Keep in mind that this thread is one year old. There are many new 3440x1440 displays on the market and prices have come down considerably and you can get 100 Hz display for about what I played for my LG 34UC98 a year ago. Recommendations are no longer as easy as year ago when LG 34UC88 and UC98 were the only usable ultrawides on the market. There are much more options now and those LGs are not looking as good right now, especially considering that their price haven't dropped almost at all.
For my current recommendations, if you just want 60 Hz IPS, get Dell U3417W, the same panel as LG 34UC98 but with some issues addressed, miles better than U3415W reviewed in this thread, and if you want more than 60 Hz, look at new 100 Hz VA displays. I cannot recommend them because I haven't seen any of these and I have very little trust for VA, but there are 100 Hz 3440x1440 VA displays that can be bought for around $800-900, one even with G-sync, so this is definitely something to check out.
Also there are some 37.5" 3840x1600 21:9 displays appearing on the market, but with those ones I'd say stick with LG, because as far as I know only Acer and Asus announced their models with those panels and those manufacturers are not worth considering in my opinion and experience.
Hi,
Recently I decided to upgrade to 21:9 and unfortunately I encountered a lot of problems and had to exchange and return monitors few times. I had two Dell's U3415W, one Samsung S34E790C and one LG 34UC98-W. I will share my experiences here, maybe someone will find it useful while deciding which ultrawide monitor to buy.
Please mind that I am not monitor expert and this comparison review is based only on personal impressions. Also, I am not native English so this review will contain some language mistakes. I am copying strait out of Libre Office so it may be not the most esthetic review ever, there are some problems with centering and etc.
There are huge price variations in different countries, for example here in Poland Dell is 890$, Samsung is 900$ and LG is 950$, while in the US its 750, 850 and 1200 respectively, so this why this review doesn't contain any price comparisons.
Package and Safety
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
Package
Very big and heavy, cartons themselves are over 6 kg
Big but not that heavy
Slim and light, very easy to carry
Safety
Screen is well secured with cartons and something like sponge, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Lack of any other foils on bezels or on on the back
Screen is well secured with styrofoam, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Additional foils on bezels
Screen is well secured with styrofoam, stand and screen covered with soft foil. Additional foils on bezel, on the back, on stand, basically everywhere
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
External build quality(back, sides and etc)
Very solid plastic, nothing is delicate or easy to break
Also very solid, nothing is breaking in hands, you can carry and move this screen without worrying
Also nothing bad to say about build quality
Stand
Well built, steady and overly anti-skidding, its very hard to move screen from place. Practical shape, you can hide for example central speaker between stand and panel.
Easy height adjustment. A bit easy to scratch. Practical shape on the back, goes deep into desk without hitting wall to while screen is still close to you
Not as solid as on Dell, plastic feels a bit delicate while carrying or moving monitor. Unpractical shape, taking more usable desk space than Dell's, but there is some flat space to put your central speaker on. Easier to move than Dell because stand is less anti-skidding. Unpractical shape on the back, hits the wall while screen is still too close to you, you need deep desk
Solid and well built but similar to one from Samsung so its also not practical and also I had to stick my central speaker with tape. Monitor is very easy to move because stand is not overly anti-skidding. Practical shape on the back, goes very deep into desk without hitting wall
Weight and size
Big, thick and heavy, hard to carry and move
Easier to move thanks no less anti-skidding stand but still heavy and thick
Very light and slim, very easy to move
Bezel
Nice and slim enough bezels upstairs and on sides hidden in glass, down bezel is quite big but not intrusive and matt
Nasty glassy physical bezels all around that are reflecting ambient light and light from screen. They are thin, but still annoying
Bezels similar to Dell but down bezel is very small and it basically looks same as other bezels. Everything finished with very thin silver frame that is not intrusive
Esthetics
Dark matt plastic finish with silver stand and gray down bezel, looks just normal and toned
Dark mat finish on the back, glassy bezel and silver stand, looks fine
