2016 - The year of 21:9? Questions below.

VincentHanna

VincentHanna

VincentHanna

Caporegime
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Hello all.

At the moment I am running a 27" 2560x1440 Desktop monitor and a 58" 4k TV for large-screen gaming.

I'm liking the idea of a 34" 21:9 monitor for desktop/gaming (I don't watch any TV shows or movies on my desktop monitor) but have some questions that should be straight-forward and a few that might require educated guesses :)

1) At the moment the X34A looks to be the best 21:9 monitor (100hz/G-sync) but it's 9 months old already and pretty pricey (£900). Reading some other threads I've seen mention of a successor (X34P) and I'm sure there must be other monitors from Asus and the like that will be 21:9. With this is mind do you think they will support newer technologies such as DP 1.3/1.4 and HDR? Could this be the year prices might come down a bit?

2) Gaming - I see a lot of complaints in the PC gaming section that games don't support 21:9 (latest is Blizzards Overwatch). Can we expect to see more games supporting 21:9 or will it always be a niche? If neccessary, can I play games at 16:9 with black borders on the left and right, and if so what is the equivalent screen size (e.g 27")?

3) I've never had a particular issue with 60hz screens anyway, but the X34A supports 100hz overclocking. I use an Xbox One wireless controller for gaming. Will I notice any difference using a controller or is the 'smoothness' purely related to using a mouse?

4) Finally - G-sync. I'm running two Titan X's in SLI. I can't imagine they would struggle at 3440 x 1440 so would I see any benefit with a G-sync screen?
 
I'm thinking of getting a 21:9 to, so ill keep an eye on this thread :)

Some info on the X34P here

Acer X34P
More curvature than the X34/X34A
100hz straight out the box without overclocking

Day
 
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for question 2 ive found support for 21.9 pretty good, the one game i have that does not have native 21.9 is bulletstorm but i fixed that with widescreenfixer, with popularity increasing for 21.9 i can only guess games will support it more and more.

for question 4 a pair of titan x's will handle 3440x1440 easy, cant say if you would benifit from gsync or not as i use freesync and a single fury tri x
 
Day187 said:
I'm thinking of getting a 21:9 to, so ill keep an eye on this thread :)

Some info on the X34P here

Acer X34P
More curvature than the X34/X34A
100hz straight out the box without overclocking
Click to expand...

I'm sceptical about the 100Hz native claim... this would imply the panel is a genuine 100hz native, yet it APPEARS to be the same panel that's in the new XR342CK which is still only 60Hz, but 75Hz with Freesync, so there's something not right here if they are indeed using the same panel. Perhaps they are mis-suing the word 'native'? After all, that guy in the video says the monitor is 4K which it's not! Regardless, it will be an improvement from the X34 if they guarantee 100hz, can improve upon the bleed/glow issues that many suffered from, and also the scan-lines issue.

Separate to this though, there's also an AUO 35" VA (3440x1440) panel due out later this year which is worth keeping an eye on, but we really don't know much about that at present.
 
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Day187 said:
I'm thinking of getting a 21:9 to, so ill keep an eye on this thread :)

Some info on the X34P here

Acer X34P
More curvature than the X34/X34A
100hz straight out the box without overclocking

Day
Click to expand...

More curvature... Does it need it. I think it has the right amount of curvature -




Also can the new X34P still be overclocked?
 
DAIR said:
More curvature... Does it need it. I think it has the right amount of curvature -

Also can the new X34P still be overclocked?
Click to expand...

I agree, I am not sure how the extra curvature will work tbh... I certainly don't think the X34 isn't curved enough, just perfect IMO.

As for overclock, probably not, although it may depend what DP connection it has. If it's still using DP 1.2 then highly unlikely, but even if it's using DP 1.3/1.4, I would imagine 100Hz is the phsyical max of this panel. I still speculate that it will be a 60Hz panel overclocked internally by Acer, and locked at 100Hz. I don't believe this is a 100Hz native panel, they will just have improved the panel tech and their QC process to ensure each and every one leaves the factory at the correct speed, rather than the 'cross your fingers and hope' approach the original X34 had!
 
