan to play P3Dv4, Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines, GTAV and perhaps some driving like Project Cars 2, Forza 7 etc, in addition to normal productivity stuff like Photoshop, Word, Excel.

My rig is fairly smooth on 1080p with most sliders right providing I don't go nuts with dynamic lights and anti-aliasing, it sometimes bogs down a bit in multiplayer with heavy weather around my addon airports. My main addons are Orbx Global+Vector+OpenLC EU, REX4TD+SC, FreeMeshX 38m, Horizon VFR X England & Wales photoscenery, Orbx Scotland, MJC8-Q400 and selected detailed addon airfields from UK2000 and JustSim.

I don't have any budget for a hardware upgrade as well (only just got the GTX980 and an SSD), so if it's not going to run 1440p well I may just settle for 1080p on a 27" screen, if anyone has any experience of how that looks and feels? I sit around 68 cm (27") from the screen

 

Edited April 17, 2018 by ckyliu

[neumanix 113]

I recently got a 27" 1440p gsync monitor that my old GTX970 runs just fine in most games. With the higher resolution you can use less antialiasing and performance is more or less preserved.

No need to upgrade your 980.

[Sartanius 399]

I previously had the very similar setup (GTX-980 and 27" 1440 gsync) and P3D/gaming were just fine.  You should be ok.

[ckyliu 1,749]

So a quick approach stress test with my current 1080p situation as per a suggestion elsewhere. I have about 65-88% (80% average) GPU load for 30-50 FPS, with 3.3 GB VRAM usage. I did manage to hit 100% GPU on the ground in external view. CPU load was 50%, but I almost maxed out cores 1 and 2.

It would seem I don't have much power left to shift from 1080p to 1440p to use unless I start turning stuff down? Click here to see my P3D settings and test situation. Not sure i'll be able to turn the anti-aliasing down as the screen PPI will be about the same.

Edited April 18, 2018 by ckyliu

[Silverbird 115]

9 hours ago, dmiannay said:

I previously had the very similar setup (GTX-980 and 27" 1440 gsync) and P3D/gaming were just fine.  You should be ok.

I agree with Doug running a 1440p here had a gtx980 everything was fine but warning you wont wanna go back to 1080p lol.

[ckyliu 1,749]

Thanks for your feedback so far guys. I found a thread suggesting nVidia DSR could simulate the performance impact of 1440p with a 1080p monitor. They had no framerate drop in P3Dv3, which is a lot different to the 30+% drop I expected, but their GPU load was from an 60% base, not my 80%. I shall test again tonight and report back.

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by ckyliu

[ckyliu 1,749]

So I had about 28-30 FPS with 85-95% GPU load during that approach at 1400p, 3.5 GB VRAM. It felt smooth enough.

A couple of extra FPS but with only 75-80% GPU and 43% CPU load at 1050p, 3.3 GB VRAM.

On the ground I got a 20% lower FPS at the higher resolution, I think because of dynamic lighting push GPU usage to 100%.

So it seems 1440p is for me after all! I hope someone else will find this information useful. Note that DSR is only available GTX970 and 980 cards (and some of the 10xx series). The performance was monitored using GPU-Z 2.8.0.

Edited April 18, 2018 by ckyliu

[Sartanius 399]

Sounds great, Chris.  Like @Silverbird said above, "you wont wanna go back to 1080p lol"  Enjoy!