The Great Monitor Upgrade

So this is going to have a completely unnecessary analysis of monitors.  Beware.

I am going to be upgrading my PC monitor and graphics card soon, I have been debating for quite a while which setup I am going to use:  a 21:9 29" monitor or 3 20" standard widescreen monitors.

There are quite a few factors, such as Resolution, screen area, screen height, and price.

So, first, the competitors: three HP 20xis vs an AOC Q2963PM. 

(I can't get blogger to put these side by side)

The 20xi is currently priced at $99.99 while the Q2963PM is $379.99, making the triple HPs a better deal by over $80, but there are some issues with this.  Namely, resolution.

Each 20xi has a resolution of 1600x900, making three of them a total of 4800x900, or about 4.3 Megapixels at an aspect ratio of 16:3.  The Q2963PM has a resolution of 2560x1080, or 2.75 Megapixels, at an aspect ratio of 21:9, or 7:3. Lower resolutions equal lower necessary graphics power.  Lower graphics power means cheaper card when I buy it for upgrades.  The more expensive required graphics card nullifies the cheaper monitors pretty much off the bat.  I can get a GTX 760 for around $235, which would work great for the 21:9 screen, but I would probably need a more powerful GTX 770 for the triple monitor setup. If I were to bump up to bigger screens, like a 23xi, with a resolution of 1920x1080, I simply would not have enough horsepower to run games at 5760x1080, which is nearly 6 Megapixels.  

Now, screen area.  A nice website I have found for comparing screen area is Display Wars.  They provide some very nice comparisons of screens along with all of the numbers, so you don't have to calculate them yourself.  Look here for the comparison of the two screen sizes.  We can see that the 21:9 screen has an area of 304.5 sq. in. while the 20xi has an area of 170.9 sq. in.  This makes a single 21:9 screen have the same area as about 1.75 20xis.  Not bad, but cost wise, not good either.  The 21:9 is not looking like a good bang for my buck.

Now, a concern brought up to me out on the HardOCP forums was vertical height.  And I thought to myself, yeah, that makes sense.  The smaller screens are going to have less vertical height and it won't be as good for gaming.  But in looking closer at the displaywars numbers, I notice the stats.  20xi height: 9.81 inches.  Q2963PM height: 11.42 inches.  A difference of only 1.61 inches.  Now it is looking like a lot less that I originally envisioned.  1.61 inches, about 4 centimeters.  Can it make that much of a difference?

Finally, there is the inherent advantage of having a single large screen over several smaller ones.  Videos on youtube can be 1080P.  Games that can only run on 1 screen look better.  Better for things such as CAD work or even document writing sometimes.

My final consideration is mounting my original monitor above the 3 20xis, but I don't know if this is possible.

I will be buying in a month or two, so I have some time to decide...