Downgrade res but jump to ultra wide 34 inch?

[mazeroth]

I currently game on a 27" Shimian IPS 2560x1440 screen. I'm running my brand new R9 390 video card and things are good.

I see Adorama has the LG 34" 2560x1080 monitor for a great price of $345 after a $25 MIR. This would give me 34% more area, the same height, and 8 inches more width. I foresee myself playing in the next few months some heavily modded Skyrim, FO3 and New Vegas and then probably Fallout 4 once they iron it out and get some mods for it.

I would love the additional width but would be sacrificing dpi in doing this, as well as overall resolution. 1080/1440 = 0.75, so a loss of 25% pixels. However, in theory, my games should run 25% faster, which would allow for some better mods and fps increase. AND, this monitor has Freesync, which will work with my video card.

With all of that, what would you guys do? I don't care that much about having the most eye candy but do like some decent graphics settings and love to be able to use vsync at 60hz. Games just feel so much better at a constant 60.

Thanks for any input. Here's a link to the deal:

http://slickdeals.net/f/8127286-34-...-after-25-rebate-free-s-h?page=10#commentsBox

 

[Headfoot]

I'd only consider it if you're willing to mod the monitor to lower the FreeSync range to ~30hz ish from the underwhelming 45hz minimum FreeSync range it has now. You do get to go to 75hz instead of just 60, which is nice, and ultrawide is nice, and if you can get it to 33-35hz to 75hz FS range then that would be pretty awesome.

 

[biostud]

I wouldn't like to get a lower ppi and fewer pixels, specially in desktop. For me the next display might be a 32" 1440p VA screen combined with freesync, similar to the new HP Envy 32 ($499, release 18th oct.), but without the speakers.

 

[postmortemIA]

1080p is bit too low when you had better... Perhaps you should look at these 3440x1440 monitors

 

[Gryz]

There will be a lot of people claiming that they need 1440p. Imho it's exaggerated.

It depends on what you do with your monitor. Are you editing pictures or movies ? Then higher ppi is useful. Are you just surfing the web, reading email and writing word documents ? In that case ppi hardly matters. In fact, high ppi can be a hinderance, because your webrowser and applications will display their windows a lot smaller. (Higher ppi, but same size screen means: everything on the screen becomes smaller). My dad went from 1080p to 1440p recently. And he regrets his decision, because with his eyesight, he has a lot more problems viewing content.

Now the important thing for you and me: gaming.
Is 1440p better than 1080p for gaming ? Does it look nicer ? Yes, higher resolution looks a bit nicer. But there is a cost. You will get a lower framerate. I compared benchmarks here on Anandtech (see http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1248 ). My rough calculations showed that you lose about 36% of your framerates on average, just going from 1080p to 1440p. That means you need to buy a videocard that is 50+% more powerful, just to achieve the same framerates.

Even if you buy a faster videocard, do you want to spend the money just on a higher resolution ? I don't. I prefer eyecandy. That means I want to have the best AA (either 4xSGSSAA in older games, or FXAA + SMAA + sharpening in newer games). I prefer further view-distances. More foilage. Further foilage-distance. Better shadows. SSAO, even in older games, via the control panel. More NPCs on screen. High-res textures, max tesselation, etc. In some games you can do that at 1440p, but in many games, you have to chose. In those cases, I prefer more eye-candy over higher resolution.

And on the desktop, I found 1440p more irritating than that I liked it.
So my next monitor will probably be 2560x1080 too. I'm waiting for the Acer Predator Z35. Because I think IPS-panels suck for the games I play. (Dark games, while playing in a lowly lit room gives terrible ips-glow). The Z35 has a VA-panel. So I hope it will be good for me. The fact that the Z35 is also just 2560x1080 is no concern for me.

 

[biostud]

#5
Hopefully you have showed your father scaling in windows.

 

[Headfoot]

There will be a lot of people claiming that they need 1440p. Imho it's exaggerated.

It depends on what you do with your monitor. Are you editing pictures or movies ? Then higher ppi is useful. Are you just surfing the web, reading email and writing word documents ? In that case ppi hardly matters. In fact, high ppi can be a hinderance, because your webrowser and applications will display their windows a lot smaller. (Higher ppi, but same size screen means: everything on the screen becomes smaller). My dad went from 1080p to 1440p recently. And he regrets his decision, because with his eyesight, he has a lot more problems viewing content.

Now the important thing for you and me: gaming.
Is 1440p better than 1080p for gaming ? Does it look nicer ? Yes, higher resolution looks a bit nicer. But there is a cost. You will get a lower framerate. I compared benchmarks here on Anandtech (see http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1248 ). My rough calculations showed that you lose about 36% of your framerates on average, just going from 1080p to 1440p. That means you need to buy a videocard that is 50+% more powerful, just to achieve the same framerates.

Even if you buy a faster videocard, do you want to spend the money just on a higher resolution ? I don't. I prefer eyecandy. That means I want to have the best AA (either 4xSGSSAA in older games, or FXAA + SMAA + sharpening in newer games). I prefer further view-distances. More foilage. Further foilage-distance. Better shadows. SSAO, even in older games, via the control panel. More NPCs on screen. High-res textures, max tesselation, etc. In some games you can do that at 1440p, but in many games, you have to chose. In those cases, I prefer more eye-candy over higher resolution.

And on the desktop, I found 1440p more irritating than that I liked it.
So my next monitor will probably be 2560x1080 too. I'm waiting for the Acer Predator Z35. Because I think IPS-panels suck for the games I play. (Dark games, while playing in a lowly lit room gives terrible ips-glow). The Z35 has a VA-panel. So I hope it will be good for me. The fact that the Z35 is also just 2560x1080 is no concern for me.

+1, 100% support everything here