Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm in the process of building a new PC, and am considering triple monitors vs ultra-wide, or both... But one aspect I'm not sure about is whether you get any peripheral vision through multi-monitor or ultra-wide/curved displays. With FOV, the wider you go, the more "fisheye" there tends to be, which does this actually bring about peripheral information? Do you get peripheral vision though laid out on a flat screen? On a flat screen, this is mildly functional when you look at something like Microsoft's Flight Simulator. I recall years ago that if you widened out the FOV, you'd get the peripheral fisheye effect and could hover a helicopter better since you really need that sense of fore/aft balance, not just left/right. So I'm wondering if that is inherently part of triple-monitor setups. Do you actually see peripheral information on the side displays in a meaningful/functional way? Do you set the angle of the visual information to match the physical angle of the displays? Or do you simply get a wider FOV and instead of stretching it on a flat surface you're stretching it across a flat surface with two hinges on it? And then does it come down to the game/sim and how it implements the wider FOV (how much peripheral/fisheye and such)? Or is that something you can dictate with nVidia Surround? I guess another way to put it is: do you actually see what you'd see on those side displays what you'd see if you had windows at that angle? Or do you simply take a "forward-only" view port and stretch it/angle it onto those side screens?

And how would this translate to the curved displays we're starting to see? Does that look like a good option for this result? Or is it simply taking a flat screen and bending it so that your vision is more perpendicular to the screen surface more than it is the curve bringing about a glimpse into that lateral dimension?

And if I'm after that peripheral vision, am I better off going with 3x1440p 16:9 and having the hinges at the bezels? Or better off with curved 21:9 (and potentially, eventually 3 x 21:9 curved)?

And lastly, is it realistic to drive 3x1440p with a solid CPU plus 2-way SLI GTX980 Ti? Would overclocking be necessary to achieve good framerates or is it enough to run reference GPU and simply have that 6GB VRAM available? I know it will depend on the specific title, but I'm thinking (with high or better settings) at least 30fps in a heavy sim environment like Prepar3d or DCS, and >60fps in a typical AAA game. Presently with my GTX980 I'm getting great framerates at 1x16:9 1440p. So how would SLI 980 Ti do for triple monitor vs 21:9 vs even 3x21:9?

I'm leaning toward trying the 21:9 curved ASUS IPS when it is available early 2016, and then when funds allow, maybe going up to 3 of those in total, possibly after a GPU upgrade (Pascal). Am I hoping for too much out of this strategy in terms of performance and/or results?

Check out the game report screenshots to get an idea of how FOV works with wider aspect ratios--for games with Hor+ behaviour the centre display on a triple-wide setup often looks just like a single display apart from some HUD position changes. The skewed perspective of the side displays is obvious when looking directly at them, but focus is primarily on the centre display (this is also why the ideal is to have the multi-monitor HUD restricted to the central display). 21:9 is much narrower so its edges have comparatively less distortion.

Game output is a flat image. There is no capacity for correcting the output for curved/angled displays. Display curving is subtle (e.g. see skipclarke's LG 34UC97 Curved 34" 3440x1440 Ultra-Wide Display review and video follow-up). The angle change between displays in a multi-monitor setup is noticeable when looking directly at it but you're not going to be doing that during normal gameplay.

How much the bezels bother you will come down to personal preference (of course narrower is better). 21:9 has the advantage of a much wider view before any disruption. Mixing displays (central 21:9 with 16:9 sides) is another option here but note that this is not supported by Nvidia Surround (AMD Eyefinity supports it). Gaming with multiple 21:9 displays is possible (e.g. LinusTechTips experiment), but as Linus notes you will deal with even worse HUD placement in games with no HUD correction and some visual errors towards the sides in some games due to the extreme FOV involved.

As for performance and hardware advice I'll leave that to someone with more experience in that area.

I have 3x2560x1440. I was running GTX 970's in SLI and it worked fine but just the other day I went for a single 980TI Hybrid. In most games the 970's are maybe 5-10% faster but the single card is WAY smoother. I have had sli or crossfire since 2008. From now on I am going single high end card for the smoothness. If I get 40 fps in a game, that is still a better gaming experience than 60 fps with SLI. I have 60hz monitors btw with no GSYNC.

It took me a while to make that decision and I did a lot of testing before I went single card. I got sick of the hassle of SLI. When it works right it is great but there are always little things that do not work. I am very good at trouble shooting sli and crossfire problems as I have been using them since my 7950gx2. I played games last night for four hours and it was a way better experience with the single card. I am also on a fresh install of win 10 pro and just like a single card better for it.

To answer your question: 980ti's will handle 7680x1440 nicely. As far as bezels go I have newer monitors with very thin bezels. After playing for 20 hrs. you do not notice them anymore.