I'm sure the 970 came about as something they could do if absolutely necessary, since the tech allowed it, and higher-ups decided that 4 > 3.5. Either way I'm sure you could turn some settings down from Ultra to High and it'd look just about the same and run tons better. Shadows especially, if you're already using soft shadowing, can benefit from lower resolution.
At home I'm mainly on a 144 Hz 1440p monitor with a 60 Hz 4K that I enable when I'm coding. At work I have a variety of 1080p and 4K monitors, but we're trying to bring some more HDR in so we have a better test bed.
As a graphics programmer I think my ideal for gaming would be some 144 Hz ultrawide 3840x1600 legitimate (Dolby preferred, legit HDR10 with the brightness to back it up) HDR monstrosity with GSync. Probably 34" at that point for appropriate pixel density. For work I think I'd still prefer 2-3 4K, ideally above 60 Hz since they give me a headache and ideally HDR since we always have late bugs that come in involving HDR.