Question Wheres my bottleneck? GPU or current display?

[Storm]

All,

Happy Thanksgiving to for those that are celebrating...

I'm a long-time member first time posting again in years maybe?

Video card - a Gigabyte GTX970 in 2014
Monitor - ASUS VW246H 24" 1920 x 1080 2ms in 2011

It looks like my monitor is the bottleneck and I should probably upgrade it? How far can I go with a GTX 970. I'm not looking at upgrading the rig to a 4k level machine.

Just upgrading the monitor for now at least...Could I go with the Acer Predator XB271HU? any other suggestions?

Let me know if I've posted in the wrong place since this could go under displays... man what happened to General Hardware and builds area

Edit:
CPU is - Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 4.0 GHz

 

[mopardude87]

Wouldn't hurt to upgrade both the gpu and monitor at the same time. No one would argue that both could use a upgrade. It's gonna be about what you play, want to play and overall your budget. If your playing some older stuff then perhaps you could make due with just a monitor upgrade.

Post your budget and currently played games and upcoming then i am willing to bet people will point you in the right direction.

 

[pandemonium]

Agreed with @mopardude87. Any ideas of what you're looking forward to playing or minimum requirements you feel you want?

2560x1440 is still the current sweet spot, in terms of what the hardware available can drive and fidelity of picture and screen size, so good choice on the monitor upgrade. To drive that, I'd recommend you definitely want to upgrade your GPU. (I'm speaking from experience here being a GTX970 SLI owner running at 2560x1440. A lot of titles, especially of late, do not support multi-GPU configs and I'll spend hours playing with Nvidia Inspector for compatibility bits to no avail.)

A budget level GPU for that resolution could be a 1660Ti, though I'd probably go for something around a 2070 Super or higher if you want to future proof at all and play AAA titles without dipping below 36 FPS so GSync doesn't trip up your experience.

To be safe, anything giving you a low 99th percentile for 16.7ms frametimes on 2560x1440 is a good bet. See techreports recent comparison.

 

[Guru]

That is still a decent monitor, but in terms of graphics you can use an upgrade if you want to play the newest AAA games. I'd recommend buying either the RX 5700 or RX 5700xt. Nvidia just can't compete with these two cards in this mid range segment. Best value for money by far.

If you have the money definitely go for the RX 5700xt, its only $50-60 more and you get 15% more performance.

 

[Rocketman122]

Im curious... Whats wrong with your 970/1080p setup? Do you feel like you need to get a better 1080p display or is it low fps? How is the screen a bottleneck? Im asking for myself

Me personally, Im looking to get a used gtx980 to upgrade my prehistoric gtx660 but I certainly dont have issues playing any games at 1080p. although all games I play are older 2017 titles. But no issues running over 50fps on anything im playing. Though im not a heavy gamer anymore like I once was. I broke way too many keyboards from being competitive. I had to do some rehab so no longer play online or into it too much

Update.. Ah, I see the screen bottleneck as the acer is 2560x1440

 

[happy medium]

Upgrade to the 1440p Acer predator monitor and grab a used gtx1080ti.
Mabe a little overclock on your 4790k and your set.
Your gtx970 will work at 1440p at med/high settings.