ACER Predator X34 3440×1440 Curved G-Sync Gaming Display Review

Predator X34: Gaming and Power Consumption

Gaming on the Predator X34 display with NVIDIA G-Sync enabled allowed for an enjoyable gaming experience as long as the game titles support the 21:9 format. We’ve been gaming on the 16:9 aspect ratio for so long it was actually nice to try out something different.

We were able to play game titles like Star Wars Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 without any issues, but there are a handful of game titles that do not officially support UltraWide screen monitors with a 21:9 aspect ratio. One of the more recent titles that doesn’t support wide screen gaming by default is Fall Out 4. If you are comfortable with INI file edits, mods and script extenders you’ll be able to get many games that don’t support 21:9 displays to work for the most part.

The gaming experience was way better than my first time trying out the Alienware curved gaming display on Crysis way back in 2008 at the Consumer Electronics Show. We’ve come a very long way with regards to display technology since then!

If you are looking to move up to an ultra-wide gaming monitor you’ll need to make sure that your system and mainly the video card are ready to handle the additional pixels. We tested with a middle of the road NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 graphics card and found that moving from 1920×1080 to 3440×1440 wasn’t that bad. Our average frame rate dropped from 131.1 FPS down to 66.9 FPS, a decrease of nearly 49%, but we were still averaging more than 60 FPS on average and the low was just 58 FPS. When we performed the same manual benchmark with FRAPS on the 4K Ultra HD monitor we found that we were averaging just 42.6 FPS and at times were dropping down into the 30’s. The performance hit to go from 1920×1080 up to 3440×1440 was more than worth it as it didn’t really impact performance and we really enjoyed having the extra pixels to look at. Making the move up to 4K might not be worth it though unless you have a high-end video card like the Fury X or the GTX 980 Ti as you need the horsepower of those GPUs to have an acceptable 4K Ultra HD gaming experience.

When it comes to power consumption the X34 used under 50 watts of power in our testing and used between 42-45 Watts for the most commonly used power modes. When the monitor was placed into the Eco power saving mode the Acer XR341CK consumed 32.9 Watts. At idle with the display off the monitor was observed pulling 12.7 Watts of power from the wall.