I too own 2 970s and its great at not having to worry about GPU power; but its not necessary at the moment.  My friend, who I built his computer, only has a single 970 and my same monitor; he hasn't run into any problems yet.  So 1 will do you, but having 2 is really nice.  You can always add another one later on if you don't have the money right now.

Funny you mention that. I just got my 970gtx going last night and Batman was the game I tested it with. I am only gaming on a 1080P monitor but I was thrilled when I was monitoring the card. 60 FPS, 61 degrees max temp with all eye candy on. The biggest improvement was zero screen tearing and virtually no noise compared to my old 570gtx. I kept the clocks stock. It was like a whole new game. To hear it will do well with 1440p is very cool.

Gtx900
 Will running games in 1080p look bad on 1440p monitor?

I'm sorry, but I missed this part. It's generally not a good idea. LCDs are fixed-pixel displays. That means that each pixel must display a color (as displayed via its sub-pixels). When you run at 1080p on a 1080p display (native resolution), each pixel on the display is displaying the color that that the GPU is specifying. When you run below native res, say 1080p on a 1440p panel, then the monitor has to guess at which color should be used, because it has more pixels than what the GPU is pushing. This results in a blurrier appearance.
 
Take two monitors, exactly the same in EVERY measurement (size, panel type, response time, color depth, etc.) with the only difference being that one is 1080p and the other is 1440p - If you output at 1080p, then the 1080p monitor will look better. It's just the way that panel scaling works, unfortunately.
 
Additionally, because the monitor has to scale the image, this also adds to input lag.
 
Conclusion: Always try to run a monitor at native resolution. Doing so gives you the best picture quality and the lowest input lag.

Segads
I was just playing batman Arkham Origins 1080 in max settings and sometimes i got 30fps

On a GTX 970? What are your other system specs?

Then you are doing it wrong.

Not sure why, is everything max out

Segads
Well, core i7 3770, 16 corsair vengeance ram, win 7 ultimate

What's your average framerate? Is the 30fps typical, or just a random spike? By maxed settings, are you also using maxed out PhysX? I ask, because on Arkham City (I don't have Origins), I stay at a locked 60fps most of the time, but will have an occasional (once every few minutes, if at all) stutter down to the 20-30fps range. If I disable or reduce Physx, this becomes a much rarer occurance.

ARMYguy
These questions are subjective. I have 2 titan xs and i don't think one titan x is enough for my 1440p screen, which is why i bought two.

Interesting.
 
I've got 1 980Ti @ 1440p and I feel that its more than enough.

Vipergtspa
In my experience you will need more then 4GB of Vram to max out games in 1440P.
 
SoM is a good example. Using the ultra preset on a 1440P monitor will max out my 6GB of Vram on my 980 Ti's. Normally I will have to turn down texture quality to high, in order to not run out of video memory.
 
If it were me I would get a GTX 980 for 1440 gaming. My old 980's did come close to maxing out most games, had to turn down some settings to stay at the 60 FPS range and not run out of Vram.

Shadow of Mordor is the only game I've seen that will use that much VRAM (even though Ultra doesn't look that much better than High).  On my 970s, the only other games that I've seen go above 3GB of VRAM are Evolve, Watchdogs, Batman Arkham Knight, and Dead Rising 3 (bad console ports) and they still ran great while using that much VRAM.  A 980 has the same amount of VRAM though, so getting a 980 wouldn't help you on the VRAM issue (he already bought a 970 though).
 

jlp209
If you play nothing current then yes a 970 will be fine for 1440p at 60hz. If you are playing the latest and greatest and want all the eye candy + solid 60fps, you may have issues. Since you already bought a 970, if it were me I'd grab a 2nd 970 to play at 1440p without hesitation. If you can afford the 2nd card, don't think about it, just buy it. There is no such thing as too much GPU in my opinion, whatever you can afford.

A single 970 is still a strong card for 1440p at this time.  Later down the road a second might be needed, but not right now.  If he feels like one isn't enough, he can always buy another one; but he might as well try playing on one and see if it's enough.
 
I just went and played Crysis 3 for an hour to test my 970s, and with everything on maxed settings (except no AA) I was getting an average of 120-150 fps and never saw it go below 100.  So a single 970 would be able to play Crysis 3 maxed.  Metal Gear Solid 5 looks great and runs amazing on just a single 970 with max settings (watched my friend play MGS5 for a few hours and he has a single 970 and 1440p monitor).
 
So to OP, get a 1440p monitor to go with your new 970 and enjoy the new high resolution.  And after a while and you have some more money, you can always add another 970 for more power.

your going to be fine with the old system I have i can play witcher 3 with a mix of high and very high with hairworks on and my 780 classy stays around 50 to 60 fps with some dips when things get really crazy on my asus swift just don't go crazy with AA settings