When I said I can’t wait to try gaming on this, they said, Jon, it’s a 60-Hz monitor, not designed for gaming.
Yeah, but it’s also <5 ms monitor and it only refreshed every 16 ms; so what? The games I play only refresh in 33 ms. I’m not a twitcher, at least when gaming. I don’t need a 2,000-Hz monitor to enjoy gaming. I don’t play competitively, except against the AI in games. So, I connected the Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved WUHD Monitor—U4021QW, to the 3.7 GHz I9-10900 with the RTX3080. And then I started looking for some post-apocalyptic ghouls and super mutants, Albions’ on the Themes, Nazis in a battlefield, and enemies of V.
Interestingly, the FO76 (Fallout 76) doesn’t always understand what monitor is connected to it. I have to frequently remind the game’s .INI file about the 49-inch 5120 × 1440 resolution. But it immediately saw the 40-inch’s 5120 × 2160. Same for all the other games and the 3080—that’s how plug-and-play is supposed to work.
The resolution in lines difference between the 49-inch and the 40-inch is 720 lines or 50% more than the 1440 lines of the 49-inch. That really makes a difference. Not only can you see more, but you can also see better.
Comparison of 49-inch 5120 screen to a 40-inch 5120 screen
The loss of nine-inches of width is 17%, and the gain in lines is 50%. When using a widescreen monitor, the FOV needs to be adjusted. Most games default to 90 degrees. A widescreen monitor should be set to 120-degrees or higher, depending on how close one sits to the monitor.
So, if you’re not a twitcher who has convinced himself that he needs a monitor to refresh faster than he can see, then a 60-Hz big 5K display will give a gaming experience like never before. If you want to see if someone is drawing down you, you’ve got a better chance at 5K than you do at 144 Hz.