AW3418DW still worth buying? + general ultrawide advice

[Kitsan]

A friend of mine is selling his AW3418DW 34" and im debating on whether to buy it, has technolegy moved on allot in the last 3 years?

 

The other monitor I was thinking of buying (new) was the AOC CU34G2X but it's not IPS, doesnt have native G-sync and it's not on the Nivida list of approved monitors (although I know allot of unsupported monitors do work), however it is 144hz.

• Has anyone got real experience of 120hz vs 144hz?

For ultrawide owners, is there any advice from ownership, like

• Is VA a good experience
• Wished you'd gotten a higher refresh
• ...etc

[Stahlmann]

I personally loved my AOC AG352UCG6, a 120Hz 34" VA ultrawide. There is no big difference between 120Hz and 144Hz. Most people, including me, won't notice the difference. VA has much better blacks than IPS monitors and thus often have better contrast and image quality. IPS is more responsive and has better color performance as VA on the other hand. But i could keep on rambling about different display techs for ages.

 

Basically out of these 2 monitors the Alienware is the better choice imo.

This specific AOC model has several reports on issues when using it with G-Sync.

 

 

Now to ultrawide in general: I personally went back to 16:9 because ultrawide is still a lot of hassle. First off you need a very strong GPU for 3440x1440 because it's almost as demanding as 4K. Many games natively don't support 21:9 or do a very bad job at it. For games like Witcher 3, Assasins Creed Odyssey and Terraria you need to dig into the .exe and make changes to it so you have proper ultrawide support ingame. Some games like Skyrim are fixable with mods. And with other games like RDR2 you can't do anything about a bad 21:9 implementation without the risk of getting banned for tempering with the games files. Some very old games won't even launch when running a 21:9 resolution in Windows. Basically there is a lot of tinkering involved. I found myself often researching a game's ultrawide support before making my buying decision, and in the end this is the reason i went back to 16:9. It's just more convenient.

 

Yes, if you have games that properly support 21:9 it's an awesome experience, but sadly still many games, even new ones, still don't have a good implementation. This is partly because there are no 21:9 TVs and a lot of games are designed with consoles in mind.

 

I'll receive my Samsung Odyssey G7 32" today and i'm happy about not having to worry about monitor support again when buying new games or tinkering around to not have black bars at the sides or extremely cramped fov.

 

If you have any more questions about ultrawide, feel free to ask.

I've used my ultrawide for a little over 2 years now and i can share a lot more about my experience with it.

[Kitsan]

17 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

I personally loved my AOC AG352UCG6, a 120Hz 34" VA ultrawide. There is no big difference between 120Hz and 144Hz. Most people, including me, won't notice the difference. VA has much better blacks than IPS monitors and thus often have better contrast and image quality. IPS is more responsive and has better color performance as VA on the other hand. But i could keep on rambling about different display techs for ages.

 

Basically out of these 2 monitors the Alienware is the better choice imo.

This specific AOC model has several reports on issues when using it with G-Sync.

 

 

Now to the more important info: I personally went back to 16:9 because ultrawide is still a lot of hassle. First off you need a very strong GPU for 3440x1440 because it's almost as demanding as 4K. Many games natively don't support 21:9 or do a very bad job at it. For games like Witcher 3, Assasins Creed Odyssey and Terraria you need to dig into the .exe and make changes to it so you have proper ultrawide support ingame. Some games like Skyrim are fixable with mods. And with other games like RDR2 you can't do anything about a bad 21:9 implementation without the risk of getting banned for tempering with the games files. Some very old games won't even launch when running a 21:9 resolution in Windows. Basically there is a lot of tinkering involved. I found myself often researching a game's ultrawide support before making my buying decision, and in the end this is the reason i went back to 16:9. It's just more convenient.

 

Yes, if you have games that properly support 21:9 it's an awesome experience, but sadly still many games, even new ones, still don't have a good implementation. This is partly because there are no 21:9 TVs and a lot of games are designed with consoles in mind.

 

I'll receive my Samsung Odyssey G7 32" today and i'm happy about not having to worry about monitor support again when buying new games or tinkering around to not have black bars at the sides or extremely cramped fov.

 

If you have any more questions about ultrawide, feel free to ask.

I've used my ultrawide for a little over 2 years now and i can share a lot more about my experience with it.

Thanks for the really informative reply!

 

I guess the main reason for me moving to ultra-wide is that i'm going back to uni to study an MBA and an ultrawide will take up less space than my 32" IPS 4K 60hz and 25" TN 1080p 240hz while still being able to support two or three windows to run different programs/compare documents and webpages and play games/esports titles in my down time

 

I'm a little nervous about making the transition because I fully appreciate your points about going back to 16:9 and it's the reason why I never adopted it... however I feel like the productivity element of it for what i'll be using it for is very useful.

 

Really appreciate your throughts though

[Stahlmann]

2 minutes ago, Kitsan said:

Thanks for the really informative reply!

 

I guess the main reason for me moving to ultra-wide is that i'm going back to uni to study an MBA and an ultrawide will take up less space than my 32" IPS 4K 60hz and 25" TN 1080p 240hz while still being able to support two or three windows to run different programs/compare documents and webpages and play games/esports titles in my down time

 

I'm a little nervous about making the transition because I fully appreciate your points about going back to 16:9 and it's the reason why I never adopted it... however I feel like the productivity element of it for what i'll be using it for is very useful.

 

Really appreciate your throughts though

For productivity there are definetly upsides. I noticed this a lot when working on my skirim install with 700+ currently installed mods. Multitasking is definetly easier on 21:9. Forgot to mention that.

 

Always happy to help!  

[ewitte]

2 hours ago, Kitsan said:

A friend of mine is selling his AW3418DW 34" and im debating on whether to buy it, has technolegy moved on allot in the last 3 years?

 

The other monitor I was thinking of buying (new) was the AOC CU34G2X but it's not IPS, doesnt have native G-sync and it's not on the Nivida list of approved monitors (although I know allot of unsupported monitors do work), however it is 144hz.

• Has anyone got real experience of 120hz vs 144hz?

For ultrawide owners, is there any advice from ownership, like

• Is VA a good experience
• Wished you'd gotten a higher refresh
• ...etc

 

Just got the AOC CU34G2X.  Yes you can set it to 144hz but if you check out the reviews the actual amount of time it takes to refresh a pixel is closer to 120hz.  Your chances of "smearing" increase after that.  Its not bad though I like it.

 

VA - I've had IPS for most of my monitors I'm fine with VA but i HATE TN panels.

No real need over 120-144hz IMO.

 

I'm surprised at how well/fast I adapted from Dual 27 inch IPS screens. Its pretty comparable especially if you can get used to the snap feature.  Two 1720x1440 windows is fine for a browser.  Also if I screenconnect to a machine with dual monitors it is usable that was never the case on the dual 27 inch monitors.

 

[Kitsan]

Im coming from 240hz and I definately dont mind TN panels as I play allot of esports titles, that said I do much prefer the image of my 4K IPS.

 

Infact the only thing thats stopping me pulling the trigger right now is the 120hz spec.... although I think im going to give it a shot.