Great look. Silver frame finish matches well to silver stand and glassy but not overly glassy white finish on the back also looks well and fits white cables included with screen. Great design
Ports placement
Unpractical and annoying ports placement, hard to reach and use and they gave miniDP to annoy you even more
Ports simply placed at the back without hiding them anywhere, simple to use and reach
Same as on Samsung, good ports placement easy to use and reach
Cable management
Hole in stand for cable management, not bad solution
There is something on the back on stand, but since stand is already very deep its unpractical to put cables there
Small clip that can be attached on the back of the stand, it makes monitor deeper so it may not be practical if you have limited desk depth
PSU and coil whine
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
Placement
Internal
External
External
Coil whine while on
Moderate
Annoying while working/reading in silence, not a problem during listening to music or gaming. Got it on both units
None
No sign of coil whine even while working in silence
Almost none
Very little, audible only if you really try to hear it in total silence at night
Coil whine while off(but plugged into power source)
Excessive for about 30 seconds after turning off, then goes back to moderate. You need to unplug it from power source to stop it
Crazy whining after turning off, unplugging from power source badly needed
Almost none
Audible only if you use your monitor and psu as pillow and I think nobody does that
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
Picture quality of the box
Washed out, very cold and eye hurting picture, ICC profile or calibration needed
Terrible
Washed out, very cold and eye hurting*, ICC profile or calibration needed. Some bright backgrounds look a bit grainy**(probably related to coating, I am not sure). Image retention sometimes happen (more info in conclusion)
Picture after tweaking
After using ICC profile from TFT Cental picture is great, colors are beautiful but blacks and whites still not perfect
Nothing really helped, side by side comparison with Dell was a first round knockout by Dell even after hours of tweaking on Samsung
Currently I am using same ICC like on Dell and they look quite similar, both beautiful, only blacks and whites are noticeably better on LG
Sharpness
Very sharp picture and very good sharpness adjustment in OSD
Terrible and unrepairable sharpness problems, basically you have to choose between sharp text plus oversharped and grainy picture or relatively good picture but blurry text. Balance is not reachable with OSD settings.
Mostly very sharp picture, both text and picture, but sometimes some fonts appear a bit blurry and sharpness adjustment from OSD is useless(its going by 10, you can set only ...40,50,60…, 60 is oversharped and 40 is blurry, 52-53 would be perfect, but I have to use default 50 that is not exactly perfect)
Color uniformity
Very good, only a bit darker very close to bezels. While viewing single color on whole screen you really need to look for any uniformity problems to notice something
Noticeably more vibrant in center and less vibrant on the sides. Basically visible only while viewing the same color on whole screen which has nothing to deal with real everyday use.
While viewing white or gray on whole or the most part of screen, there are some uniformity problems visible. Nothing intrusive but uniformity is certainly not perfect
Backlight bleed
Intrusive
(photo)
Intrusive backlight bleed on both units I had, yellow stains in 3 corners and purple in one corner. Dark scenes in games, movies or dark pictures very uncomfortable to play, watch or view. Backlight bleed gets through not only very dark scenes, but also through gray/dark blue ones like nights in games, sometimes even a bit darker picture for example during sunset in games is enough for bleed to cover significant area on screen. Not acceptable.
Almost None
Practically non existent, there were some brighter and darker spots on black screen but nothing noticeable in any kind of monitor use except watching blank black screen
Little
(photo - purple color is reflection, not backlight bleed, better quality photo from other user)
Acceptable blueish bleed in down corners and a bit of grayish glow near upper bezel. Not intrusive even during dark scenes in games and movies, you need total darkness on screen to see it (for example game menu with black background like in The Witcher 3). Backlight bleed on most monitors tends to get through not only totally dark scenes, but also grey/dark blue ones, like nights in games, sometimes even through sunsets, but on this monitor it is not happening. Probably because bleed on most monitors is usually yellow, and here it is gray/blue, it makes it less intrusive and picture is less vulnerable to it.
