Considering monitor upgrades - Opinions encouraged.

[Zzyzxx71]

Currently I run 3 21" Acer 1920x1080 in a 3 wide configuration. It was only after purchasing them (christmas sale at Newegg in 2012) I realized they didn't have vesa mounting hardware.

Not a problem at the time - they fit on my desk, so I made do.

I recently (~2 months ago) reactivated all of my accounts, upgraded them to WOD, and slowly came to the realization that my 2 x GTX 550Ti's just weren't going to cut it (or at least not cut it much longer). I purchased a GTX 970. Technology amazes me. A single card provides a 400% increase in performance over 2 cards in SLI purchased only about 2 years ago.

This card is (supposedly) capable of supporting 4 monitors (2xDVI, DP, Mini HDMI), of which I'm currently using 3.

I'd like to purchase a 4th monitor with more real estate than what I currently have (per monitor that is), with the intention of adding to it and replacing my existing monitors as I go along.

Save rainy day money for 4k? Find a 21:9? Introduce some portrait shenanigans to the mix?

I'd like your thoughts/opinions/recommendations on potential upgrade plans, ideally I'd like to generate a "roadmap" for the next year or so.

Thanks in advance aaaaaand go!

[Kicksome]

Hey Zzy,
I would NOT recommend a 4k for games. I bought a dell 4k monitor that's 32". The text was too small to really be usable. It was like putting 4x 1920x1080 screens together 2x2. Which would be roughly like four 16" monitors put together at 1920 resolution each. WAY to small. It strains even the best video cards.

In theory it sounded great - the 4k, but I'd much rather have 2x 27" monitors at 2560x1440 (which I have). Or possibly even like 4x 22" monitors at 1920x1080 (which I've never tried). The 4k I use for music production on my mac now, which is handy, but I could have put the money to better use.

The best setup was 2x 2560x1600 30" dell's. Not sure they make them anymore for a reasonable price. That extra space at the bottom helps.

-Kicksome

[MiRai]

3840x2160 (4K)

My full thoughts can be found here (http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/51159-New-Monitor-on-the-Market?p=393588&viewfull=1#post393588), but I think 4K has these problems/drawbacks:


Resolution is so large that it requires some form of DPI/Display scaling in Windows which I find scaling to be a terrible experience.
There's no way you're going to use anywhere near a resolution of 3840x2160 to run any of your WoW clients at when multiboxing and attempting to do so will likely require you to invest in multiple high-end GPUs and still have to drop your video settings and/or frame rates in order to actually play the game.
Recording, editing, and uploading video footage at this resolution is a nightmare.
IPS 4K panels are incredibly expensive.


However, you can multibox in a lower resolution and get creative with your Window Layout, but this doesn't really change anything when it comes to recording and editing video unless you only capture a single game client.



3440x1440 (21:9)

I just upgraded to these monitors and I love them; however, for content creation they're both difficult, and amazing to work with at the same time.

They're difficult because it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to record videos at my full desktop resolution and share them online because no video sharing site at this time supports 21:9 -- They all support 16:9 and it would be incredibly awkward for them to support two entirely different aspect ratios because people with a lower aspect ratio would either be missing part of the video or it'd be surrounded by black bars and the video would be smaller than the person viewing it would generally like it to be. They also share a similar problem with 4K, and that's that you're pushing a lot more pixels when you multibox and, if you utilize the entire monitor, you're going to need to either drop your video settings or upgrade your computer hardware in order to maintain a good frame rate.

They're amazing because I've got so much f'ing screen real estate that I can open tons of stuff at once and even see everything when I'm editing video (http://i2.minus.com/ilPHATkAmi4ap.png) (the missing video is 1920x1080 at 100%) or doing whatever else. They were only a little more expensive than a quality IPS panel at 2560x1440, so I ran with it and I'm happy with my purchase.

Linus's review from LinusTechTips (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrxNfxRK_4) has good information about the LG version of this type of monitor.



2560x1440

I'd say this is going to be the new sweet spot for me when dealing with video content because I can transform my ultra-wide monitors into this resolution with ease and then capture the desktop to bring better quality videos to YouTube using the same 16:9 aspect ratio that YouTube supports -- Which will be the case moving forward.

I don't really have much else to say about this resolution except that if I hadn't gone with 3440x1440, I would have gone with this resolution instead.

[shadowandlight]

super late to this conversation, but i have a Sony 55" 4k (its not full 4:4:4 color until they release an update for it and you WILL need a HDMI 2.0 video card to do it)

HOWEVER, it is amazing. I run my clients in windowed mode and only usually play on about 1/3 of the screen real estate.

For me it was totally worth the price (about 1600) compared to buying multiple 4k screens.

It has one of the best response rates around and was rated excellent on displaylag.com for using as a gaming monitor

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-XBR55X850B-55-Inch-Ultra-120Hz/dp/B00J58F0IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417640499&sr=8-1&keywords=sony+4k

[Ughmahedhurtz]

2560x1440

I'd say this is going to be the new sweet spot for me when dealing with video content because I can transform my ultra-wide monitors into this resolution with ease and then capture the desktop to bring better quality videos to YouTube using the same 16:9 aspect ratio that YouTube supports -- Which will be the case moving forward.

I don't really have much else to say about this resolution except that if I hadn't gone with 3440x1440, I would have gone with this resolution instead.

I just upgraded recently to a 28" 1440p monitor and I notice two things. First, MiRai is right on about those larger resolutions suffering from "tech issues" for things like font scaling/size and performance in the multiboxing context. 1440p is just about as high as I'd want to go for anything under 32" and even then it might be sub-optimal. Down to preference really. Though with the advent of 4k stuff, the lower-rez displays are seeing a very nice (for us consumers) price drop since everyone else wants the shiny.