[Hyrel]

Hi there!
I was wondering if Alienware’s QD-OLED was good enough for more serious competitive FPS due to the instant response times and G-sync Ultimate certification, or is the input lag just too high to make the cut? Assuming 175Hz is enough that is (I doubt my GPU would be able to push much higher anyway).

[PCM2]

Hi Hyrel,

From the responsiveness section of the AW3423DW review:

“we calculated 5.17ms (under 1 frame at 175Hz) of input lag… It indicates a fairly low signal delay, though a bit higher than you’d typically see on models with G-SYNC modules. Most users should be fine with this and the monitor will feel highly responsive, though some sensitive users may prefer an even lower signal delay. ”

There’s not really much more that can be added to that. It’s very subjective and some would find it absolutely fine, including for competitive gaming. Whilst others whom are particularly sensitive to input lag may find it slightly too high. It isn’t really a high level of input lag or indeed signal delay (main element of input lag you feel), as the wording above suggests. And the ‘visually flawless’ 175Hz sample and hold experience certainly has its competitive advantages as well. Personally I feel I perform well on this monitor when gaming and find the ‘connected feel’ decent and visual representation very nice, even though I am sensitive enough to ‘feel’ the fact the input lag isn’t super low and I’ve used monitors which are better in that respect.

[Hyrel]

That’s great to hear then, plus not having to worry of which overdrive settings I use at different fps-brackets is also gonna be really nice.

Just one more thing, since mine should arrive shortly after 3 months of always being out of stock here in Germany: is there any setting in particular I should change from factory once it arrives? Is it true that it doesn’t support firmware updates?
Thanks for the reply and awesome reviews!

[PCM2]

This is certainly one I’d recommend having a play with as there are a few settings that could work nicely depending on your preferences. This is covered alongside the ‘Test Settings’ in the calibration section of the review. For these I preferred:

– The ‘Creator’ preset, which unlocked the ‘Gamma’ setting. I preferred this set to ‘2.4’ (vs. ‘2.2’ which some of the presets will be locked to) because the gamma was too low for dark shades with ‘2.2’ and that invited unintended detail. For competitive gaming you might actually find this extra dark detail useful, so ‘2.2’ could be your preference there.

– ‘DCI-P3’ for ‘Color Space’ as I like to discuss and test capabilities primarily using the full native gamut of the display and assess ‘sRGB’ separately. You should try both colour space settings and see which you personally prefer, however.

– If using ‘Custom Color’, ‘Game 1’, ‘Game 2’ or ‘Game 3’ you can adjust the colour channels if you need to. For example, if your unit has an obvious tint you wish to correct or just isn’t balanced like you want with respect to the white point and green channel balance.

– Brightness is set according to taste. The monitor doesn’t go super bright under SDR so some people would find ‘100’ fine, but I was happy with ’75’ as this provided a similar level to what I set other monitors to when reviewing. As noted in the review “due to the excellent contrast and overall ‘punch’ provided by the screen… you may feel comfortable using a relatively low brightness setting”

So basically, it’s just the case of fine-tuning according to your own preferences. You may feel it is right where you want it straight from the box – as you say, you don’t have overdrive settings to worry about. And I appreciate the donation – hope you enjoy your 34″ QD OLED experience after all that waiting. 🙂

[PCM2]

Dell has released new firmware for the Alienware AW3423DW, which supposedly decreases input lag. Apparently there are 2 ‘hardware versions’ of the AW3423DW and older models (like mine) include ‘MOB1x’ from the factory and can be upgraded to ‘MOB106’. Newer models include ‘MOB2x’ from the factory and can be upgraded to ‘MOB205’.

Edit: Confirmed that it does significantly decrease input lag (2.18ms measured).

[djkrisdee]

Rtings updated measurements:
AW3423DWF/DW/DW’MOB106′
Max Hz 3.5ms 7.9ms 4.3ms
120Hz 6.0ms 10.9ms 6.5ms
60Hz 14.6ms 18.4ms 15.5ms

[PCM2]

Just in case people are looking at that thinking the RTINGS measurements are ‘high’, note their method always records relatively high input lag compared to some others (such as the one we and TFT Central use). It’s good having the perspective of the ‘DWF‘ there at its maximum refresh rate as that is understood to have essentially no signal delay and of course pixel responses are exceptionally fast. So being within 0.8ms of that is still negligible input lag and a large improvement compared to original ‘DW‘ firmware’. 🙂

I’d also add that I could ‘feel’ the difference as soon as the new firmware was applied (before any input lag measurements were taken). I’d just come from a 240Hz monitor with low input lag so was quite sensitive to this aspect. The difference I felt sort of surprised me, it was actually more of a difference than I expected to feel. I didn’t find this has necessarily made a difference to how well I perform on the games (and I’d have nothing other than anecdotes to support that), but the difference was noticeable even on the desktop and ‘nice to have’ either way.

[Author]

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