I have a 2560x1080p monitor, and while I want to upgrade to a 1440p since the monitors control joystick nub recently broke off I can’t really justify it. I have a 4080s and just run all my games with DLDSR so they in engine render at 1440p or 4k, then I let nvidia ai magic downsample and output the 1080p image to my monitor. Shit looks crispy, no aliasing to speak of so I can turn off the often abysmal in game AA, I have no real complaints. A higher resolution monitor would look marginally better I’m sure, but it’s not worth the cost of a new one to me yet. When I can get a good 21:9 HDR oled without forced oled care cycles or another screen technology that has as good blacks and spot brightness I’ll make the jump.

From what people have told me, 144hz is definitely noticeable in games. I can see it feeling better in an online fps, but i recently had a friend tell me that Cyberpunk with maxed out settings and with ray tracing enabled was “unplayable” on a 4080s, and “barely playable” on a 4090, just because the frame rate wasn’t solidly 144 fps. I’m more inclined to agree with your take on this and chalk his opinion up to trying to justify his monitor purchase to himself.

All that said, afaik you can’t do VRR over VGA/DVI-D. If you play games on your PC, Freesync or G-Sync compatibility is absolutely necessary in my own opinion.