Brightness
Good editable brightness range, 0% is really dark and 100% is really really bright, good for both saving eyes and getting blind
Not as good as Dell but still good brightness range, 0% is not very intrusive and you can make this screen really bright if you want
Lack of good brightness range, 0% on LG is like 10-15% on Dell. May be a problem for sensitive eyes to view browser or Excel or work at night
* - ICC profile that is applied automatically with driver installation appear to be source of this bad picture, if you delete this ICC from color management in Windows and restart computer screen looks good, although you can still improve it with ICC profile
** - I noticed it only on LG, but I am not completely sure if its because it has worse pixel pitch than Dell or do I stared to even notice this effect after getting LG. But its obviously visible on LG and I don't think I wouldn't notice this in over 3 weeks of using Dell. This is minor problem, visible only only in web browser on sites with white or gray backgrounds or if you have wallpaper like this, in games or movies it isn't visible.
OSD
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
OSD Navigation
Touch-sensitive buttons on bottom bezel
Not very resposive, not illuminated, not comfortable to use, especially on monitor of this size
Joystick on the back on left side
Joystick is much better solution, but its placement is not well designed on Samsung and is not comfortable to use
Joystick placed on the bottom of the panel in the middle
Perfect placement for joystick, OSD navigation is now so comfortable that I didn't even installed screen control software
OSD Esthetics
Basic but good looking
Very outdated look, OSD on my parent's I believe now 10 year old Samsung Sync Master 943 is looking exact the same
Very good looking, elegant and big OSD, nothing more to wish on this matter
OSD Options
Nothing special, standard OSD options, no RGB adjustment if I remember well
Probably all options you need are there, but this is also nothing special, this 10 year old Samsung I mentioned above has exact the same options in OSD
Also all needed options are there, plus some additional features like Black Stabilizer, I find it very useful
OSD Software
Easy and practical to use but lacking in options
Outdated and not very readable, but imporant options are there
Quite easy to use and filled with options although Dell's option is more practical in everyday use
Curve
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
3800R/3.8m
Nice subtle curve, enough to make some effect and better for eyes than flat screen but curve is not big enough to disturb strait lines
3800R/3.8m
Same as on Dell, but effect is a bit disturbed by physical bezels
1900R/1.9m
Twice as curved as Dell and Samsung. For games and movies this is great, but I can clearly see that strait lines are disturbed even though I am already used to curve and I love it. May be a problem for some people.
(after almost 2 months of usage curve is still visible enough to disturb strait lines)
Additional features
Dell U3415W
Samsung S34E790C
LG 34UC98-W
Dell's Next Business Day Warranty being the best warranty you can imagine, they send you new monitor day after you call them and take old one day after you get new one, so you are not left without monitor for even a single day. Amazing.
None
AMD FreeSync
Ability for 75 Hz Refresh rate (enabling FreeSync causes automatic 75 Hz overclock*, also on Nvidia card, but on Nvidia card it causes problems with GPU utilization)
10-bit color depth support
* - after enabling FreeSync, 75 Hz option appears in your Windows/Nvidia/AMD panel display setting. You need to apply it manually, screen doesn't go to 75 Hz automatically after enabling FreeSync.
Conclusion
Dell U3415W
Positives
Negatives
-Beautiful and sharp picture
-Good external build quality
-Good quality and practical stand
-Slim and hidden bezel with down physical bezel being non intrusive and matt
-Simple, esthetic look
-Nice, optimal curve
-Wide brightness adjustment range
-Bright colors uniformity
-Great Dell's warranty
-Intrusive backlight bleed on both units
-Moderate coil whine on both units
-Heavy, thick and hard to move
-Terrible ports placement
-Need for calibration or ICC profile, poor picture out of the box
-Uncomfortable OSD usage
Overall this is good screen with beautiful picture and colors but very intrusive backlight bleed made me look elsewhere.
Samsung S34E790C
Positives
Negatives
-Solid build quality
-Not bad design, nothing flashy at least
-Absolutely zero backlight bleed
-Nice, optimal curve
-No coil whine while turned on
-Good ports placement
-Despite size and weigh not that hard to move
-Poor picture quality
-Terrible sharpness problems
-Nasty glassy physical bezel
-Crazy coil whine while turned off but plugged into power source
-Heavy and thick
-Despite place for central speaker, stand is unpractical and very deep
-Bad OSD joystick placement
-In some games color banding may be a huge concern
Solid outside, except bezel, and zero backlight bleed, but panel has various quality problems with colors and sharpness. I wouldn't recommend this monitor to anyone.
