I had an LG 27" 1080p monitor and it looked fine. Might depend on your viewing distance though, it was about 50cm for me.

Also, that GTX 980 is nowhere near the end of life hardware for Win7. You can go much higher than that, and if you intend to play games from 2015 and onward fully maxed, you probably want something that packs a bit more punch. Games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Rise of the Tomb Raider will eat that card for lunch.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-08, 16:16:

I had an LG 27" 1080p monitor and it looked fine. Might depend on your viewing distance though, it was about 50cm for me.

Also, that GTX 980 is nowhere near the end of life hardware for Win7. You can go much higher than that, and if you intend to play games from 2015 and onward fully maxed, you probably want something that packs a bit more punch. Games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Rise of the Tomb Raider will eat that card for lunch.

Yea I did get the feeling poking around the net that 27" 1080p native would be a matter of distance positioning but it does seem like the potential for a pixelated look is there hence my leaning towards the other 2 options.

As to the GPU, upon a deeper search I do see now that the 10 and perhaps even 20 series may be supported, but I tend to try and build PCs with parts that were released more or less around the same time and the 6700k as far as I could tell definitely is the last Intel series of CPUs officially supported by Windows 7 and it just so happens to have been released arond the same time as the 980 so it works for me 😜

Besides, tbh, initially I was gonna go with even older hardware, a more nostalgic hardware period for me for Windows 7 would've been 2009/2010 (when I build my first Windows 7 PC ish) so I've already pushed ahead quite a bit and whilst you're probably right about the newer games, I expect I'll mostly be playing late 2000s and early 2010s titles on this, I have my modern PC for whenever that PC starts to struggle 😜

But thanks for the insight! 😄 It sure does seem people are mixed on the whole 27" 1080p native topic.

Just a stone in the bush -

Is a pixelated look necessarily all bad?

Sometimes I tend to like its aesthetic.

There is something about its honesty that connects with me on a deep level. I do not like the plastic look of super high resolutions.

I would get a 27" 1440p monitor, run the desktop at 1440p, then run each game on the maximum resolution that gives you satisfactory performance. For many games it may very well be the native resolution, for others it will be 1080p, and as was said - there do exist games that can stress the 980 enough for you to want to run them maybe even at 720p (which is half the native resolution).

Text at non-native, and especially non-integral ratio resolution tends to look blurry and bad on an LCD. 3D-rendered games tend to apply so many interpolations, smoothing, blurring, etc. techniques - that 1080p on a native 1080p and 1080 on an interpolated 1440p may not look that much different.

st31276a wrote on 2026-01-10, 10:48:

Just a stone in the bush - […]
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Just a stone in the bush -

Is a pixelated look necessarily all bad?

Sometimes I tend to like its aesthetic.

There is something about its honesty that connects with me on a deep level. I do not like the plastic look of super high resolutions.

I concur with this. 1080p was "the" resolution for a huge chunk of the windows 7 era, so for me, a 1080p monitor is perfectly suited for a period correct PC. I also like the look of 1080p on those games, even if a better resolution was available.

Thanks for all the replies everyone! I appreciate your feedback 😀

I ended up going with a 24" 1080p monitor in the end, managed to get a great deal on a decent spec one.

To be honest, I was heavily leaning this way anyways, I just wanted a sanity check by the community but I think it vibes best with the rest of my setup in the end. It will be easier for the GTX 980 to drive at higher FPS and I won't have to worry about any pixelated look at this pixel density hopefully 😀 Plus as it's been pointed out, it kind of also fits in with the Windows 7 era of gaming so I think this should work well 😄

furyanwolf wrote on 2026-01-24, 13:19:

Thanks for all the replies everyone! I appreciate your feedback 😀

I ended up going with a 24" 1080p monitor in the end, managed to get a great deal on a decent spec one.

good call, I think.

IMO, 24" isn't too small for 1080p - I have a bunch of 22" 1080p monitors and consider them to be too small.
I always bump up the font size on those monitors to be comfortable.

Personally, I do still run a 27" 1080p as my main monitor on my main rig and don't think it's too "pixelated".
Going a step up to 1440p sure would not hurt, but to my eyes, it's not enough of an upgrade to make me wanna buy a whole new monitor.

The other question I have is: where do you get the games?

Windows 7 was officially released in 2010 and it was some time between 2010 and 2015 that the gaming industry fully switched from "buy game in store, put game disc in computer, install and play" to the "game in store is just a steam key in a box" distribution model.

Windows 7 is not supported by steam or any other online store any longer, but the games are not old enough yet that you can find them on abandonware sites.

So if the game didn't have a proper "install from disc and play" release and is not on GoG either, what can you do except sail the high seas?

I thought everybody just pulls them from their NAS...

Most of my Win7 time a decade ago was on 1920x1080 on a 22".

you'll be fine.