Hardware & Technical New monitor day. Excited.

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Don't really have anybody to share my excitement with, I'll just crap post here :)
Will be delivered tomorrow. Nobody cares but I will share my impressions anyway when it arrives.
www.msi.com

MSI Optix MAG321CQR | RGB LED WQHD Curved Gaming Monitor

We are honored to introduce our latest MAG series gaming Monitor - MAG321CQR. It features 144Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time to make the gameplay more smooth, a curved display, WQHD resolution and MSI Mystic Light to give you more game immersion.
www.msi.com www.msi.com
32 inches of 1440p 144HZ goodness. Now, I just need a bigger desk...
I also have a question for people with two monitors - how taxing on your GPU is to run second screen? My old 1080p screen is still fine, just a bit small at 23 inches. I thought I'd retire it for browsing duties while I do important business of gaming on the new screen.
 

Morbad

Morbad
You'll have to let us know how the motion blur and overshoot ghosting are. There are only two 32" 1440p VA panels out there (all monitors of this type are thus far either using Samsung or AUO panels) and rating any of them 1ms MPRT seems overly optimistic. I've been using VA panels on my primary setup for some time now and they've gotten impressively fast, but blur/ghosting is still an issue. Contrast ratio is worth it though.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Well. It showed up.
It is handy to have a 2nd person to assemble it. I didn't. But it's doable. Base legs are thin, but nice and weighty. I'd say steel. The way they are constructed actually leaves tons of room on your desk. It barely takes up more space in terms of depth as my old 23 inch thing. Lovely materials all around.
First thing that I really have to say - it is...big. Like, comically large. Voice of reason in my head is screaming right now "why'd you buy this monstrosity, you plonker". But I don't listen to that loser :)
I've not done anything yet to see if there are ghosting issues, but there's no noticeable blur problems. For panel of this type colours are amazing, that's what's actually surprising. Especially black is often the problem, but it's very deep and rich on this thing.
I have not much to report yet, apart from the fact that my neck will get a good workout from now on. I'm sitting pretty close to it, it's like being in a movie theater on a first row. One more thing - I absolutely can't tell there's anti-glare coating. People were complaining they can see it, but I'm as close to the thing as it's reasonable and I can't tell.
Text sharpness in OS isn't terrible, but if you're used to smaller screens and/or 4k you may notice it's not as crisp. But who buys this to work in Excel, am I right?)

Oh, and view angles - they're great. Not 178 degrees how they claim though :) It never is that simple. Usable view angle range is generally much smaller. It's enough so you don't have to sit right dead centre, leaving you room to get comfy around your desk. But at high view angles you get all the usual colour washing, which is standard. Nobody would look at a curved panel from the side anyway.
This is how dumb my setup looks, until I renovate a bit and get a bigger desk.
UvpPN8y.jpg
 
Last edited:

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Caramel Clown said:
Well. It showed up.
It is handy to have a 2nd person to assemble it. I didn't. But it's doable. Base legs are thin, but nice and weighty. I'd say steel. The way they are constructed actually leaves tons of room on your desk. It barely takes up more space in terms of depth as my old 23 inch thing. Lovely materials all around.
First thing that I really have to say - it is...big. Like, comically large. Voice of reason in my head is screaming right now "why'd you buy this monstrosity, you plonker". But I don't listen to that loser :)
I've not done anything yet to see if there are ghosting issues, but there's no noticeable blur problems. For panel of this type colours are amazing, that's what's actually surprising. Especially black is often the problem, but it's very deep and rich on this thing.
I have not much to report yet, apart from the fact that my neck will get a good workout from now on. I'm sitting pretty close to it, it's like being in a movie theater on a first row. One more thing - I absolutely can't tell there's anti-glare coating. People were complaining they can see it, but I'm as close to the thing as it's reasonable and I can't tell.
Text sharpness in OS isn't terrible, but if you're used to smaller screens and/or 4k you may notice it's not as crisp. But who buys this to work in Excel, am I right?)

Oh, and view angles - they're great. Not 178 degrees how they claim though :) It never is that simple. Usable view angle range is generally much smaller. It's enough so you don't have to sit right dead centre, leaving you room to get comfy around your desk. But at high view angles you get all the usual colour washing, which is standard. Nobody would look at a curved panel from the side anyway.
This is how dumb my setup looks, until I renovate a bit and get a bigger desk.
UvpPN8y.jpg
Click to expand...
Without a doubt, you need a bigger desk. Otherwise you will not appreciate this beautiful monitor.
 
