AndrewMayers :
Thank a lot for taking the time to give such an in depth answer. As an owner of a 29" ultrawide, would you recommend it, an then play at high settings, or should i stick to a 24" 16:9 monitor? And lastly, do you notice pixels an a ultrawide 1080p 29" (if you sit from about 20" away from the screen? And do you see the pixels when you start to divide the screen?)
You're welcome!
I got my 29" 1080p ultrawide way back when I had a smaller desk. During that time, it WAS ~20" away from my eyes, using it's own stand. There were definitely NO evidence of pixelation from that vantage point. Add to the fact that it is an IPS panel, it just certainly works for my needs. I got that monitor mainly for multi-tasking work, a bit of gaming, and a bit of watching movies.
For multi-tasking work, such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, and Excel, it definitely excels! I can fit 2 browsers side-by-side, viewing them simultaneously without having to Alt+Tab my way out as compared to 16:9 screens.
For movies, the ultrawide works best when the content is in a cinematic format. Viewing such movies at an aspect ratio of 21:9 would remove the black bars on the top and bottom (movie becomes full screen without distortions). Howevver, when viewing older movies and tv shows (usual content at 4:3 ratio), there would be black bars at the left and right of the screen -- which I initially found a bit distracting, but, in time, have gotten used to.
For gaming, NOT all games support ultrawide aspect ratios but most do. For such games that doesn't (older games especially), I am forced to stretch either live with the black side bars *or* force the 2560 x 1080 resolution in in-game settings (a bit of image stretching is noticeable). But most games I play support the ultrawide resolution and is very astounding. The extra screen real estate definitely helps in viewing the periphery otherwise not seen in traditional widescreen monitors. Racing games and maps in strategy games become wider in view. I loved the atmosphere of playing FPS as if you are gaming movie/cinematic-style with the ultrawide. What I only find distracting is when playing games that involve cut-scenes -- where the scenes play in traditional 16:9 format with black side bars before returning back to 21:9 when the scene ends and you start to game again.
Now, I have a multi-monitor setup (see link in my signature), where I got a new and larger desk (48" depth). The 29" ultrawide is now mounted on a vertical desk clamp-style mount and the screen is now positioned almost 36" away from my view. With this distance, the 29" ultrawide suddenly became "smaller" than usual -- including the default icons and text sizes. I can barely read texts in Excel of Calibri 8pt size in 100% view compared to before. But for gaming and movies, the new monitor distance was just slightly noticeable.
Depending on the games you play with a GTX 970, you can get by on ultra settings with 50+ fps (such as Project Cars, Civilization and other strategy games, NBA2K games, and the like) but for some GPU-hungry games, I would have to tweak the graphics settings and the eye-candy a bit lower to get acceptable framerates (such as Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, Rise of the Tomb Raider, etc.).
I would highly recommend the 29" ultrawide if the pros outweigh the cons based on your specific usage/settings in games you play on the monitor. As for my situation, I am now in the process of getting a larger monitor and GPU (possibly, a 34" 1440p ultrawide + GTX 1080).
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