Dual screen - 21:9 & 16:9

Haggisman

Haggisman

Haggisman

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I'm in the process of finishing off my home office, and will be treating myself to a new monitor.

I currently have a 23" IPS (AOC i2369vm), however I could really do with a bit more screen real-estate (used to have dual 1680x1050 monitors, and have dual 1080p at work).

I'd love one of the 21:9 ones, and from what I can tell, the 29" are pretty much the same height as my current 23" 16:9 (there's a difference of <4mm)

Has anyone got a setup like this? How do you find it? I'd have the 21:9 as the main monitor, with the 23" to the side.

Currently looking at one in the MM (although the seller hasn't responded to me), but if that doesn't go through, I'm torn between:

Being "sensible": LG 29UB55-P 29"

Being a bit less sensible and getting the curved version of the above: lg-29UC97C 29"

Being even less sensible and getting a 34": LG 34UM65-P 34"

However I previously had the 27" version of my current AOC screen, and had to get rid of it as the pixels were too big. Given that the 34" is around the same height as a 27" 16:9 (again 4mm difference), I'm guessing I'll have the same issue?

Most tempted by the 29" curved as IMO it's beautiful :p but how would this work with dual screen?
 
Ste said:
Get the 34 and you won't need the other one :)
Click to expand...

That's not going to give me any more screen space over the 29" though? It will just make everything bigger!

Unless I go for the 3440x1440 at £600, which is a bit more than I was planning to spend, and also think my graphics performance would suffer a bit too much :(
 
Yes 34" 1080 will be the same PPI as the 27" 1080 so I would avoid it personally unless you sit really far back....

I would get the 29" 75HZ freesync version especially if you have an AMD card.

I had a 23" 16.9 before and briefly had it beside my 29" but with the extra screen real estate of 21.9 2560x1080, I didn't really need the other screen

http://i.imgur.com/8NTKBoLh.jpg

Might be better sticking the 23" in portrait mode.

Although honestly, I think if you are going 34" 21.9 these days, you really should be looking at the 34" 1440 screens, either the AOC or the LG, if the dell didn't have such high input lag, I would list it... or preferably wait a bit longer for other stuff to come out.
 
A 34" is probably out of the running then, based on the cost and the fact that on a single GTX970, I'm going to struggle with performance at 1440p on newer games!

Another point I was thinking for keeping the 23" is for compatibility with games that don't support the 21:9 aspect ratio - or is it as simple as displaying in 16:9 with black bars on the sides?
 
Haggisman said:
A 34" is probably out of the running then, based on the cost and the fact that on a single GTX970, I'm going to struggle with performance at 1440p on newer games!

Another point I was thinking for keeping the 23" is for compatibility with games that don't support the 21:9 aspect ratio - or is it as simple as displaying in 16:9 with black bars on the sides?
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Game support is already close to 100% and it will be 100% for all titles published from now on. Of course if it doesn't support the 21:9 native res it will show up @2560x1440 with black bars but it will be totally playable. So no biggie here.

As for your other questions, I have a similar setup: 3440x1440 as main screen and a secondary 25' 1440x2560 (dell 25' in portrait) as secondary. It's pretty awesome I must say. Single 970 here, the impact the second monitor has on games is close to zero (of course you don't keep unigene heaven running on it while playing on the main one right?), being in portrait reduce the total "encumbrance" and the informations you can keep on it are pure gold (browser, tools, chat, ts......).

Of course I could go overkill for a second 970 but it's not easy to find a good one on the second hand market so I prefer to wait for Pascal.

Tl;DR: go for it!
 
Pretty much what johnny said, in my experience, most games work really well with 21.9 and if they don't, flawless widescreen or a tweak to the config file generally fixes any issues.
 
johnnystuff said:
Game support is already close to 100% and it will be 100% for all titles published from now on. Of course if it doesn't support the 21:9 native res it will show up @2560x1440 with black bars but it will be totally playable. So no biggie here.

As for your other questions, I have a similar setup: 3440x1440 as main screen and a secondary 25' 1440x2560 (dell 25' in portrait) as secondary. It's pretty awesome I must say. Single 970 here, the impact the second monitor has on games is close to zero (of course you don't keep unigene heaven running on it while playing on the main one right?), being in portrait reduce the total "encumbrance" and the informations you can keep on it are pure gold (browser, tools, chat, ts......).