Day187 said:
I'm thinking of getting a 21:9 to, so ill keep an eye on this thread :)

Some info on the X34P here

Acer X34P
More curvature than the X34/X34A
100hz straight out the box without overclocking

Day
Click to expand...

There are no native 3440x1440 100hz native panels in existence at the moment so it will be an overclock.
 
The only games I've found that don't support 21:9 OOTB are Blizzard games minus WoW and now HOTS and Fallout 4 (which you can get to run at 21:9 with a few tweaks)

Other than that every new AAA and some Indie game I've played in the last year works and even older games support it.
 
As others, been running 3440 x 1440 for over a year and a half now and on the whole out of all the games I played in the time only a handful had issues with the resolution and most after a little bit of tweaking and searching the next resolved the issues.

1) There will inevitably be panels released with higher refresh rates to take advantage of the extra bandwidth, when however is a different matter. But even then 100hz is a nice balance I think.

2) I think with the resolution trending upwards we may (hopefully) see devs give it abit more attention. As noted though there are some gains which do not work, but more often then not its pretty great.

3) I play most my titles with Xbox 1 pad such as witcher 3 and 100hz also helps there to make things smoother. I think combine that with G-sync and its awsome.

4) YES! G-Sync + 100hz is awesome with a pair of Titan X's. More often then not I disabled my third Titan X as it messed up frame pacing and a pair of TX's + 100hz + G-Sync = EPIC! Depending on what settings you use you would be surprised (I guess I often like a lot of eye candy) so often sit under 100hz and for that G-Sync does smooth things out very nicely. If your always at 100hz however then G-Sync will obviously not be as useful, but seeing as the 100hz 3440 x 1440 panels all come with G-Sync, kind or a moot point
 
I thinking about it too this year. Was going to get a 1080Ti to go with it but judging by Nvdias pricing that has gone out the window. Will probably get a "490x" or whatever equivalent AMD release.
 
LambChop said:
There are no native 3440x1440 100hz native panels in existence at the moment so it will be an overclock.
Click to expand...

But it may be an out-of-the-box, factory tested overclock. The current model needs to be set to 100Hz, and there are reports that not every monitor can get to a stable 100Hz.
 
PinkPig said:
But it may be an out-of-the-box, factory tested overclock. The current model needs to be set to 100Hz, and there are reports that not every monitor can get to a stable 100Hz.
Click to expand...

There aren't 'reports'... it is a fact.

As already mentioned, I do not believe for one second this is a 100Hz native panel, and it will simply be OC'd at the factory to ensure it does actually reach that figure. This is no bad thing of course, but I just hope they don't hide this fact in the marketing/tech spec as a means by which to charge a hefty premium over the original X34.
 
Legend said:
I do not believe for one second this is a 100Hz native panel, and it will simply be OC'd at the factory to ensure it does actually reach that figure.
Click to expand...

That difference doesn't mean much to me. I buy a monitor which works at 100Hz out-of-the box, the monitor spec says 100Hz, I can get my money back if it doesn't work. What difference does it make to me that Acer bought a panel that was only rated at 60Hz? Lots of people would ever even know.
 
PinkPig said:
That difference doesn't mean much to me. I buy a monitor which works at 100Hz out-of-the box, the monitor spec says 100Hz, I can get my money back if it doesn't work. What difference does it make to me that Acer bought a panel that was only rated at 60Hz? Lots of people would ever even know.
Click to expand...

It will be interesting to see if the scan lines issues has been rectified. Many have speculated this was caused by the G-Sync module pushing that OC so high, which the panel was never originally designed to do (the XR34 Freesync version didn't suffer with this problem). Even Acer released a statement saying there was no fix. This is one reason why a 100Hz native panel would actually be a good thing vs an OC'd one, but as mentioned there is virtually zero chance that will be the case with this monitor, as no such panel is known to exist... and in fact the specs match a 60Hz one that Acer are using in the XR342CK.
 
From this:

AOC_Q2770PQU_desktop01.jpg

To this

Acer_PredatorX34A_desktop01.jpg
 
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