My 1080 GTX finally arrived, and after figuring out how to go from two 6-pin power cables to two 8-pin power cables (turns out my 6-pins had tucked-away 2-pin additions, so it was actually very simple once I found those additions), the new card was up and running along with the Dell U3415w. On to the good and some of the bad.

The good is the monitor is overall fantastic. The picture quality is great, the setup was super-easy, and perhaps most surprisingly, the curve on the screen actually has an impact in terms of immersion and just enjoying what you are looking at. At 3440×1440, the desktop is HUGE compared to the view at 1900×1200, where the different application icons on the left side feel like they are a mile away from my Steam friends list all the way to the right.

Speaking of resolution size, for games that support it, its amazing. I’ve already talked about the benefits in Mordheim, but the same can be said for TW: Warhammer; the extra screen size not only makes the battles looks better and help you see the details, but the view of the campaign map is also greatly enhanced. Simply put, the game is more fun to play at that resolution, which is the ultimate payoff for upgrading; having more fun.

EVE in particular is awesome here, both if I run the game full screen for the ridiculous immersion factor, and the more normal scenario where I have EVE in a large window, and then have things like Jabber, the forums, and other tools on the side. At 1900×1200 that meant windows would stack behind each other, but at 3440×1440 I can fully see multiple windows while still having full view of EVE. I can also run multiple clients without major or any (depending on the number of clients and the window size of each) overlap, which almost feels like cheating.

I should also mention League of Legends, as not only does the game support such a resolution, it also results in your view being more zoomed out, so you see more of what is around your champion. From a competitive perspective, that’s actually a decent advantage. It won’t get me into diamond, but it doesn’t hurt.

For games that don’t support that high of a resolution, things are hit-or-miss. Fallout 4 doesn’t, but the Nvidia control panel will allow you to configure the game so it does (you can also edit the config files in the game to get the same result), and the only major drawback is that the GUI in the game is a little too wide at times (oddly the pipboy interface is fine, but looting menus are too wide). In terms of performance, at ultra the game stays locked at 60fps, so at least in that regard all is good.

Fallout Shelter on the other hand will have more problems if I go full-screen, where certain items will wrap around and the game basically isn’t playable. That said putting the game in a window the size of 1900×1200 (or bigger) isn’t an issue, so it’s not a total disaster by any means, and we are talking about a game originally released for mobile, so I don’t really need it full-screen anyway.

ARK does support 3440×1440 in terms of having that resolution as an option, but it looks like it just stretches the game out a bit too much rather than actually widening the field of view, which is very disappointing. It runs fine, but knowing the game doesn’t look ‘correct’ makes it a little harder to get up for playing it.

However just having to wonder now going forward if game X is going to support my native resolution is a minor pain itself, but that I guess is the cost of being on the upper-end of technology. Still worth the upgrade, by far, but to be fair its not without some potential hassle.