Last edited:

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
There are no blur issues, even though there a function in OSD called something like anti motion blur. It's off and greyed out, I'll try to figure out why it's not available. Don't need it really.
Now, overshoot ghosting. It's an interesting one. There are three settings for response. Normal, Fast, Fastest. I'd imagine 1ms is peak at fastest setting, but there is a very noticeable ghosting at that setting. When anything moves on a screen some parts of it where image changes to become a bit brighter and sharper for a moment. On default normal setting there's zero ghosting that I can see. Crisp and precise. And it feels...just as responsive as my old 3ms panel. It's probably somewhere in that range on normal setting, maybe a bit faster. Hard to tell, we're talking single digit milliseconds here :)
Also freesync seems to be working with my 1080ti with latest drivers, had no issue enabling it. Not sure it works in all games, time will tell.
 
Last edited:

Morbad

Morbad
Caramel Clown said:
there a function in OSD called something like anti motion blur. It's off and greyed out, I'll try to figure out why it's not available.
Click to expand...

That's probably a backlight strobing setting. It's almost always incompatible with Freesync.

www.blurbusters.com

Motion Blur Reduction (ULMB, LightBoost, etc) - Blur Busters

Motion Blur Reduction for displays (ULMB, LightBoost, DyAc, ELMB, etc) are now very common on modern 120Hz+ gaming monitors. For example, many G-SYNC monitors come with a "ULMB" setting that can be turned ON/OFF. These technique utilize strobe backlights as the method of blur reduction. Why Use...
www.blurbusters.com www.blurbusters.com

Caramel Clown said:
For panel of this type colours are amazing, that's what's actually surprising. Especially black is often the problem, but it's very deep and rich on this thing.
Click to expand...

VA panels have the best blacks you'll get out of any LCD type that doesn't have an FALD backlight. No where near as good as LED (OLED, AMOLED, QD-LED) panels, but there are only a handful of monitors using those and they all cost a fortune and/or have longevity issues.

Caramel Clown said:
I've not done anything yet to see if there are ghosting issues, but there's no noticeable blur problems.
Click to expand...

Caramel Clown said:
Now, overshoot ghosting. It's an interesting one. There are three settings for response. Normal, Fast, Fastest. I'd imagine 1ms is peak at fastest setting, but there is a very noticeable ghosting at that setting. When anything moves on a screen some parts of it where image changes to become a bit brighter and sharper for a moment. On default normal setting there's zero ghosting that I can see. Crisp and precise.
Click to expand...

I had to use the highest overdrive settings on my LG 32GK650F-B (one of the fastest 32" VA displays I've seen tested) and Pixio PX329 to eliminate most standard ghosting/response time issue (most visible in ED as stars that dim noticeably in supercruise as you turn and move them across the screen), which in turn induces some noticeable overshoot ghosting, especially in areas that have gray-on-gray colors (like many planets with craters in ED).
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
VA panels have the best blacks you'll get out of any LCD type that doesn't have an FALD backlight. No where near as good as LED (OLED, AMOLED, QD-LED) panels, but there are only a handful of monitors using those and they all cost a fortune and/or have longevity issues.
Click to expand...

I think I'm just a bit behind monitor tech. About 8 years ago when I've got my first high refresh rate monitor it was accepted that you sacrifice colour and black on such panel. Looking now in comparison, black on old panel doesn't even look black. It's like dark grey.
 
  • Like (+1)
Reactions: EUS

Morbad

Morbad
Caramel Clown said:
I think I'm just a bit behind monitor tech. About 8 years ago when I've got my first high refresh rate monitor it was accepted that you sacrifice colour and black on such panel. Looking now in comparison, black on old panel doesn't even look black. It's like dark grey.
Click to expand...

I just got back into higher refresh rate gaming...had more than a decade between the death of my last high-end CRT and the time when I could get a high-refresh rate panel that didn't have trade-offs I wasn't willing to make.

But yeah, the blacks on even a good TN or IPS display won't look black next to a VA panel and the difference coming from a TN panel from eight years ago that sacrificed everything for refresh rate and response time would be even more dramatic.

EUS said:
I've only ever bought IPS panels.
Click to expand...

I don't think I've owned any IPS panels myself, except for laptops and TVs.

Used a bunch of cheap TN panels before switching to VA about four or five years ago.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
Heh, took me a bit to figure out how to move my mouse to a second screen without minimizing game in fullscreen mode. I though borderless windowed would be mandatory.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom