Six months with Samsung's crazy $1,300 ultra-wide gaming monitor - it's a symbol of peak video gaming entertainment

If you're thinking this monitor's width will let you see more of the playing field and give you an advantage in games, you'd only be half right.

Indeed, you see more of the playing field, but I rarely found that the CRG9 gave me an advantage by seeing more than a player with a regular monitor. In turn, my performance and scores in games were none the higher while using the CRG9.

You do get the occasional moment where the extra width gives you a little advantage, like revealing an enemy in your peripheral you wouldn't have seen on a regular monitor. Again, those moments are surprisingly rare.

What you get with the CRG9 is a celebration of your video games.

The main difference between the CRG9 and a regularly sized monitor is almost entirely based on immersion. In a first-person-shooter like "Battlefield V," for example, the chaos of war is amplified — you see more explosions, more rubble, more debris, more teammates and enemies fighting and falling around you. It's truly a celebration of a game's graphics and visual effects that maximizes the spectacle and emotion of a game's setting.

Some gamers would dislike that, as they'd rather eliminate as many peripheral and "unnecessary" distractions as possible to boost their own performance. For those kinds of players, the CRG9 monitor isn't for them.

Otherwise, for almost every genre of game, the CRG9 offers an enhanced visual experience of your games simply by the virtue of its extra screen real estate, as well as features like HDR for beautiful colors and contrast (in games that support HDR). The CRG9 also comes with AMD's FreeSync 2 technology to help remove unwanted artifacts like screen tearing when parts of the screen lag behind other parts of the screen. I also found that it's compatible with Nvidia's G-Sync technology, which does the same thing as FreeSync, but works with Nvidia graphics cards.

You might be surprised, but I don't think $1,300 is such a crazy price for the CRG9.

There are TVs out there that cost several thousands of dollars. Those TVs are often large and come with premium screen technology like OLED. People who buy them are after the best of the best, and there are lots of people who invest heavily into these kinds of TVs to maximize their living room entertainment, whether it's for watching movies and TV shows or playing video games from a console like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

So who's to say that $1,300 for a supreme video game experience at your desk is too much? It's just an option — albeit, an option for those who can afford it, just like those who buy expensive and large OLED TVs. As in the TV market, there are plenty of cheaper monitor options out there if $1,300 is out of budget.

But consider that to make the most of the CRG9, you need high-end hardware, which can also get expensive.

The CRG9 is designed to turn your games into a visual spectacle, and if you're considering spending $1,300 on a monitor, it wouldn't be crazy to presume that you'd accept nothing less than the highest graphics settings in your games for the best visuals.

So, to make the most of the CRG9's 5120 x 1440 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, you're going to need some powerful and expensive hardware.

To give you an idea, my PC is currently running on some of the most powerful and expensive parts, including:

• An Intel Core i7 9700K (overclocked to 5GHz)
• An Asus ROG Strix RTX 2080Ti graphics card (overclocked to 2070MHz).

With a demanding game like "Battlefield V" on "Ultra" graphics settings, I was getting anywhere between 90 and 110 frames per second.

Less-intensive games like "Fortnite" are more forgiving and won't require such high specs to run at high graphics settings and frames per second.

For the gamer who appreciates the visuals and plays for the immersion of their games, the CRG9 is the obvious choice. But for me to recommend a $1,300 computer monitor outright is madness.

The CRG9 is a symbol of what's possible with video games, and console gamers should be a little jealous.

While it's possible to hook up the CRG9 to a high-end console like the Xbox One X or PlayStation 4 Pro, it's not a good idea, or a good investment.

For one, consoles aren't designed with crazy monitor sizes like the CRG9's 32:9 aspect ratio. They'll only output at the standard 16:9 ratio that your TV supports. So if you try to play a game from a console on the CRG9, half the screen will be black and unused.

Furthermore, games on consoles are usually capped at a maximum of 60 frames per second — half of what the CRG9 is capable of displaying.

The CRG9 represents one of the reasons why I stick to the good-old PC to play video games.

I'm not knocking consoles, but if you're looking to get the absolute maximum out of a game, the PC is the way to go. You have the choice of picking out a PC that unlocks graphics and smoothness that consoles simply can't match. And to top it off, you're given the option of enjoying your games on screens that give games a fresh look and shape, like the CRG9.

The CRG9 comes highly recommended for the type of person who values immersion in their video games — just as long as they can afford the CRG9's price tag. Speaking of price, I should note that Samsung is selling the CRG9 for a small $100 discount. It's not much of a price cut, but it's something!

But also take into account that Samsung has a new model of its super-ultra-wide monitor coming out soon called the Odyssey G9. The main upgrade in the upcoming Odyssey G9 is its 240Hz screen, which is twice as fast as the CRG9's 120Hz screen.