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Massdrop Vast 35-Inch Curved Gaming Monitor

Sep 25, 2017

I've been following this monitor closely and have yet to pull the trigger as it's hard for me to get a sense of whether it's a good upgrade for me. Hopefully someone who knows more about monitors could assist.
I am a simple man - I play one game (WoW), which occupies ~90-95% of my gaming time. About six months ago, I upgraded to an RX 480 (4GB) and am currently playing on an ancient 1920x1080 Asus (2010 vintage) monitor with now two full lines of green pixels going vertically across the monitor. My thought at the time I upgraded the GPU was that I could pick up a 2560x1440 Freesync monitor later in 2017 and get playable framerates. This drop has potentially thrown a wrench into my plans.
The ultrawide has an obviously huge appeal for a game like WoW, but I'm not sure that my RX 480 has the horsepower to drive a screen at 3440x1440 within a playable framerate band. My current setup (with i5-4670k Haswell CPU) gets me to a stable ~70-80 FPS on High/Very High Settings depending on what I am up to. Presumably, I'd need to get the minimum framerate to the lower bound of the Freesync range (49) to make this workable.
The question I guess is whether I would have to immediately upgrade to a new GPU in order to reach playable framerates? The 480 4GB benchmarks put it in the 50-60FPS range for 1440p, but I'm not sure how this translates to ultrawide 1440 resolution and obviously WoW is a whole other beast compared to modern games. I have had the same computer since 2010 and have maintained a pretty steady ~2.5-3 year staggered upgrade cycle for GPU/CPU so ideally I'd be able to keep the 480 until ~2020 with a CPU upgrade next year. Alternatively, I suppose I could consider a fresh rebuild in early 2018 with one of the Vega boards given the price this monitor is sitting at.
Any thoughts are appreciated.

Sep 25, 2017

Nostromo26

Sep 25, 2017

jloopy212Honestly, I think you'd be fine for at least a year or two with the 480 at 3440x1440p. Paul's Hardware did a video awhile back testing the rx 480 (I think it was the 8gb, but you'll find that very few games utilize more than 4gb of vram). He was getting above 60fps in games like GTA V, which utilize the cpu and gpu pretty well, on high settings, and almost 100fps dropping settings down to normal. WoW will be different but I can't imagine by much. You might have to toy around with settings to get above 60fps, but I think hitting the freesync range would be pretty doable at high or maybe medium settings. I can't say for sure, since I haven't owned a 480 or played at the 3440x1440p resolution, but for WoW-exclusive play I think the 480 will do fine. As newer games release you'll likely need a gpu upgrade, but you should at least be able to wait for volta and maybe even for Navi.

Sep 25, 2017

aohige

Sep 26, 2017

jloopy212 RX480 should be plenty capable of running WoW at 1440p Ultrawide. Keep in mind, due to the ancient architecture of WoW, it does NOT scale well with current generation GPUs. Meaning, you actually won't see any difference between entry level (RX480, GTX1060, etc) and high ends. I have compared a GTX 970 and 1070 and did not make a lick of difference. You will still suffer frame losses with high view distance in places like Suramar, and there does not seem to be a solution to it. Can't brute force it with GPU, the problem is entirely on WoW's outdated engine.

Sep 26, 2017

jloopy212

221

Sep 26, 2017

Nostromo26That's very helpful; I'll have to dig up that review. As long as I can get to playable framerates (as you said, in the 50-60 FPS range), I'll be happy - it sounds like it is doable with some possible compromises. The whole Medium/High/Ultra doesn't really fuss me too much; I'm mostly looking to get more screen real estate with a similar experience overall. If I have to crank down to Medium for raiding/dungeons that is fine really. It'd be great if I can hold off on an upgrade until Navi - that'd be the dream really. I've been thinking about a full rebuild of my setup sometime in the late 2018-early 2019 time period anyway, which would line up nicely with your suggestions.

Sep 26, 2017

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jloopy212

221

Sep 26, 2017

aohigeI did not actually know that about WoW, but I've definitely "felt" some weird bottlenecks that were suspicious. When I first bought the RX 480, I cranked up the settings to Ultra (for fun) on 1920x1080, which both the CPU and GPU should have been capable of pushing to 50-60 FPS at least. Just running around the world, I struggled to stay in a playable range (30-40 FPS), which freaked me out, but then I tweaked like 2-3 settings down to "High" (view distance and shadows/water particularly) and suddenly it pops up to a stable 50+. I was half considering picking up a Vega once prices rationalize, but it sounds like that wouldn't necessarily help me here.
Is this the kind of thing that would ever be "fixed" via some rework of the engine or will this be an issue until like WoW 2 comes out or whatever? Like I said, I pretty much just play this game (plus a few MOBAs casually), but I recognize that a flagship card would give me a lot more proverbial bang for my buck. If I'm not improving my performance much though I can just keep upgrading to whatever entry-level card in the $200-$250 range every 2-3 years and save myself some money.

Sep 26, 2017

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aohige

Sep 26, 2017

jloopy212This is an issue somewhat unique to WoW, as it is one of the rare cases of a very popular franchise that's been going on for over a decade continuously performing series of bandage-upgrade to the graphics engine. In fact, I can't think of any other case like this. (Long lasting games like EQ, Eve, and Runescape doesn't attempt to do a graphic overhaul in the extent of WoW) Nothing short of an entire engine overhaul will likely fix this issue, and that would be far too much work for a game with content size of Warcraft. We'd have to wait for something like WoW2 for a chance of improvement.

Sep 26, 2017

Elevas

Sep 26, 2017

jloopy212As someone who played for WoW as well in the past for at least 6 years(not playing currently), I can say that throughout the years even the best high end gaming machines would randomly stutter in WoW in heavy raids... or work perfectly. But weirdly even a mid-low tier PC handled WoW fine. Just like @aohige said.
My bet is, if everything is working fine now where you already game in WoW(all raids/spots you hang), I don't think the upgraded resolution will change much.

Sep 26, 2017

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