Thinking of upgrading my monitor in a reasonable way.

No..
Upgrade your monitor in an unreasonable way
I wouldnt worry about curved unless your going ultrawide (which you can do for not much more than $200 if your willing to stick with 60hz, infact you can even go 4k, of course then you have to drive it)
Heres a list of monitors up to £300
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/monitors/finder/up-to-300-pounds

 

I was just going to write that you end up doing something unreasonable anyway, but the friggin dalek ruined my momentum again.

We have 4 curved Samsungs in kids' computers. A couple of very cheap ones (72hz 24") and two 144hz (one 24, one 27). Individually the curvature is not really much of a thing, but on 3 display setup it is quite nice.

Edit:
Oh yeah, they are all 1080. But all have Freesync support. The image quality in the cheapest ones is clearly weaker though; unless looking for a dirt cheap secondary screen (which they are) the ~200€ range is much better in general.

 

Personally I wouldn't buy a new monitor to suit your current GPU. As with my wife's new PC, she's running 1080p but I want to get her a 1440p once she's able to buy a new GPU... one day... in 2023.

 

yep, and modern displays are quite good at upscaling (the default "gpu upscaling" on AMD/Nvidia also already good) to upscale 1440p to 4K. 1080p to 4K a bit blurry tho.... Although if its only 24-32 inch, I'm not sure if 4K will bring any benefit hahaha.

 

The thing about buying a new monitor is that, assuming it doesn't fail, it's going to outlast every other part of your computer. Like you said, you have a monitor from 10 years ago that's still useable. And if you are going to pass it along to someone else in the family in a year or two, even better. You are in a no lose situation, sir.

How does integer scaling look going from 1080 to 4k? I've tried a few games at 540p with integer scaling trying to get sharp, chunky pixels and it's blurrier than I would have expected.

 

you would need to use the gpu to do interger scaling. IIRC its hidden in one of the option inside nvidia cpanel submenu of submenu. as 4K TVs even high end ones didn't have interger scaling AFAIK

 

Yeah, I'm using integer scaling one the GPU (RTX2070S) and doing 540p->1080p still looks soft to me.

 

any game i could test? im curious

 

On desktop, I played zDoom a bit at 540p, for astatic reasons. I might have tried Hellblade at 540 also, but that may have been on my laptop. On laptop, played a bunch of games at lower res to get better performance. Still looks soft on a 15 inch screen..

 

I have a 27 in 1080p monitor that I no long use as my daily, and it's fine for games. Not the best if you are trying to do pro stuff, but games were totally fine. The only reason I stopped using mine was because my kids hit it with something and left this weird mark on it where it looks like the backlight is slightly brighter where they hit it. Now it's my LAN party monitor, not that I've been doing that lately.

 

Ugh 1080
I tried one when my 1200 2ndary died, hated it & pretty quickly donated to my flatmate when his primary died, managed to find a very affordable Samsung 1200 to replace it.

I've been kinda thinking of upgrading my primary to a proper 4K but I'd need to be over 27" & by the time you get that big (at least the last time I looked) 4K monitors get very much into Unreasonable $$$

 

My last monitor was 27" 1080p set and the pixel density is definitely poor. As in if I sat close, but not stupidly close, I could easily make out the individual pixels. For gaming where you're mostly sat back though it was okay. There's no way I'd ever consider a 16:9 monitor again though after going 21:9. For both gaming and productivity it's vastly better.

 

So goddamnit now I've been looking and there are a bunch of 32/34" 4K monitors from reputable manufacturers around in the right kind of price range

Whats the story on VA panels?
Quick research puts them between IPS & TN (another issue with that 1080 24" was it was TN, blurgh, my others have all been IPS) but you need IPS for proper HDR right?

 

Nope some of the best HDR monitors are VA. What you need is a minimum of VESA HDR600 certified although some would argue you need HDR1000. And ideally you need a FALD display which are crazy expensive.

Mine is an HDR600 display with no FALD and the local dimming is horrendous (I leave it turned off). HDR still looks better on it but I've not seen anything I would describe as significant. Then again, the same applies to my OLED C6.

 

how about using LG 48CX in windowed? just use the top 2//3 or bottom 2/3 depending on whichever more comfortable.

for HDR on non OLED/miniled/microled you need FALD, but FALD are crazy expensive and still far from perfect. The panel itself can be VA/IPS/WVA/etc

 

So for HDR its a case of go unreasonable or don't bother?