LG 34UC98-W
Positives
Negatives
-Very good build quality
-Great design
-Beautiful and sharp picture
-Despite being ultrawide IPS, very little backlight bleed
-Aggressive curve great for games and movies
-Almost no coil whine
-Great OSD joystick placement, OSD usage never been easier
-Good ports placement
-Very light and slim for screen of this kind
-Nice, slim and hidden bezel with down physical bezel being very small
-Very good whites and blacks
-Slim and light package
-FreeSync and ability to go 75 Hz with it
-10 bit color depth support
-Stand is not practical
-Need for calibration or ICC profile, poor picture out of the box
-Aggressive curve may be problematic in some of professional uses
-Slight color uniformity problems, may matter in some of professional uses
-A bit narrow brightness adjustment range, screen may be too bright in dark room for sensitive eyes even on 0% brightness
-Slight sharpness problems in some cases while OSD sharpness option is not optimized and useless
-Bright backgrounds (for example in web browser) appear a bit grainy (probably related to coating, I am not sure)
-FreeSync range (55-75 Hz) is a bit narrow and limiting (although easy to hack to 40-75, some artifacts appear if hacking below 40)
-Image retention sometimes happens. Disappears after a minute or so, but may be a problem for software/content creators or someone who switch between white and dark content over and over. This however occurs only with high contrast simple "back on white" pictures like websites, not an issue in movies, games or with any other "advanced" or dynamic pictures
-75 Hz refresh rate available only on AMD cards with FreeSync enabled, frame skipping on Nvidia GPU on any overclock over 60 Hz
Outstanding screen with minor problems. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. After bad experiences with Dells and Samsung I thought I would have to abandon idea of upgrading to 21:9, but this monitor saved the day, or rather few years.
(you may also want to look at 34UC88 that is about the same as 34UC98 except design and Thunderbolt connections, and it is cheaper)
Check out this thread for more info about 34UC88/98
To be fair, as far as I'm aware the actual original kickstarter goal, which was the single-player game ONLY, is slowly nearing completions and has a lot of features actually implemented. I feel a lot of people forget that the original game pitch and goal was the SINGLE PLAYER game, not the MMO every seems to be excited about.
What we have access to right now is the online module, that while also important, is to be completed AFTER the first single player chapter.
*insert shameless plug to use my referral code to create a SC account*
IT's late and I'm both hungry and tired from shooting Scrapyard Wars (which by the way is an LTT series and will be airing ad-supported on YouTube very soon for your viewing pleasure).
But there are a few points to address and you've already been patient enough.
I said LMG content would always be free. This was poor wording on my part. There has always been content produced by me and my team that was not necessarily available on a free platform like YouTube.
These "The Boost" videos that we make on contract as a sales training resource for Intel, for example:
In much the same way, Vessel has contracted LMG the production company to create an original series for their platform. They bankrolled the whole thing, giving us an opportunity to make something that otherwise would have been too costly, and per the licensing agreement they own the right to exploit this content. It's their show until such time as they decide it's not anymore.
We played more of a "production company" role in this than we're accustomed to.
This could, and SHOULD have been communicated better, and for that I'm sorry. The community should have heard about this from us FIRST, and not from a random email newsletter, but I've been (and so has the whole team) absolutely busting ass to not only get Nerd Sports produced, but also make sure that we're keeping up with everything else that we've got going on including not having missed a single day of LTT uploads for something like 5 years..
With that said, quantity isn't everything, and I've noticed that not everyone has appreciated the LTT content as much as usual lately, but it's hard for me to tell if that's because they don't like our new direction (fewer reviews, and more exploratory or experimental videos) or if they just saw a video or two they didn't like and raised hell in the comment section - it wouldn't be the first time.. And I will say, too, that honestly if a couple of the videos felt rushed then it's probably because they were.. HOWEVER, the primary reason for the rushed videos was the entire week we're taking off this week to film Scrapyard Wars Season 4, which will be premiering on Vessel sometime in the next few weeks or so, followed by a release on YouTube 1 week later, which is the standard agreement for OUR content that is paid for by LMG or our sponsors.
