Samsung's massive 49-inch super-wide monitor got an upgrade that will make video games look incredible — if your PC can handle it

Samsung announced a new member to the "super" ultra-wide gaming monitor family with a higher resolution quad-HD model that's sharper than the regular full-HD model that the company originally released back in 2017.

Super ultra-wide monitors have an aspect ratio of 32:9. Put into plain English, that's exactly two normal monitors put together. Measuring 49 inches diagonally, the CRG9 is the equivalent of two 27-inch monitors side-by-side.

The CRG9 has a resolution of 5120 x 1440. It's a welcome upgrade for those who thought the original 2017 model's 3840 x 1080 — two FHD monitors — wasn't sharp enough for their video games, and anything else for that matter.

Samsung Indeed, the CRG9 monitor is designed with PC gamers in mind with its smooth 120Hz refresh rate that allows up to 120 frames-per-second on games. Typical non-gaming monitors have a 60Hz refresh rate, which is also smooth, but PC gamers like to go beyond the standard specs. The CRG9 also comes with AMD's Freesync 2 technology that helps with smoother and more stable gameplay when used with AMD's graphics cards.

HDR10 is also supported on the CRG9 monitor, which makes for better colors, better detail in dark shaded scenes, and better contrast overall between light and dark areas of a scene.

Samsung

There's no pricing or release date to speak of yet. If the original CHG90 monitor from 2017 is anything to go by, the new CRG9 could cost north of $1,000.

Anyone interested in a gaming super ultra-wide monitor now that it's available in QHD resolution should note that they'll need a pretty beefy PC to play games smoothly, especially if they want to set their games' graphics options to higher settings. The CRG9's 5120 x 1440 resolution isn't too far off a 4K monitor's 3840 x 2160 resolution, and you need pretty serious high-end and expensive hardware to play games smoothly at 4K. To make the most of this monitor, your PC will need brawny hardware like Intel's Core i7 range of processors and Nvidia's GTX 1080Ti or RTX 2080 or higher.

Despite support for AMD's game-smoothing Freesync 2 technology, very few — if any — of AMD's graphics cards would be able to make the most of the CRG9 monitor. The only AMD card that could have a chance is the Vega 64, which is best suited for a single QHD monitor. But whether it can handle the equivalent of two QHD monitors at 120 frames-per-second at higher graphics settings is perhaps questionable.