Of course I could go overkill for a second 970 but it's not easy to find a good one on the second hand market so I prefer to wait for Pascal.

Tl;DR: go for it!
Click to expand...

Does the 970 not struggle at 3440x1440?
 
Struggle is definitely too big a word, it simply won't allow you to go full throttle with the uber settings in next-gen AAA titles. As of now, the only title where I'm almost constantly below 60fps (like 50 quite steady) is GTA V but I can simply lower some settings on shadows, ambient occlusion or lights, flares, grass, water..... and be happy again. In no other title I noticed a _constant_ frame rate below 60.

It may happen of course in very crowded, detailed and fast paced scenes but that's something you won't easily fix anyway since it depends much more on the game optimization rather than on the bare number of cuda cores/TMU/bandwith or whatever other parameter you look at in benchmarks.

And Pascal is about 6-8 months away so..... pull that trigger already :)
 
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I would pick one of these:

Dell U3415W

Aoc U3477PQU

Curved vs flat, tough choice, mostly depends on your wallet. Imho 170£ is not exactly proportionate to the different experience they offer, maybe 70 would be closer to be appropriate. But yeah, the Dell should be better also for the electronics onboard. But the AOC is on offer too so.... well your money, your choice.

Me, I'm happy with my AOC ;)
 
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The dell was 620 on this week only three weeks ago. I think the next time it goes that low I'll probably get one :)

That AOC is tempting though but for me the KVM switch has some real value for switching to my docking station when I work from home.
 
johnnystuff said:
I would pick one of these:

Dell U3415W

Aoc U3477PQU

Curved vs flat, tough choice, mostly depends on your wallet. Imho 170£ is not exactly proportionate to the different experience they offer, maybe 70 would be closer to be appropriate. But yeah, the Dell should be better also for the electronics onboard. But the AOC is on offer too so.... well your money, your choice.

Me, I'm happy with my AOC ;)
Click to expand...

Hmm, I could stretch to the £600 for the curved LG... £670 is maybe pushing it =/

So is the Dell significantly better than the LG? What are the differences? Spec wise they look identical.
 
I would pick dell for CS etc. but... unfortunately the input lag and motion clarity isn't as good as the lg or aoc and LG CS is absolutely **** so AOC gets my vote.

All the 34" 1440 screens are pretty much the same (except the dell's input lag and motion clarity)

EDIT:

IIRC, LG is the only one to have hardware calibration
 
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So, all these guys mount the same panels, by LG. But.....

- Flat version, LG vs AOC: LG has an horrible base, only tilt and not even much, no height adjustment let alone pivot (AOC is the only one who can). Tons of issues reported for horrible backlight bleed (prolly) due to a bad engineering, the bezel is too tight, cable mangment or whatever else makes the blb bump way too much and too often. On top of all that IF you have such a problem with backlight bleed you'd better return it to the vendor asap because LG won't rma nor change it in NO WAY. Same goes for other defects (you name it). The only plus it has is the thunderbolt (thunderwhat? I mean really? cmon) and the hardware calibration, which doesn't mean you shouldn't calibrate it so..... screw LG.
AOC has the same panel but a better mount and has not as many reported cases of blb, which is almost 90% of the cake.

- Cuved ones, LG vs DELL. Well Dell is THE name. Best CS ever, best electronics and lowest rate of reported issues with blb. It has its downsides though, as Nexus reported earlier, so it all boils down to the price, which is imho too high for something that anyway is not guaranteed to be perfect, as a monitor that you paied 680 quids should. Of course the LG has almost all the problems reported for the flat version too.

That being said, there are dedicated threads for each one of them, you will find all the informations you want there.

DISCLAIMER: Problems have been reported on all of these models, just if I had to shoot some semi random number on the chances to have a defective one are: LG 65%, AOC 25%, Dell 10%

Again: it's all about solving the magic equation ((cuved vs flat) + blingbling).
 
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Brilliant, thanks :)

That's a shame because the LGs look the nicest :(

Might wait a little and see if the Dell goes on this week only - or just pull the trigger on the AOC. Aren't there rumours of a curved AOC at some point though?
 
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