Do Ultra wide monitors affect gaming performance?

KinoPC

Commendable
Sep 21, 2016
4
0
1,510
Hi i've been researching about ultra wide monitors for quite some time now, I can't find anything about performance impacts. My PC is fairly good but top High-end
I5 4460
GTX 960 2GB
16gb ram
I don't mind like a 1-3 fps loss for example. Do ULTRA WIDE affect performance?
 

bignastyid

Titan
Moderator
Like with any display the larger the resolution the more resources it takes to run. 2560x1080 is going to use more resources than 1920x1080, and 3440x1440 is going to use more that 2560x1440. Going from 1920x1080 to 2560x1080 you are going to lose more than 1-3 fps. The performance will be closer to 2560x1440 that 1920x1080.
 
^ actually the performance on the 2560x1080 is much closer to 1080p than 1440p. Simple pixel count can tell you that.
the performance impact will be ~25% compared to 1080p, and ~40% better than 1440p.
Anyway,
the GTX 960 (the GPU is the component that affected by changing resolution) is not that powerful card and you will probably upgrade it soon. monitors are for many years. so you can get an UW monitor and if performance is too bad, you can lower a bit some graphical settings (like shadows quality) and the performance will be back.
The problem with UW monitors is not the performance impact, but the games compatibility. Not all games support 21:9 out of the box, some do not support at all and some do support in a very annoying way(overwatch is the most annoying).
So before getting UW monitor, check that your favorite games actually support this resolution.
For tasks other than gaming, the performance impact is next to none, but the experience is so much better :)
 
It's the resolution that matters, not the size of the display. 1920x1080 will have exactly the same performance impact whether the monitor's 23" or 27".

It's worth bearing in mind that some games don't support 21:9 displays and require third-party tools or .ini hacks. Bioshock Remastered comes to mind, but 2K are planning to patch it.