I was curious last week, given I got an amazing 34" Ultrawide display a little over a year ago that I just love, if they makde an OLED Ultrawide. They do, and it is a pretty amazing sounding display. The AW3423DW came out first and has G-Sync and goes for $1299. I got an employee discount that brings it down to $1187 after tax and with free shipping from Dell.
However.
Doing some more research, I can get the newer version from just a few months ago (AW3423DWF) that according some reviews fixes some of the issues found in the first version (including allowing for custom firmware to fix issues) and has some other fixes, for cheaper. $1,025 after taxes. However, it is an AMD FreeSync display, not a G-sync. However again, I’m told it’s “Gsync Compatible”. Now, I have a 3080 and have had a G-sync monior for a few years now, most recently the aforementioned Ultrawide.
A few questions - First, will it really matter one vs the other? Also, will it cause problems if I have two displays, one gsync compatible and one full blown g-sync confirmed? Especially if the “compatible” one will be my primary (gaming) display?
EDIT: I think I have my answer thanks to watching this video from Linus.
TL;DW - no difference of note, just get the cheaper/newer/better version of the display.
As an adopter (not early) of the original panel, I can say it doesn’t suck at all. Awesome display. But yes, I would definitely get the cheaper one, since freesync should be fine instead of G-Sync Ultimate.
I just got the newer one and it’s great, but given you have an Nvidia card I wouldn’t dismiss the older one out of hand. They still haven’t fixed the HDR 1000 EOTF curve on the DWF, whereas it’s fine on the DW. That may not be worth the extra money to you, and the DWF does have some other advantages, but maybe check this out first:
I doubt it? Until my upgrade, I had a Gsync primary and a plain old office monitor as a secondary without any issues.
Check out that video I linked - it sounds like except some HDR issues the DWF is the better version. I’m not sure slightly better HDR is worth giving up not just a better price point but better color accuracy and a quieter fan and user firmware fixes - fixes that can address the HDR stuff even - among other improvements with this newer variant.
The only complaint I really hear about these is the non-standard sub-pixel stuff making text a tiny bit blurry, which I don’t think anyone minds for a gaming/movie screen.
Thanks for this video - I saw others of his recently while researching this, and it’s good to know it’s still not “fixed”, though (at least for me) the reality is most PC games don’t really take advantage of HDR and the HDR600 on my current display isn’t perfect either - I still think if I set the DWF to HDR400 it will still look pretty nice.
Honestly I’m just looking forward to playing stuff like Diablo 4, Warhammer 3, and Age of Wonders 4 on an Ultrawide AND OLED display. Should be well worth the money, I think.
I looked into this and I doubt I would notice - but the real key is I’m not using my OLED display for anything like web browsing or work from home - I’m keeping my LG 34" Ultrawide as a secondary display, and will do everything on that (like I am right now while I type this) and the DWF will be only for gaming. Black wallpaper, auto-hide task bar, just in case.
The color accuracy isn’t better, it’s just better calibrated out of the box. You can calibrate to your hearts content. Re noise, I can’t discern the fan on my DW.
Still, I’d save the $200 if the DWF was out when I bought. Since I run Nvidia, I probably have some sort of false psychological comfort with the hardware G-sync chip, but I’ve never compared G-sync to Freesync. They’re largely comparable from what I’ve read.
As far as text, I’m 54 so take my vision related opinions w a grain of salt, but I work on the screen every day and the text appears crisp to me. This ultrawide OLED is my favorite PC purchase since SSD drives were introduced.
I pulled the trigger on this new display this afternoon. I’m pretty freaking excited - I’m going to have my LG Ultrawide still in the mix so I re-organized my desk and have it all set up so I have plenty of room to swap out the current secondary 27" 1440p with the new OLED UltraWide, and I’ll angle the LG UltraWide to point at my side so I can use it (it has an incredible picture on its own) as my new secondary. I’ll post my thoughts next week after it finally arrives.
Thanks to everyone that gave me advice and helped me decide!
Sorry, I was thinking on “input lag” which is better on the DWF than the DW, the theory is the NVidia scaler is the culprit but no one knows for sure.
The newer DWF. The HDR being not as good as the DW didn’t concern me as it still scored almost a full point higher in HDR from the rtings review of my current display, and was better in every other way (plus $200 cheaper).
