Ultrawide Gaming

[Andy14]

A quick question I haven't seen answered in regular reviews.

When you encounter games that simply don't want to play ball with the 21:9 aspect, can you choose the 16:9 version and it runs in the center of the screen with black bars either side?

E.g. I'd purchase a 3440 x 1440 and currently own a 2560 x 1440. So if choosing the later still works then my worst case is just being no worse off than now. And I assume I could still run this lower resolution at the monitors max refresh rate ?

Thanks for any clarity of this one.

[jimbouk]

Should be possible through your graphics card driver. (Just on the other half's AIO PC at the moment and) Intel call the option Display Scaling. Should allow you to scale things to the panel but maintain aspect ratio (black bars). With older games that didn't support anything but 4:3 or 5:4 it was preferable to have black bars on a normal widescreen monitor than everything being stretched (back in the day...), I guess these problems haven't gone away!

Edit: or there might be a way to set it on your monitor itself to turn off in built scaling, that will vary by monitor though.

[virtuo]

Dell U3451W here (3440x1440)

In nvidia control panel go to "Display" -> "Adjust desktop size and position". Plenty of options on how to scale and a tool to preview how it will look, I tend to use "Aspect ratio" and perform scaling on GPU.

I'd presume AMD control panel has something similar.

[Andy14]

Dell U3451W here (3440x1440)

In nvidia control panel go to "Display" -> "Adjust desktop size and position". Plenty of options on how to scale and a tool to preview how it will look, I tend to use "Aspect ratio" and perform scaling on GPU.

I'd presume AMD control panel has something similar.

Thanks. I'll be "Green Team" too.

Do you find you have to mess about with this often ? I don't want to create a headache for myself changing display settings each time I play different games. The other option is for me to go "2 x 27 monitors".

[virtuo]

Thanks. I'll be "Green Team" too.

Do you find you have to mess about with this often ? I don't want to create a headache for myself changing display settings each time I play different games. The other option is for me to go "2 x 27 monitors".

It is a pain, there may be tools to deal with it but in honesty I rarely game on the ultrawide - it's great for coding and productivity but the gaming novelty wears off quick. I have a pair of 1440p 25" screens that I generally prefer gaming on.

[Andy14]

Interesting. So would you recommend 2 x 1440p (27") monitors over a 34" UW for a 50/50 mixed use of games and productivity.?

[virtuo]

Interesting. So would you recommend 2 x 1440p (27") monitors over a 34" UW for a 50/50 mixed use of games and productivity.?

Hard to answer that if it's close to 50/50 usage - that's why I've got both. UW on my work machine, 25s on my leisure rig

If I was forced to go one or the other, I'd go for the separate screens - you can always stitch them in to a single virtual display in Nvidia CP for a mega 5120x1440 res if you wanted to quench your curiosity, though there's a bar down the middle.

[Andy14]

The bar down the middle would deter me from doing this. I'd probably go for a high refresh monitor on the left, normal on the right. Both can be used for productivity, the high refresh for gaming with the right one holding email, chat session, browser, etc. Or just one UW.

It's very interesting that you don't game on the UW though. I've seen many videos / reviews and all describe the UW gaming experience as amazing (when it works).

[virtuo]

The bar down the middle would deter me from doing this. I'd probably go for a high refresh monitor on the left, normal on the right. Both can be used for productivity, the high refresh for gaming with the right one holding email, chat session, browser, etc. Or just one UW.

It's very interesting that you don't game on the UW though. I've seen many videos / reviews and all describe the UW gaming experience as amazing (when it works).

When it works, it's nice. I found outside of driving/flight/space sims it's just not worth it. I tried ROTTR and I just felt like my GPU was working double hard just rendering all that extra scenery. It didn't add much to the experience for me.

Also tried a couple of FPS titles and got the same, lots going on but you still only focus on the middle and the frame rates were dropping a lot. I also had to tweak the FOV quite a bit to feel "right" but that skewed the perspective too much.

I honestly am of the opinion that all these people saying the experience is "Amazing" just don't want to cry that their £800+ monitor doesn't really work that well for games. But that's just me. I didn't pay for mine so I can slate it a bit more easily

[prwilson]

I like the idea of the ultrawides in terms of extra real estate and POV in games, but I can't help feeling a bit more evolution needs to happen both in terms of the hardware and game/program support as yet.

[Tannen]

I like the idea of the ultrawides in terms of extra real estate and POV in games, but I can't help feeling a bit more evolution needs to happen both in terms of the hardware and game/program support as yet.

Aint that the truth. Many games support it, but it's often at a price. Take Overwatch for example - that runs beautifully on 3440x1440, but you actually LOSE vertical visible space compared to 16:9 due to the design of their aspect mapping.

In general, I find very few problems with this aspect ratio. It usually comes down to the game - I've had to mod Fallout 4 to get it right, MGSV just runs with the black bars on 16:9 (without in-depth modding) while dozens of other games support it straight out the box.

I'm running AMD (Fury X) on a Acer Predator 35" with Freesync. Much prefer it over multiscreen setups, regardless of bezel. Beautiful display.