Hi all, I have been PC gaming for a long time (30+ years), but specifically gaming from the couch for 10+. I’m now going to be having a nice workspace in another part of the house so I’m building a second system.
I have two main goals: I want to set up my flight sim stuff (= yoke, throttle, etc) permanently in the workspace, and I also want to play strategy titles in there, in particular ones which have text that can be a bit small on a TV from the couch. I imagine I’ll still play a lot in the front room, mostly titles with full controller support, so I think it is fair to say that strategy (4X, RTS) and flight simming (X-Plane primarily) will be the focus where I need a monitor.
I was considering targeting 1440p, but 1080p is probably also fine.
Thing is, I haven’t been monitor shopping in a long time. Curved screens? Ultrawides? None of that existed when I last was using a monitor.
So I wanted to ask the community here for their recommendations or ideas. Pretty open ended I guess (modulo a couple questions below) but anything would be helpful.
Not sure it matters, but the workspace system will be:
- Ryzen 7 9700x
- RX 7800 XT
- running Linux (probably Pop! since I have used it for years on the other system without issue), using Proton for anything without a native binary
Are there any pitfalls with ultrawides? If a game doesn’t support the resolution, do I just get bars on the side? Does Linux / Proton handle it significantly differently versus Windows?
I also did consider having the flight sim setup and more standard setup be on different desks (thus multiple screens but not next to each other). This might make sense in terms of the flight equipment but then again it might just be a good way to waste space.
I have an ultrawide, and when games don’t support it, they just give me a 16:9 in the center of the screen with black bars on each side.
Hades has a cool unsupported ultra wide logic where they give stylized bars on each side and 16:9 in the middle
Thanks. I suspected this but wanted to make sure that stretching to a weird aspect ratio wasn’t the norm.
Why not go for 4K? You probably don’t need 144 fps in strategy, tile-based, or flight sims, but the crisper image makes a huge difference. If you’re worried about GPU performance, just lower the game settings to medium or switch the resolution to 1080p if that doesn’t help. That way, every 4 pixels will combine into 1 larger pixel, so the image won’t be blurry, maybe slightly worse than native 1080p display.
Thanks for the response.
I guess I just don’t see the point of going 4k over 1440 or even 1080 for these games. Ultimately it means I’ll pay more for the monitors and use more system resources for what seems like a minor difference to me.
To be sure, it might be a huge difference for flight simming, but that is relatively resource intensive, so I’m still remiss to jump to 4k for that use case, too.
Which display size do you want?
Probably no larger than 24", I would think
Go to your local computer store and look at the sizes in person. 24" is fairly small by today’s standards and you may prefer 27", especially as you are approaching that ‘grey beard’ age and vision starts to go… :-)
Also look at the panel tech for whatever size you choose and read up on pros/cons of different panel types and what trade-offs you are willing to make to choose one over another.
In fact I bought a pair of 27s – they were on sale as a set. I think it is a good size, though I’m considering getting a third.
Thanks!
If you’re really thinking of a 3rd monitor, depending on your financial situation, instead of a 3rd 27", consider a 34" as a centre monitor with the 27s flanking it on the sides. Also make sure that your video card has the capacity to drive that many pixels. (roughly speaking a 34" ultrawide is about 1 and a half 27" monitors)
