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

Got to make a decision myself as too whether to keep it or not :(. The screen, curve , resolution everything is beautiful Cyberpunk looks amazing very and I mean extremely little flicker it’s not even really noticeable. Starfield .. wow incredible on this monitor the blacks at night are the best I’ve seen anywhere, I even seem to get more fps at 4k than my older 1440p upscaled,now comes the but ..

MSFS 2020 is my go to Sim, daytime flights including Dawn/Dusk are absolutely incredible ..clarity, visuals the lot , nighttime especially if there’s cloud then the flickering becomes quite bad, at 1st there was a white screen flicker after doing some research it turns out having bloom on was the issue with that. But the cloud flickering still remains, I’ve tried FG off/on GSYNC off/on, capping fps , I’m going to try changing from DP to HDMI in a bit . Sorry for my long post if anyone can possibly give me some advice I’d be eternally grateful, Ino it might seem a small “issue “ for some but it’s kind of just bugging me a bit Cheers all.
 
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t2na said:
Not for the same price, unfortunately. Both the MSI and Asus models (that use the same panel but are flat - with a 3 year burn in warranty) are all above 1200.
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Thanks. There's no way I could justify an additional £400 for the same product.

The curve is unnoticeable in games, but it's very apparent during productivity tasks. I don't hate it, but it would be better if it just wasn't there.
 
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adger1971 said:
Got to make a decision myself as too whether to keep it or not :(. The screen, curve , resolution everything is beautiful Cyberpunk looks amazing very and I mean extremely little flicker it’s not even really noticeable. Starfield .. wow incredible on this monitor the blacks at night are the best I’ve seen anywhere, I even seem to get more fps at 4k than my older 1440p upscaled,now comes the but ..

MSFS 2020 is my go to Sim, daytime flights including Dawn/Dusk are absolutely incredible ..clarity, visuals the lot , nighttime especially if there’s cloud then the flickering becomes quite bad, at 1st there was a white screen flicker after doing some research it turns out having bloom on was the issue with that. But the cloud flickering still remains, I’ve tried FG off/on GSYNC off/on, capping fps , I’m going to try changing from DP to HDMI in a bit . Sorry for my long post if anyone can possibly give me some advice I’d be eternally grateful, Ino it might seem a small “issue “ for some but it’s kind of just bugging me a bit Cheers all.
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I think to minimise the flicker you have to keep your fps as high as possible. Maybe means using dlss performance and maybe lowering a few settings to push the frame rate higher.
 
Nexus18 said:
What fps were you getting?

Yeah it was the thing I least cared about in terms of reasons for "upgrading" but browsing etc. really is just much nicer and 240hz on windows alone is noticeable :cry: I do miss 21.9/3440x1440 for multi-tasking though, having 2 windows side by side looks/works better.

What's making you think to go back to the 27"?
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I brought down the fps to around 40/50. The fps was very consistent though which helped a bit I guess.

I do agree the side by side multitasking is better with the DW but I'm not toooo bothered about that but handy for sure.

If I'm being honest I think it's the fps hit. However the hit isn't that bad, I'm being picky. I need to keep playing with it. May even hook up the PS5 and have a fiddle with that too as this monitor has HDMI 2.1.

Other than that, I still stand by the fact this display is stunning. HDR is great, the overall brightness/colours just look brighter/better imo than my DW and Asus.
 
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SpartaP said:
If I'm being honest I think it's the fps hit. However the hit isn't that bad, I'm being picky.
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This was my main concern and reason for never wanting to go to 4k but I have been very surprised with the 3080, cp 2077 needs ultra perf. dlss to get decent fps when using path tracing but still, even then, it looks better than dlss balanced on 3440x1440. I always intended on getting 50xx so even if perf was awful, I could make do but alas, it was a nice surprise!
 
Nexus18 said:
This was my main concern and reason for never wanting to go to 4k but I have been very surprised with the 3080, cp 2077 needs ultra perf. dlss to get decent fps when using path tracing but still, even then, it looks better than dlss balanced on 3440x1440. I always intended on getting 50xx so even if perf was awful, I could make do but alas, it was a nice surprise!
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Does show just how good DLSS is. (and upscalers in general)
 
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Turns out rtings have tested for vrr flicker on the aw34dw and it's now confirmed my findings/videos, the aw34d is substantially better than non gsync module monitors!

NySyDoc.png
 
Nexus18 said:
Turns out rtings have tested for vrr flicker on the aw34dw and it's now confirmed my findings/videos, the aw34d is substantially better than non gsync module monitors!

NySyDoc.png
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Interesting. Still would not stop me from wanting to upgrade.

Is the panels coming out next year gen 4 by any chance?
 
t2na said:
I was deciding between the MSA20 and the Ergotron LX and went for the MSA20 - although I really don't think you can make a bad decision between either.

The MSA20 has the benefit of fitting directly onto all Dell/Alienware monitors without having to use a VESA mount. I think the Ergotron is probably more versatile as if you use the MSA20 with a non-Dell monitor it has to have an additional plate which adds more depth.

