Should I go 1440p or 4K with the RTX 4070 for smooth gaming?

[EmmaS]

I’m trying to decide between a 1440p and a 4K monitor for my new setup, but I’m worried my RTX 4070 won’t be enough to drive the higher resolution smoothly in newer games without turning settings down too much. Has anyone made this jump recently and noticed where the card starts to struggle?

[Kenneth.G]

I went 4K with my RTX 4070 a few months back. In most newer games I can hit 60fps with DLSS Quality on, sometimes 70–80 if I turn off RT and tweak a couple of things like shadow distance. In the heavier hitters I dip to mid‑40s without DLSS, so I learned to keep DLSS on or accept a few settings lowered.

[SamuelL]

I found resolution isn't the only limiter. In a few titles the game was clearly CPU bound or used lots of VRAM even though GPU usage looked high. I noticed bigger framerate gains from turning off RT or reducing reflections than from pushing more pixels.

[GaryJ]

Are you sure the real bottleneck isn't your target frame rate or the monitor's refresh rate? sometimes the problem is the numbers you want rather than the GPU actually choking.

[SavannahL]

I did a quick test: I toggled DLSS on and off and swapped RT on/off. With RT off and DLSS on I stayed in the mid 60s; with RT on I dropped to the 40s unless I switched to DLSS performance. Not a perfect rule, but it helped me decide between the two modes for a given game.