I have not played the PC version, but would it help if you played at a higher resolution?
There is an option to use the desktop resolution for the UI, which you could change from however it is set now to see if that helps.
On the Xbox, the description is shown in the bottom right pane of the inventory (character model, stats, etc, on the left of the window, equipment list on the top right), and you can hit a trigger button to toggle the stats on the left between the selected and equipped items, or to bring up a side by side comparison of the selected and equipped items.