I ended up making my decision based on getting better discount on the MSA20 compared to the LX!
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I bought mine for £95 brand new on the auction site.
 
Been playing around with AW32 a lot and no question it's a good display. However, I decided to get out my PG27AQDM and AW34 back out to do some comparisons with FPS and picture/colour quality to help me decide once and for all if I'm going to keep the AW32. I never took screenshots so apologies in advance.

The PG27 is ok overall but the worse of the 3, especially in HDR. HDR is so poor in comparison to both my AW's. Being 27" I lose immersion which never bothered me much in the past but I find it too small now. But a clear FPS winner which ofc wasn't a surprise. I updated the firmware while I had it out and it displayed some weird buggy behaviour in the OSD and decided to colour cycle when in standby, had to factory reset to stop it. Minor but annoying.

Then I went to my AW34. What can I say, it's so good lol. Immediate observation was the lack of height compared to the AW32. Surprising how quick I got used to the height of that monitor. However I'm already used to the 21:9 again. In one of my games (TW:WH3) I'm 50fps better off in battle maps, and 20fps better on campaign map. That's pretty huge. Image quality is still very good and honestly the lack of 4k in that game in particular didn't really show but I gained more display being UW which is a win. In CB2077 benchmark I'm 3-5fps better with the AW34 which ofc is nothing, but in game it appears to be more like 10 maybe 15fps better in places. The colours and visuals look amazing. Running the game at 5160x2160 brings it very close to 4k native on the AW32 imo but not quite as detailed, but even at 3440x1440 native still looks so good and more immersive being 34" 21:9 UW. I will probably say that the HDR colours pop a bit better in CB on the AW32.

I never improved the text clarity on the aw34 before, and I increased the text size in windows a bit and the detail has improved quite a bit. AW32 4K still more crisp but I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker anymore when web browsing etc. I've got the detail at a very good place now on the AW34, something I should have done a long time ago. And being able to have 2 browsers split (or more) is just much better for me personally. I even rewatched a bit of Land Of Bad to compare that, and I much prefer it on the AW34 wider display.

The AW32 is a great monitor, but being able to compare back to back against the AW34, I now feel the HDR improvements are marginal and the extra detail overall (desktop use/gaming) having 4k is marginal. Finally the last thing I've not mentioned is the 240/175hz comparison. Surprisingly marginal again. I found the 240hz on the Asus PG27 noticeably better over the AW32 240hz. Being a smaller display probably reflects that. But honestly there's not many games I cap at 235fps at 4k, and the ones I do I cap at 170fps on the AW34 and still feels just as fast/smooth.

As it stands currently, I'm back on the AW34 and enjoying it more. I will swap back to the AW32 on Monday and pump some more hours on it to be sure, but currently I don't feel like the £800 price tag is worth it for the marginal gains. Of course all this is subjective so may be a different experience to others who can compare back to back.
 
It's not about games at 235fps though remember, even on the desktop the mouse cursor at 240Hz is obvious that it is slicker/smoother than at even 175Hz I found, it was the first thing I noticed and this still remains the case as I have both DW and QF in use on two PCs both with 1000Hz mice within the family.

I just tested the internal scaler on the QF by playing Cyberpunk at 2560x1440 and it is rather excellent quality, put it back at DLSS Quality and everything is sharp with no graphical quality loss due to being a non-native res. What is not possible is VRR when outside of native res but we already know that as NV list the QF as GSYNC supported in a future driver, so GSYNC is not possible when not using non-native resolutions until then.

It reminded me of the scaling quality on my old LG 34UM95-P which I played some games at 2560x1080 because my then GPU, the RTX 2070 Super, couldn't quite push beyond 60fps in some later games so a lower UW res was needed which didn't sacrifice image quality thanks to a great scaler. ON the QF it makes sense as it's got HDMI 2.1 ports and is usable with consoles so the scaler has to be sufficiently good quality anyway.

So for some games, if the GPU someone has can't quite manage good fps at 4K, then 2560x1440 is certainly a great experience on the QF, and should be the same on the 5120x2160 QD-OLED panels coming out next year.

I've also got used to the height that reading sites is better in multi window mode which Windows 11 does really well with window pinning and stuff:

qXoFjsm.jpeg


Edit*
I played a new free game from Epic store today called Maid of Skier, a horror sim FPS. It's almost all set in dark locations and as such the VRR flicker is mostly visible when locking the fps to anything below uncapped. the game easily runs at ver 240fps though but a result of this is that the 4090 fans spin up faster as drawing such high uncapped frames in games like this generates heat and draws power vs other games that can be locked to say 120fps with the GPU trickling along seeing only 65% utilisation.

The workaround for this is to disable GSYNC which gets rid of VRR flicker. I might toy around with this idea actually as on a 4090 GSYNC may not be necessary completely. Play a few games for a week without it and see if I am missing anything important outside of VRR. IN similar games the DW also has VRR flicker of course but it's less obvious at 144Hz vs the native 175Hz and I covered this in detail in the DW thread before. I do not wish to drop down form 240Hz on the QF though obviously.
 
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