TdC
Trem's hunky sex love muffin
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2003
- Messages
- 30,925
Ok dudes here's a quick summary of my first impressions of the Asus PG348. Note: for the record I also have the Acer XB321HK.
What were my expectations/desires up front?
Well, primarily I wanted to get "faster" monitor. In quasi-technical terms I wanted to reduce the amount of ghosting / overshoot I could see on the '321. I experienced this as blur, and it happened primarily when I played my current fave game, eg WOT. In my WOT setup there will be text moving across the screen, generally in the horizontal plane, that I have an interest in reading. The perceived "blur" prohibits me from easily doing so, hence the annoyance. In all other respects the '321 is a decent monitor (uneven back-light and/or bleeding issues aside). If you don't have a requirement like I do, want to play at 4K and have a system that can handle it, well, it's about as good as it gets.
What were my immediate thoughts?
Firstly: holy hell this thing is wiiiiide. Ofc it's wide! It's a 3440x1440 monitor.
I also noticed that the monitor body is very plastic-ish, whereas the "foot" it stands on is heavy, made of metal and generally quite awesome. Might be me but visually I feel that the monitor body does not suit it's awesome foot. Hey ho though, in my general use of the monitor I won't be looking at the back of the thing heh. The foot does let me turn and tilt the monitor a whole lot more than the Acer though, for sure.
Turning it on, what I noticed straight off is that I see nothing of the (admittedly slight) uneven back-light I see on my '321. Also, I notice that the buttons at the back right-hand of the screen, and the OSD in general is pretty intuitive, which is good because Asus' documentation is shit or non-existent. Anyway, I turned on the monitor overclock immediately, because this is kind of the only reason I have bought this thing. This OC function lets you turn up your refresh rate from 60 to 100Hz in 5Hz increments. I set it to maximum straight away and tested in some games. It worked, so cool beans.
So, 100Hz eh? GSYNC eh?
Yeah. I have an Nvidia 1080 so it's a fair assumption I will be able to make things work with this monitor. I generally managed to set or tune my most-played games to allowable framerates, from say 45 in The Division to whatever it got to in Elite: Dangerous (anything between 45 and 100's). As this '348 has approx 3440x1440 / 3440x2160, or 4953600 / 7430400, or 66% of the pixels, I'm bravely and naively expecting a frame rate improvement of say...30% or so. *blinks* This should put me anything between something I already view as acceptable, and something that I will have to see, meaning GSYNC'd frequencies in excess of 60Hz with hopefully much less ghosting and/or overshoot. Looking forward to that, oh yeah
What were my second thoughts?
Ooh, hard one. I still have to play more. Some thoughts:
rationally I can say that I kinda like the curve to the screen. There are those who argue it's a gimmick, and I think that we've actually proved here on FH that the curvature is not enough to really work, but its there and I don't hate it (yet). The other thought I have is that the wideness is not really useful for anything other than immersion purposes when you're playing a game. I mean, your effective screen real-estate is a fairly small circle around whatever the hell part of the screen you happen to be looking at. Games that orient you to the middle, well that means that effectively the middle part of the screen is where you get all your pertinent information and the two side thirds are eye-candy or less pertinent data. Ofc, if you're not playing a game but using something like a music or drawing program, or even programming perhaps (still have to do that on this screen) it may be that the side thirds of the screen become more effective. My current final thought is that the screen seems every so slightly less sharp than the Acer '321. I theorize that this is because there is 33% less pixels to the height of the screen. I only notice this because I literally switched monitors this morning and I'm still very used to the Acer.
Hope this helps guys!
PS. oh, aye, all my 4K wallpapers are fucked. ffs
What were my expectations/desires up front?
Well, primarily I wanted to get "faster" monitor. In quasi-technical terms I wanted to reduce the amount of ghosting / overshoot I could see on the '321. I experienced this as blur, and it happened primarily when I played my current fave game, eg WOT. In my WOT setup there will be text moving across the screen, generally in the horizontal plane, that I have an interest in reading. The perceived "blur" prohibits me from easily doing so, hence the annoyance. In all other respects the '321 is a decent monitor (uneven back-light and/or bleeding issues aside). If you don't have a requirement like I do, want to play at 4K and have a system that can handle it, well, it's about as good as it gets.
What were my immediate thoughts?
Firstly: holy hell this thing is wiiiiide. Ofc it's wide! It's a 3440x1440 monitor.
I also noticed that the monitor body is very plastic-ish, whereas the "foot" it stands on is heavy, made of metal and generally quite awesome. Might be me but visually I feel that the monitor body does not suit it's awesome foot. Hey ho though, in my general use of the monitor I won't be looking at the back of the thing heh. The foot does let me turn and tilt the monitor a whole lot more than the Acer though, for sure.
Turning it on, what I noticed straight off is that I see nothing of the (admittedly slight) uneven back-light I see on my '321. Also, I notice that the buttons at the back right-hand of the screen, and the OSD in general is pretty intuitive, which is good because Asus' documentation is shit or non-existent. Anyway, I turned on the monitor overclock immediately, because this is kind of the only reason I have bought this thing. This OC function lets you turn up your refresh rate from 60 to 100Hz in 5Hz increments. I set it to maximum straight away and tested in some games. It worked, so cool beans.
So, 100Hz eh? GSYNC eh?
Yeah. I have an Nvidia 1080 so it's a fair assumption I will be able to make things work with this monitor. I generally managed to set or tune my most-played games to allowable framerates, from say 45 in The Division to whatever it got to in Elite: Dangerous (anything between 45 and 100's). As this '348 has approx 3440x1440 / 3440x2160, or 4953600 / 7430400, or 66% of the pixels, I'm bravely and naively expecting a frame rate improvement of say...30% or so. *blinks* This should put me anything between something I already view as acceptable, and something that I will have to see, meaning GSYNC'd frequencies in excess of 60Hz with hopefully much less ghosting and/or overshoot. Looking forward to that, oh yeah
What were my second thoughts?
Ooh, hard one. I still have to play more. Some thoughts:
rationally I can say that I kinda like the curve to the screen. There are those who argue it's a gimmick, and I think that we've actually proved here on FH that the curvature is not enough to really work, but its there and I don't hate it (yet). The other thought I have is that the wideness is not really useful for anything other than immersion purposes when you're playing a game. I mean, your effective screen real-estate is a fairly small circle around whatever the hell part of the screen you happen to be looking at. Games that orient you to the middle, well that means that effectively the middle part of the screen is where you get all your pertinent information and the two side thirds are eye-candy or less pertinent data. Ofc, if you're not playing a game but using something like a music or drawing program, or even programming perhaps (still have to do that on this screen) it may be that the side thirds of the screen become more effective. My current final thought is that the screen seems every so slightly less sharp than the Acer '321. I theorize that this is because there is 33% less pixels to the height of the screen. I only notice this because I literally switched monitors this morning and I'm still very used to the Acer.
Hope this helps guys!
PS. oh, aye, all my 4K wallpapers are fucked. ffs
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