Widescreen Gaming Forum

Right a little bit of background - I was a PC gamer 10 ish years ago, over the last 10 years have kept my hand in playing on a laptop (I know I know!) and have just started the route back in. Now at work I have either 3 monitors or 4 monitors depending on the tasks im doing, so this got me thinking - and I found this forum....

My current setup

AMD A8
Built in GPU
8GB Ram
GB F2A55M-HD2 MB - single slot so its 1 x Graphics card for me
Stock (not very good!) PSU
Monitor - currently using a LG TV!

Now I know the above isnt amazing, but it allows me to game, and now start the process of upgrading.

Games I play - ED, LOTRO, Far 4, Skyrim, Battlefield and some COD 1, a a very little bit of Minecraft!

So here we go, my ultimate aim is to get to a 3 monitor setup, but I wont be able to afford to do this all at once!

So I need recomendations for the following:
PSU replacment - this will be completed first and I can afford around UK£ 50-60
G-Card - Not sure if I should go for AMD or NVIDIA so open to suggestions and when I can afford I think I could goto about UK£250
Monitor - Remembering that my ultimate aim is to have 3 Monitors - Im open to suggestions on what my first one should be and then the extra screens to be added at a later date.

My aim is to do the above over 3 months, and then the following 2 months get the additional monitors, so over 5 months in total, and within this at some point also upgrade to 16GB Ram!

So ill leave this over to you guys the experts?

Hi,

PSU is the main part of the computer, if the PSU isn't working flawless all other devices can cause problems. Never try to save money on a PSU.... on the other hand don't waste it for nothing

If we're talking about GPU's for 3x FullHD gaming i can only reccomend the AMD r9-290(x) and the nVidia GTX980
The GTX970 does NOT have 4gb Vram but only 3.5gb +500mb which is only connected with 22gbits .... huge drama all over the internet. Endresult is this: No problems on 1080p, lot's of stuttering in 4k gaming. and 3 Monitors is really close to 4k you really want all the VRAM you can get in Surround!
There are some rumours that in 3-4 months AMD will release their new R9-380 which is a highly optimised shrinked 290x (but i expect it to be around 300-350£)

For the Monitors it's preferably to get 3x the exact same Monitor. i'd even go so far and say, buy them at the same time at the same store just to be sure (or at least hope) they're from the same production batch. But that's probably just me being paranoid ^^


P.S why 16gb RAM? where are you limited with 8gb ?

Perhaps a "bit" paranoid.

I'm running 3 monitors bought across at lest 7-8 years.

Got the first Dell 2405FPW brand new directly from Dell when they first came out for about $1200 as I recall. It has 3 dead pixels that it had the day I opened the box. Not nearly enough for Dell to replace it (ugh). They are really only visible with a full white screen though so it has never been a big deal and I LOVE the monitor otherwise.

Got the 2nd 2405FPW a few years ago used on E-Bay for around $300 and the 3rd one only a month or so back, again from E-bay for $120 when I decided to buy the W2 stand and go wide. They both are great. Have not found a dead pixel yet.

In part, maybe I just got lucky and I think in part they are a pretty decent quality monitor. They work together very nicely.

NOTE: The "reset to factory default", base color settings on the three don't match up (very noticeably different). I had to go in the screen menus and manually set the brightness, contrast and RGB values the same on each one and they all look identical by doing it that way. No idea why they have different 'default" color/brightness/contrast values set in their firmware.

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On the other hand, I have 5 identical dell 20" monitors that I set 4 up in a quad stand at work. 1 of the quad just would NOT match colors/brightness with the other three no matter what I tried but luckily I had the 5th one available to swap that odd one out with and resolved the issue.

So it can go either way.