Monitor/Display Megathread - Chromebook Pixel is best IPS display on market

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Monitor/Display Megathread - Chromebook Pixel is best IPS display on market

bitprophet: Jul 22, 2004; Taco Defender

Looking for sanity checks here for my not terrifically common (but surely not truly rare) situation. tl;dr: are there good Thunderbolt-capable 21:9 displays out there besides LG 34UC98, LG 34UM88, or Samsung CJ791?

Two computers, one a USB-C era MacBook Pro, other a gaming PC.
The Mac is for text editing (programmer/sysadmin; the wider the better as I can fit more documents at once) etc; no serious video etc. The PC is for non-competitive gaming, so eg I don't care about 144Hz.
Two monitors on arms: Thunderbolt Display (16:9 / 1440p) for the Mac, Dell U2412M (16:10 / 1920x1200) for the PC. Typically keep one or the other front-and-center depending on gaming/not gaming
When gaming, I frequently toggle USB to the Mac via a USB K/M switch to look things up / take notes / chat / etc.
I enjoy the dock capabilities of the Thunderbolt Display (e.g. USB & Ethernet passthrough, speakers, webcam).

I'm contemplating replacing the displays with a single 21:9 34" or similar:

No more monitor shuffle or squeaky TBD heavy-display arm.
Have you SEEN how much text you can fit into a 21:9 display?!
Need to either run games at native 3440x1440 (bit hard even for dedicated gaming rig; currently running a GTX 970), or at some boxed-in smaller res (I'm told nVidia's driver can do this for games that can't internally).
Might be able to picture-in-picture/picture-by-picture for the times I need both systems viewable. (Sounds like the LG 34UC98 itself cannot do this? Only some half-assed Windows software-based thing?)
Regardless of PIP/PBP, toggling between inputs needs to be fast and easy versus, say, clicking through ALL inputs every time, or being deep in a menu.
Thunderbolt is nearly mandatory; USB-C HDMI dongles sound like they drop down to 30fps above 1080p; I assume that'll be a bad time even for regular desktop work.

See the tl;dr for the 3 monitors I've found that seem to fit. Am I missing any (e.g. any super-good fits for my use case that are 'only' 1440p)? Are there aspects to this switcheroo I'm overlooking? Etc.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2018 21:24

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 13:31

bitprophet: Jul 22, 2004; Taco Defender

Murgos posted:

Is there a recommended 3440x1440 monitor (or two) I can investigate?

As noted above, LG makes the most of these; I've got an LG34UC98 at my soon-to-be-former job and it's quite nice, though leaves a bit to be desired as a Thunderbolt dock (presumably not your use case). They have curved and uncurved variants, tho I'm honestly not sure uncurved at this width is worth the cost savings.

I also ran across what looks like a relatively new offering from Samsung, the C34J791, which has Thunderbolt 3 (though I'm still trying to figure out if it can do true multi input PIP and software controlled audio volume). I assume they've got others too that aren't Thunderbolt oriented, but haven't looked.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2018 23:08

bitprophet: Jul 22, 2004; Taco Defender

DrDork posted:

A 1080 driving a 3440x1440 works, but you're not gonna be 100FPS+ on top-end AAA titles with everything turned to 11.
[...]
A 1080 driving a 2560x1440 will get you better FPS at the same settings, obviously [...]

I'm also looking to game on a 3440x1440 34" display, but my understanding was that you can use eg NVidia driver software to force games to run at, say, 2560x1440 (presumably also other sizes like 1080p) - is that accurate? (And reliable?)

Not that I'd never try running some games at full native res just for shits and giggles, but in my case the ultrawide aspect is more for my workstation and not my gaming PC.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2018 01:03

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