Alienware announces the AW2725DF and AW3225QF (worlds first 4k 240hz and worlds first 1440p 360hz QD-OLED monitors - launches January 2024)

[Absolutely Clueless]

Yup you need at least 90 FPS to avoid the noticeable flicker and not get strained eyes, at least for myself. Alternative is to play without any sync but **** that

I can get VRR flicker at over 150fps with g-sync enabled and small fluctuations, e.g. 170 to 175. At least in Ghost of Tsushima when inside in a semi dark area. Yet people say it only happens at low fps and wild fps fluctuations. It doesn't bother me in the games I play, but I can see why some would find it distracting.

 

[Nexus18]

I can get VRR flicker at over 150fps with g-sync enabled and small fluctuations, e.g. 170 to 175. At least in Ghost of Tsushima when inside in a semi dark area. Yet people say it only happens at low fps and wild fps fluctuations. It doesn't bother me in the games I play, but I can see why some would find it distracting.

Yeah in darkish scenes, you'll get vrr flicker no matter the FPS The aw32 is awful for it where as aw34dw wasn't anywhere as bad in dark scenes

 

[t2na]

Unfortunately this still bothers me coming from the aw34dw, if your fps is below 70 fps, flickering is an issue, which isn't anywhere as problematic on a gsync ultimate.

Serves you right for cheaping out on your GPU…

 

[Absolutely Clueless]

Yeah in darkish scenes, you'll get vrr flicker no matter the FPS The aw32 is awful for it where as aw34dw wasn't anywhere as bad in dark scenes

I've never used a monitor with a so-called 'anti flicker' mode, but wonder how well it works in practice. Would love to test it. Seems to be pretty common on the latest ASUS OLEDs.

 

[Nexus18]

Serves you right for cheaping out on your GPU…

Who needs a more powerful gpu when you have MFG goodness Thankfully frame gen keeps the fps well in the threshold but dark areas, there is nothing that can be done.

I've never used a monitor with a so-called 'anti flicker' mode, but wonder how well it works in practice. Would love to test it. Seems to be pretty common on the latest ASUS OLEDs.

Aw34dw is the best oled out there for being as flicker free as possible but that is because of the gsync ultimate module (rtings also shows this with their VRR tests but I haven't looked at the asus reviews yet). Know lots of the anti nvidia/pro amd will shout from the rooftops about freesync being as good as gsync but having had freesync premium, gsync compatible and gsync ultimate, gsync ultimate is just superior.

 

[Absolutely Clueless]

Who needs a more powerful gpu when you have MFG goodness Thankfully frame gen keeps the fps well in the threshold but dark areas, there is nothing that can be done.



Aw34dw is the best oled out there for being as flicker free as possible but that is because of the gsync ultimate module (rtings also shows this with their VRR tests but I haven't looked at the asus reviews yet). Know lots of the anti nvidia/pro amd will shout from the rooftops about freesync being as good as gsync but having had freesync premium, gsync compatible and gsync ultimate, gsync ultimate is just superior.

Interesting. I will have to look into g-sync ultimate having less VRR flicker. There are so few g-sync ultimate recent OLED monitors though. I wonder when the 'new' mediatek g-sync module will start shipping.

 

[opethdisciple]

Unfortunately this still bothers me coming from the aw34dw, if your fps is below 70 fps, flickering is an issue, which isn't anywhere as problematic on a gsync ultimate monitor.

Actually on the subject of flicker I actually haven't seen any in the 18 months I've had the monitor.

Ok that's a small lie. When I first bought it Silent Hill 2 had some flicker but that was fixed by capping the FPS. Other than that I have not had any flicker (I have noticed) in 18 months.

