Super-Wide Dying Off??

guddler · 23 May 2015 at 01:18

As title, is super-wide 21:9 tailing off in terms of market interest? I've not been feverishly looking as I refreshed my gaming machine's monitor back at Xmas and my pair of monitors on my work machine are still going strong, but I certainly remember back at Xmas that there was a lot of activity with a lot of stuff coming soon and so on.

I check back reasonably often because at some point I hope to move the 29" 21:9 from the Gaming PC to the office and go 34" on the gaming PC but I seem to just see the same stuff all the time at the moment.

I really hope it's not falling out of favour. I love mine!

guddler · 23 May 2015 at 18:41

Some interesting comments...

I'm on 29" 2560x1080. The Dell one. Partly down to price and partly down to the great support for different inputs. I reduce my desktop to 1280x1024 temporary and have both that an my Amiga on screen at the same time. That's shockingly good

34" was basically just too expensive (and still is) and I was a bit concerned about pushing all those pixels. Strangely I don't find the 29" too small at all but yeah, the 34" might be nice to have on the gaming PC. If I were to shell out that kind of money though it would have to be absolute perfection. No stuck pixels (which the LG I tried had), no really bad IPS glow (which the LG i tried had). Actually now I think of it, the Dell has a stuck pixel but it's green and out of my field of vision so I completely forget about it!

Oh well, hope the interest continues.

I've just changed my TV in the living room so won't be doing that again for another 5+ years but otherwise it would be great to see 50" equivalent 21:9 for a TV too. But then all the transmissions are not so I guess it wouldn't really work.

guddler · 24 May 2015 at 11:44

Incidentally, can a GTX970 run most games on max settings @ 3440x1440 at a reasonable rate? I know that's a bit of a subjective question and what it can run today, may not last for new games coming out, but just as a benchmark, right now, can it cope or do you have to make compromises in the settings?

My gaming PC does need a refresh because the motherboard and processor, while an i7 at 3.2Ghz, it's about 4 years old and is the version before all the fancy names (i7 950 maybe?) The rest of the system has gradually been updated with SSDs, new GPU but it's soon time for a mainboard refresh.

Point is, the current system can still just about cope with everything on max settings. Just about! Apart from Flight Sim X and Prepar3d. They were killed dead by going to super-wide but they're very old programs and need as much CPU as you can give them so won't be any good at that res until I upgrade the board and CPU.

guddler · 24 May 2015 at 15:50

Thats interesting. 45 - 50 is perfectly acceptable to me. Most of the time I'm playing MMO's but I do venture into stuff like GTA-V every now and again. 45 - 50 is about what I get now on my existing motherboard / CPU and a GTX970, but I do get fair reduction in FPS when I'm in areas where there are a lot of people online. But that's CPU not GPU.

So basically if I were to end up 34" 3440 (which finances dictate won't be until autumn at least), by also upgrading the motherboard and CPU I'd probably stay about where I am now, then the further GPU upgrade sometime next year would really see the benefit.

That's not too bad and a reason to hope more 21:9 models see the light of day and hopefully greater take up makes it less of a niche and brings about some price reductions (we can but hope!)

guddler · 1 Jun 2015 at 22:47

I really need to add some extra, smaller screens on the ends of my 29" 21:9 for flight sim stuff, but to do that I would definitely need more grunt. As much in the CPU department as anything. So I looked into some of the comments that people have made and it certainly does seem like Skylake is the update I need in my life and if I can wait that long, Pascal.

I'm just hoping the major parts in my gaming setup will last out. I looked up the invoice the other day and all the bits that haven't already been replaced were bought in Feb 2010 so they're doing well really considering they can still handle everything on full settings

I would love to think that when Pascal comes along I could pick up a second MSI GTX970 going cheap in the sales but I've never, ever seen that happen. The computer market seems to be one of the mostly finely tuned ones there is. If anything prices just go up as stocks dwindle and run out just in time with new kit coming out so the prices never seem to come down.

Oh well, such is life.

Now I don't want to wish my life away, but I wish this stuff would hurry up and come out already