Review Alienware AW3418DW

[007ELmO]

I just picked up an Alienware AW3418DW monitor from Micro Center today.

1. I don't know how I can live without 120hz after this. I have it paired with a GTX 1080 (Founder's Edition).
2. I use a Dell U3415W (60hz HDMI) next to it, and it's making me throw up - lol.

It took me about 30 minutes to calibrate the display, but I think I have it fairly dialed in now.

The only major negatives I have encountered/thought of from the few hours of use today:

1. Sad that there is only 1 DP port and 1 HDMI port on the monitor, and that anything over 60hz (including the default of 100hz) is only available over DP
2. I have a laptop I use for work that's connected to it over HDMI, and my gaming machine is connected to it via DP.
3. I wished I could have used the 100-120hz for my work laptop too, the smooth mouse/window movement is addicting, lol.

I also read that when you switch inputs on the OSB (e.g. from DP to HDMI), it will "forget" the OC settings and you'll have to set the 120hz refresh rate again. I didn't test that out yet, since I've been busy playing a few older games at high frame rates.

It has not improved my KD ratio in CounterStrike: Source, but the game does feel butter smooth now. Same with Quake Live.

Pretty happy, overall. Based on this experience, will probably purchase the 25" 240hz GSync monitors for 4 player LAN play sometime in the future.

 

[DontMessWithJohan]

Do you have any experience playing shooters on the CRTs of old, and how would you compare the response to the 120hz? Those who know what I'm talking about will remember that CRTs have much better response and less blur compared to today's displays, which makes shooters infinitely smoother to play and absolutely gives you an edge. Ofc, their picture quality is far lesser.

I'm mostly curious if you'd say the 120hz's (supposed) lack of motion blur comes close to a CRT, especially in games like Quake Live.

 

[007ELmO]

Do you have any experience playing shooters on the CRTs of old, and how would you compare the response to the 120hz? Those who know what I'm talking about will remember that CRTs have much better response and less blur compared to today's displays, which makes shooters infinitely smoother to play and absolutely gives you an edge. Ofc, their picture quality is far lesser.

I'm mostly curious if you'd say the 120hz's (supposed) lack of motion blur comes close to a CRT, especially in games like Quake Live.

Hi,

Yes, I have experience in that. I began with Doom 1 and Quake 2 as my first FPS; started skipping classes and played about 4 hours a day using 3DFX Voodoo 3. I used to play with a keyboard for movement and aim. After playing so much (and transitioning to a mouse), I began to crush everyone, especially on Q2DM1 (The Edge) map. I played thousands of hours of Rocket Arena 2 on CRT. I think I went at least 2-3 years without ever losing a frag limit on Q2DM1, no matter who was on the server. I stopped playing for a few years and picked the game up again, and I immediately kept crushing Q2DM1's frag limit. I don't think I'll ever find a game/experience like that where I felt in total control, an extension of yourself, because of the CRT negligible response time and Carmack's code. Quake Live is not close, I used to play instaCTF rail only (insta gib, one hit kills), since I'm addicted to the rail. To challenge myself in Q2 I'd routinely let my teammates completely die and then win a 1v8 in a minute or so. Those were the days, hah!

There is nothing that will match CRT twitch. Even when optical mice came out I was still using ball mice because I couldn't get used to the optical feel, it didn't feel like I had total control like with a ball mouse. I found I was actually slightly lifting the mouse up off the ground during some twitch movements, that a ball mouse would catch - but the optical mouse would stop tracking!

Quake Live was the first game I played at 120hz. If you get these monitors (GSYNC) make sure you - turn GSYNC on in Nvidia Settings , turn Vsync off in all games, and turn the FPS cap in each game to 3 frames lower than the hz, so 117 in Quake Live.

It was instantly much smoother at 117fps than the previous VSYNC'd 60.

I played CounterStrike: Source, next. It was very smooth, but it did absolutely nothing to improve my score. I'm pretty bad at games where camping is rewarded coupled with slow movements, quake 2 was fast movements, you could still camp but still had a high chance of being owned in the blink of an eye.

I believe the monitor is a 4ms. I see no motion blur in games. I installed Mass Effect 2 back on it (since I never defeated it). I re-installed Star wars the old republic and I'll try that this weekend, those games should be easy to push 120FPS with a GTX 1080.

I think if we're searching for the CRT experience, we need to try the Alienware 25" 16x10 monitor, 240hz with 1ms response time. I have a feeling that will bring back the true CRT feeling. The response time needs to be 0ms. GSYNC version of that monitor is $500, I think FreeSync is $100 less. I have a "4 player LAN" wired up to its own breaker in the basement that maybe I'll do 4 alienware 25" GSYNC monitors, so nobody has an excuse about response time, lol.

That's why old school consoles (NES/SNES) were very playable on CRT TVs, there was zero lag. You could make as many twitch based games as you wanted knowing everyone had basically no display lag; I'd say anything with 30ms or higher lag makes games like Zelda 1 difficult on a modern day set. I imagine there is a lot more lag detect code even in single player games nowadays because of the variety of TV sets introducing display lag to the response time.

 

[007ELmO]

I bought a couple Dell UltraSharp 2518Ds from MicroCenter (pretty cheap) today. I read some were having problems with these monitors, we'll see. I have the laptop powering them into a PLP Tie Fighter configuration. I think I will like this for my work. I moved my gaming machine and Alienware monitor elsewhere, a TBD location for pure gaming.

These Dells are nice because they can portrait all the way down to the desk! 1440x2560.