I’m seriously considering an MSI MAG monitor. Do I need to adjust my workflow? I do lots of desktop work on my computer and I really don’t want to hide UI elements. I also do some gaming of course. I’d say it’s 70% desktop work and 30% gaming (though it varies). Do any Lemmings have any experience in this matter? Thank you!
I recently picked up a 49" MSI OLED monitor and it has a built program to prevent burn in. I’ve only had it for a week, but it’s so much better than 3 monitors imo. I used it mainly for work, and a little gaming. No issues with either.
I used to have a three monitor setup … One curved ultrawide 37" (I think) and two 24" (one on either side of the big one). The system was purely a personal setup - no professional use, though I did sometimes do maintenance on my servers from it. My setup was whatever media I was watching on the leftmost monitor, whatever game I was playing on the center, and any chat related windows (or other windows that might require supervision) on the right. I think. It’s been years since I had that setup - I might have reversed what the outer two did.
When I moved to my current home (3-4 years ago) I only bothered setting up the middle monitor, as I had no idea where the stands for the outer two were and didn’t want to bother mounting them. (Still haven’t.)
I don’t game on my PC much anymore. For what little desktop stuff I do it’s satisfactory. However, you may have gleaned from the above that I tend not to do one thing at a time. As such, now that I only have one monitor, I primarily play games in windowed mode unless I’m playing with a friend online. The windowed game goes on approximately the right half of the monitor, whatever I’m watching goes top left, chat windows mostly go bottom left (with some exceptions).
The only time I miss a multi monitor setup is when playing some games - mostly early access - that have their own ideas about the window mode. I’ve encountered a few that will respect my settings regarding resolution and mode, but insist on being dead center of the screen; some that didn’t even have a mode other than full screen; and some which would go windowed but only use the full resolution of the monitor, thus rendering the setting pointless for my use case.
Anyway, that’s pretty niche, I guess. If you don’t have a similar need one huge monitor is probably fine.
Is it really worth it in your opinion?
I have only lived with this 49" monitor for about 3 weeks now. It’s oled, better than my previous 32" Samsung, but not a huge improvement - mainly better blacks. My work flow was 3 monitors with 3 different applications: file/folder/misc - browser | IDE - Inspector. With one monitor I pulled inspector into the browser and split the screen with my IDE. It’s much nicer, workflow wise.
Also versus a multi-monitor setup, I think it’s mostly superior, although I do prefer having vertical side monitors. It’s less power and less draw on my card. My GPU is basically getting the same FPS ( maybe 10 FPS less) for running in 5120 by 1440p. I haven’t tried anything demanding yet, Hell Let Loose ran around 60+ FPS. - currently playing Divinity 2 @ Ultra with an old 5700 and getting between 60-70 FPS.
But a nice 32"+ single monitor also works very well, if you don’t need a large space to work in. IMO if you need that 3 monitor setup, it’s worth it.