 

[LackyT]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, really useful! Ended up pulling the trigger and ordering last night

Will drop a reply back here when it arrives

I'm about 1 year on from ordering my 27" - Overall, I'm happy I made the purchase, works very well for my use case (80% gaming / 10% productivity / 10% web browsing/YouTube etc)

I've had very few issues, worst being the outline of the monitor menu got permanently stuck / overlaid onto the screen (can't remember how I fixed this but I think it was just full power off for a while) I also had some weird vertical banding a few weeks ago, that was easily fixed with a pixel refresh

So far 0% noticeable issues with burn in, after what must be many 100's of hours of usage, with many of those being on the same game / UI etc

I will be looking to change to the 4th Gen Asus 1440p 280hz W-OLED when they become available (Jan-26 ?) While a slight downgrade in hz, I rarely hit 360hz in my games anyway

 

[Noxia]

Serves you right for cheaping out on your GPU…

Completely unrelated, but now I've got a 27-in portrait satellite monitor I was like. Oh yeah, that is quite a nice size.
So now I'm actually considering getting a 32-inch flat 4K OLED and then two 27 portrait for the side because I can't fit two of them with that current 42 screen. But again they will have to be OLED so this could get pricey. Feels weird seeing that non OLED glow to the side.

 

[t2na]

Completely unrelated, but now I've got a 27-in portrait satellite monitor I was like. Oh yeah, that is quite a nice size.
So now I'm actually considering getting a 32-inch flat 4K OLED and then two 27 portrait for the side because I can't fit two of them with that current 42 screen. But again they will have to be OLED so this could get pricey. Feels weird seeing that non OLED glow to the side.

The more recent 240/280hz 27" OLEDs are definitely not too bad price wise right now, the Alienware one was around 350. Although that would be 700 quid on just portrait side monitors alone...

And I'm running a 65 quid Gigabyte G24F 1080p 180hz monitor as my secondary

 

[Noxia]

The more recent 240/280hz 27" OLEDs are definitely not too bad price wise right now, the Alienware one was around 350. Although that would be 700 quid on just portrait side monitors alone...

And I'm running a 65 quid Gigabyte G24F 1080p 180hz monitor as my secondary

Oh that low?! Damn I'm in, they got refurb ones too for £336, sadly Def Discount code doesn't stack.

edit: Got over excited, realized they weren't OLED lol. Oh I see those are 1440p too, I wanted 4k.

 

[t2na]

Oh that low?! Damn I'm in, they got refurb ones too for £336, sadly Def Discount code doesn't stack.

edit: Got over excited, realized they weren't OLED lol. Oh I see those are 1440p too, I wanted 4k.

Ah I didn't figure you'd want 4k for the side monitors too! Christ, 3x 4k monitors with the two 27" monitors in portrait would be a lovely setup.

My only concern would be DP 1.4 & DSC / how it uses the display heads on the GPU. I know it was changed with the 5000 series but I still think there are times when using DSC uses up 2 display heads so might want to be wary of that.

I have that Alienware 27" 4k OLED monitor though (currently on sale for 500 from Dell directly) and it's a really lovely monitor.

 

[Noxia]

Ah I didn't figure you'd want 4k for the side monitors too! Christ, 3x 4k monitors with the two 27" monitors in portrait would be a lovely setup.

My only concern would be DP 1.4 & DSC / how it uses the display heads on the GPU. I know it was changed with the 5000 series but I still think there are times when using DSC uses up 2 display heads so might want to be wary of that.

I have that Alienware 27" 4k OLED monitor though (currently on sale for 500 from Dell directly) and it's a really lovely monitor.

I was thinking of DPI for text is all but maybe I don't 'need' 4k. I'm not really sure what DSC is though.

 

[t2na]

I was thinking of DPI for text is all but maybe I don't 'need' 4k. I'm not really sure what DSC is though.

Yeah, that makes sense! 4k @ 27" does look insanely sharp for text, much more so than 1440p, especially with how text actually looks on a 1440p OLED. It's one of the main reasons I keep coming back to 4k @ 27" because the text clarity is so so good.

DSC is Display Stream Compression, it's considered visually lossless and helps reach high resolutions/refresh rates where the bandwidth on an existing port would be exceeded. You can end up in a rabbit hole here with some people thinking it does make a minor visual difference, others noting input latency changing because of it (although nothing really ever proven) and then a large majority not really caring either way.

It's more noticeable now because we've got higher refresh rates at 1440p and at 4k - and some of the 'ports' on the monitors aren't using latest spec bandwidth. DP 2.1 supports 4k 240hz without use of DSC - so you could essentially run 3x 4k 240hz monitors off your 5090 without any issue provided the monitors were also DP 2.1. But the max from HDMI 2.1 (without DSC) is 4k 120hz (at 10 bit - there's a whole extra layer to this depending on what colour depth you run).

I ran a 240hz 1440p monitor on DP 1.4 at 240hz without DSC because I was using 8 bit colour, not 10 bit - if I swap to 10 bit the max supported resolution available to me was 200hz.

If your monitor only supports DP 1.4 (and it does vary panel to panel how each manufacturer implements this) you may find that plugging into a 4k 240hz monitor would end up using two 'display heads' on your GPU - so you'd essentially be using 2 video output ports (not physically) on your GPU for a single monitor. It differs from GPU to GPU and monitor to monitor, it was a lot worse on the 4000 series from Nvidia but I'm not running enough monitors at a high enough resolution/refresh rate to test how it works on the 5070 Ti.

If you wanted 4k OLED monitors at 27" for the side monitors then it's probably worth considering looking at a monitor that lets you disable DSC (Asus are good at this) so you could run them at 4k 120hz (no real benefit of running a secondary monitor at anything higher) and then only use 2 of your display heads on your GPU. That would mean your main 32" 4k monitor could happily only be on DP 1.4 and use two display heads at the full 240hz.

Aware this is a very long response... sorry !

 

[Noxia]

I'm not reading all that..

No that makes sense thanks, I saw mention of it recently looking at that 45" LG UW but I wrote it off (again) due to matte coating, not great DPI and not a huge fan of UW, oh and side monitors would suck with that curved screen. So would there be any benefit to running side pieces as 60hz instead of even 120? I currently use HDMI for my main but then its 120hz.
This reminds me a bit of the faff with M2 drives on my MB sharing bandwidth.

 

[t2na]

So would there be any benefit to running side pieces as 60hz instead of even 120? I currently use HDMI for my main but then its 120hz.

Nah, no real change outside of reducing the load on your system but (for me at least) the benefit of 120hz over 60hz outweighs the fractional additional resource you're using.

Even though it's only a secondary monitor, I find 120hz is just lovely for either different types of work/Discord/forums etc. to the side of the main screen.

Yeh it can be a real faff if you're not expecting it either, I'm surprised we haven't seen more DP 2.1 (real DP 2.1, not the gimped UHBR13.5) monitors but I guess it's not really been necessary until the last 18 months when 1440p at > 360hz has become a thing and 4k at more than 165hz has become more available now too.

 

[Noxia]

I know what I'm like though, I'd get 32 and be like nah this is to small. Can't win

 

[mrk]

I still notice flicker in some apps and games with dark scenes with gsync on, doesn't matter what fps is, flicker is still there in dark grey areas of certain games or apps with dark grey BGs like Photoshop as these apps now use GPU comp.

Anyway i solved this issue by disabling Gsync entirely ages ago and never looking back. I don't notice any distracting tearing in games as a result of this so things are just fine and will remain this way forever until Micro LED or Micro RGB panels naturally supersede current OLED entirely and thus natively solving the VRR flicker issue which OLED seems to have across the board on monitors.

 

[BS Dave]

Not sure whether to post this in here or in the drivers thread. I have an AW3225QF and am trying to make a custom resolution so I can play arc raiders at 3840/1600 - basically to give my 3080 a bit of breathing room, but when I go into Nvidia control panel the customise button is greyed out and I can't make any changes. I'm not sure if this is to do with the DSC or what... can anyone help? I'm on 581.57 drivers. Thanks

 

[peahead]

Not sure whether to post this in here or in the drivers thread. I have an AW3225QF and am trying to make a custom resolution so I can play arc raiders at 3840/1600 - basically to give my 3080 a bit of breathing room, but when I go into Nvidia control panel the customise button is greyed out and I can't make any changes. I'm not sure if this is to do with the DSC or what... can anyone help? I'm on 581.57 drivers. Thanks

Works for me so it's nothing to do with DSC, create custom resolution is not greyed out here.