Is the Dell U2715 worthwhile?

[Mallers]

Hi All,
I’m looking at dumping my existing Samsung Syncmaster T240 and moving to a multi monitor setup, probably 2 * 27in. I’m looking at the Dell U2715, they seem to have good reviews and I like the slim bezel (I’m coming back to that below!). But I did have some questions, if anyone wants to take a punt at answering:

1) Is this monitor worth it? I will mainly be surfing net, emails, and lots of gaming. The games I play tend to be any of the COD games, Elite Dangerous plus the Total War strategy games. So, I guess I don’t really need something that’s super-fast and has all the gaming bells and whistles on (The COD’s are the fastest moving games I play, and they are the ones I play least, I play Total War games the most and apart from battles they don't have a lot of movement in them). I don’t do a great deal of photo editing, so I’m also thinking splashing out on 4k may not be worth it (having said that some of the prices seem quite good, so I’m not dead set against 4k).

2) If I didn’t bother with G-Sync (I’m running NVidia GPU’s) or 144Mhz refresh rates, am I missing much? I don’t really see many problems on my current monitor, and I’m assuming that with strategy games the graphics will be more static than say COD games, so won’t need as much refreshing.

3) I’m currently running 2 * GTX590 cards, although given I’ve never really cracked SLI for Total war or Elite (keeps crashing PC) most of the time it’s switched off. Goes back on for COD – would 2 * U2715 work on 1 or 2 GTX590? I’m aiming to upgrade the cards this year, funds permitting, but potentially not at the same time I change the monitors. If my current cards are inadequate, is there a single card that could comfortably feed 2 monitors without killing any game play?

4) Slim bezel – will games know or can they be told that I’m using multiple monitors, for example so that something small centered in the screen isn’t hidden under where the bezels are? In a similar vein, do games look ok across multiple monitors? I imagine I need to go into the settings and tell each game what pixel area to use.

I want to go bigger than the 24” monitor I have now, but in terms of performance I’m happy with what I’ve got, so unless I’m missing out on anything really good, I was thinking I wouldn’t bother with the specific gaming or 4k monitors.

If I’m completely missing the point on any of the above or there’s something I missed that I need to be thinking about, please feel free to point it out! I have looked at the monitor sticky which has helped, but I’m left with these questions. I’m not interested in using as a TV, although I may play some DVD’s on it, and the only thing being connected to these will be my desktop (i.e., no consoles or anything)

 

[Steviepunk]

1) I believe they will be. I have the U2713 and U2515, both are excellent monitors with excellent pictures. Not sure how they'd be for COD but Elite looks fantastic on it!

2) Never used GSync or FreeSync so couldn't really tell you, but I think COD would be the only game of the ones you've mentioned that would really benefit from it. IMO, you won't miss something you've never tried

3) If you want to stay with nVidia cards then I think you'd need something like the 970, 980, Titan or 780(ti?) to run 2 monitors at a reasonable rate - but it will vary by game (though you'll probably need 3GB of memory on the card to support the screen space properly). Not really an expert on this, so hopefully someone else can give you a better answer.
AFAIK, you need SLI to get nVidia Surround (see below) running on a 500 series, think it only became possible on a single card with the 600 series.
For what it's worth, I've been playing Elite on 3 x 1440p monitors with an AMD 7990, on medium settings it is playable but there can be some chopiness when there is more on screen, noticably not as smooth as playing single screen though.


4) Not sure how 2 monitors will be for multi-monitor gaming - since your center point of the view will be right on the edge between the monitors. From a technical point of view, you'd be wanting to use nVidia Surround on the GTX590, but you'd need to look into that, I've got no experience for the nVidia option. If go for an AMD card down the line, you'd be wanting to look at Eyefinity, which I've found to work well on 3 monitors.


You'll probably not find many multi-monitor benchmarks for games, however if you have a look at the benchmarks for running in 4K it should give you a rough idea of what performance will be like on 2 x 1440p screens (2 x 1440p is approx 11% fewer pixels than 4K)
I'd advise having a look in Youtube for videos of people playing games on dual screens as the bezel being on the centre line may be something you need to decide you are fine with.

hope that helps you.

 

[Mallers]

1) I believe they will be. I have the U2713 and U2515, both are excellent monitors with excellent pictures. Not sure how they'd be for COD but Elite looks fantastic on it!

2) Never used GSync or FreeSync so couldn't really tell you, but I think COD would be the only game of the ones you've mentioned that would really benefit from it. IMO, you won't miss something you've never tried

3) If you want to stay with nVidia cards then I think you'd need something like the 970, 980, Titan or 780(ti?) to run 2 monitors at a reasonable rate - but it will vary by game (though you'll probably need 3GB of memory on the card to support the screen space properly). Not really an expert on this, so hopefully someone else can give you a better answer.
AFAIK, you need SLI to get nVidia Surround (see below) running on a 500 series, think it only became possible on a single card with the 600 series.
For what it's worth, I've been playing Elite on 3 x 1440p monitors with an AMD 7990, on medium settings it is playable but there can be some chopiness when there is more on screen, noticably not as smooth as playing single screen though.


4) Not sure how 2 monitors will be for multi-monitor gaming - since your center point of the view will be right on the edge between the monitors. From a technical point of view, you'd be wanting to use nVidia Surround on the GTX590, but you'd need to look into that, I've got no experience for the nVidia option. If go for an AMD card down the line, you'd be wanting to look at Eyefinity, which I've found to work well on 3 monitors.


You'll probably not find many multi-monitor benchmarks for games, however if you have a look at the benchmarks for running in 4K it should give you a rough idea of what performance will be like on 2 x 1440p screens (2 x 1440p is approx 11% fewer pixels than 4K)
I'd advise having a look in Youtube for videos of people playing games on dual screens as the bezel being on the centre line may be something you need to decide you are fine with.

hope that helps you.

Many thanks! I shall YouTube away now