Nerd Sports was shot 40% during evenings and weekends with employees taking time in lieu later on when we hire some more staff or when things slow down a little. We were careful to avoid disrupting any of our other commitments because imo you guys deserve the best we can deliver.
Which is another point that was brought up in this thread - "How will LMG keep its commitment to maintain the pace and quality of the other content if they're making Nerd Sports or other contractual content?"
We couldn't. We're hiring.
I've never shied away from investing in more staff or better equipment or a better facility to make sure that we're doing our best for ourselves, each other, our sponsors and our viewers. If we play our cards right, absolutely everyone wins.
Nerd Sports has been a fantastic learning experience for us, and whether we continue the series with Vessel, create other completely different web series in the future, or just say "fudge it" and flip burgers from now on, we'll be able to do those things better than we could have without having done this.
So bottom line is this. I screwed up the way I communicated "LMG content", which was meant to be content funded BY Linus Media Group rather than content funded entirely by and licensed to a 3rd party, and I screwed up in a MUCH bigger way the LACK of communication about this project. Sorry guys.
sorry but am i the only one who is callin bullshit?
other than the keyboard lights and the flixable HUD these should be standard in all AAA games, hell all PC games in general, its not press release material
though i do have a beta key and will play this next week
The Star Citizen 'hierarchy' of hangars (from lowest to highest - Self-Land, Aeroview, Revel & York and VFG Industrial) basically means that you have access to the highest tier of hangar that is in either your package or your ship - although the package will still say Aeroview, the VFG Industrial Hangar 'attached' to the Sabre is the hangar you'll have.
You also get all the hangars below that - so with the VFG hangar you can switch between all four hangars in the 'My Hangar' section of your account.
The Aurora comes with the Selfland Hangar, when you upgrade you keep the package you have and only upgrade the ship. I think the Gladius is the cheapest package with the Aeroview btw
Hyper Vanguard Hype?
The 325a has an advantage atm with its multi missile launcher, so i would try it first.
Watch_Dogs 2, may be released later this year instead of Ubisoft's annual Assasins's Creed franchise offering.
Wow! I'm impressed.
AND Watch_Dogs 2 may be set in....San Francisco? That's right, it might be set in San Francisco.
AND it'll feature radical changes
This is what Ubisoft's Lionel Raynaud had to say about this:
This is what Ubisoft originally said about Watch_Dogs in 2012 :
COOL! Awesome! I must be in that 1% of people who played Watch_Dogs, thought it was gorgeous, loved the mechanics, loved the story, but wanted a sequel.
radiator needs to be highr than the pump you mug so it's going to be fucking up real bad your pump uness you invert the rad
no they dont you mug
that's fine you mug, just a cheeky bit of +ve pressure
Radiator dosen't need to be higher than the pump one of my radiator is below and it didn't die yet.
The only thing that matters is that the res feed the pump
I got my X34 today... living in Austria, ordered from Alternate last Wednesday (1336,90€)
(my gaming rig wasn't delivered yet, so I could only connect it via HDMI to my iMac => no Display-Port => 1080p max => 60Hz)
As I couldn't connect the display via Display-Port, I can't say anything regarding coil whine of 60Hz+ I've read about or the color bending problem some people are complaining about ... all I can say:
I've got severe backlight-bleeding (as you can see in the pictures) in the left corners, this monitor is going back to Acer
-IPS or VA or their variant panels only. TN panels are ignored and should be avoided anyway.
-All are/should be flicker free too.
-Prices are either known or best estimate in US $.
-All models are either released or are on their way.
-Also accumulating available gsync laptops, listing the display and the cheapest price you can get a new one for. The laptop MUST have "g-sync" in its name.
C# with WPF or winforms IMO is probably the best choice but if you are feeling ballsy you could do Win32 with C++. Also from what you described it would actually be only 1 program but with 2 windows.
Frankz reacted to airdeano in Compact(ish) E-ATX case...?
