The benefit of an ultrawide monitor is the wider of field view which works great for various game genres. Budget gaming GPU’s such as the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and mainstream GPU’s such as the Radeon RX 480 can now provide an enjoyable gaming experience at 2560 x 1080 resolution and it makes playing games on an ultrawide monitor much more accessible now compared to 5 years ago. However, there is not much information on the effect of CPU performance on playing games at 2560 x 1080 resolution. It is possible to extrapolate data from 1080p benchmarks and 1440p benchmarks to get an estimate of the performance but measuring is better than calculating.

How We Tested

We tested games with built-in benchmark tools to measure performance. To make the test results relevant for gamers using mainstream GPU’s, the games we tested are F1 2017, HITMAN, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III.

Title Release Date Game Engine F1 2017 Aug. 25, 2017 EGO Dawn of War III Apr. 27, 2017 Essence HITMAN Mar. 12, 2016 Glacier

Here is the test system we used and everything is running at stock speed.

Processor – Intel Core i7 7700 3.6 GHz (Turbo disabled)

Graphics Card – ASUS ROG Strix RX 480 8GB

Motherboard – Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 (rev 1.1)

Memory – G. Skill Trident Z 8GBx2 DDR4 3200 @ 2,133 MHz

OS Drive – OCZ Trion 150 240GB

Secondary Drive – Apacer AS510S 256GB

Monitor – LG 29UM58 (2560 x 1080, 60 Hz, IPS)

As usual, the test results are the average of 3 benchmark runs. There are 4 benchmark runs but the 1st one is used to heat up the GPU and is not included in the averaging.

Test Results

Those who are still using quad-core Intel Core i5 CPU’s need a CPU upgrade if they want to play HITMAN at 2560 x 1080 resolution. There is a noticeable and frequent stuttering when disabling the Hyper Threading of Core i7 7700. It gets worse with a dual-core CPU configuration.

There is also a noticeable stuttering in Dawn of War III.

F1 2017 is the only game that ran fine with a dual-core CPU configuration. No stuttering was observed.

As bonus info, the in-game screenshots above show the games’ CPU usage and RAM usage when running at 1080p (1920 x 1080 resolution).

Closing Thoughts

The results of this testing further reinforces our earlier findings on the benefit of Hyper Threading on quad-core CPU’s. The era of gaming using a quad-core CPU is nearing its end. Anyone who is now planning to build a PC for playing games at 2560 x 1080 resolution should opt for at least an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or an Intel Core i7 8700 if budget allows. It’s better to spend a little more now and have performance headroom rather than incur more expenses in the future because you have to switch to a new platform. If you liked our article and want more, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Related readings:

Newbie Friendly Guide to Using Linux for Gaming

Milestones of Linux as a Gaming Platform

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