Saturday, May 14, 2022

ASUS ROG Strix Ultra-wide Monitor (XG349C) Review

I purchased this monitor on Amazon for $699. Then the price of monitor went down by $10 while the package was enroute. I decided to contact the seller and asked them if they could give me a discount, and they responded shortly, and gave me a $10 refund. Very generous of them.

The monitor is a renewed model. I did not notice any issues with the monitor, cosmetic or otherwise. I got all the accessories, like display port, HDMI, USB-C cables etc. The price of the new model is $799 as of this writing (5/13/2022).

Setting up the monitor is very simple. Its just a matter of assembling the base, and mounting the display onto it. Once the monitor was assembled, I connected to the PC via a display port cable. At startup, the monitor has a refresh rate of 144Hz. I went into the monitor menu and overclocked it to 180Hz. The process is quite easy and it takes effect immediately.

Needless to say to run games at 3440x1440 resolution, and at such a high refresh rate, a powerful GPU is needed. I am currently running an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Gaming X Trio. I would not recommend upgrading to this monitor unless there is a capable GPU powering the machine. I think a 1080Ti or an AMD equivalent is probably a minimum for a 1440p ultrawide monitor.

Games look absolutely fantastic on this monitor. Prior to the upgrade, I was playing on ASUS ROG Swift, which was a great monitor for its time. Its a WQHD monitor running at 144Hz, and it was a dream for most gamers. However, we now have IPS panels with the same specifications as TN panels, and upgrading from a 16:9 TN panel to a 21:9 IPS panel is significant.

The first game I tried with the ultrawide is Cyberpunk 2077. I put off playing this game till now because I was waiting for it to be updated. I was fairly confident that CD Project would fix the game over time. With the release of Update 1.52, it felt like it was the right time to play this game, but I didn't just want to play this game, I wanted to play it with all the bells and whistles, at a high resolution, on ultra settings with RTX enabled at a good framerate. With the purchase of this monitor, my machine was complete.

As shown in the benchmark video below, the results are fantastic. The game runs at an average framerate of ~60FPS.

Without RTX, I get around 100FPS. For me the sacrifice in framerate for graphics fidelity is worth it.

Getting older games to work right on ultrawide resolutions is always a challenge. Assassin's Creed Rogue had a lot of issues out of the box. I found a patch that enabled higher resolutions, but the game just didn't look and feel right. So I switched back to playing at 1920x1080 in borderless windowed mode.

I was very surprised to discover that Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, a game released in 2003 worked fine with a widescreen patch. Of course, this is less to do with the monitor itself, and more to do with software support for older games.

I was willing to put up with playing older games in either a windowed mode or on the second display, if I could play the latest games at ultrawide resolution with all settings at ultra, and RTX enabled. I definitely feel gaming at ultrawide resolution is very immersive, much more so than a regular widescreen resolution. This was the reason why I decided against getting a 4k monitor, because 21:9 aspect ratio just feels right.

For someone looking to upgrade to an ultrawide, I would thoroughly recommend this monitor. It is a bit expensive, but assuming its within the budget, there is a lot of fun to be had here.

EDIT - I added another monitor to my setup. They were giving away old monitors at work, so I took one home.

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