144hz 27" Monitor Thread

[RickJames]

Hey dear friends,

I've recently discovered a huge flaw in my gaming setup. I've always had really shitty eyesight, and I can't even read text on my monitor unless my face is around 7" from it. I've noticed that during gaming, I press my face so close to my monitor that I have to move my head to look around the screen.

Anyways, I tried wearing glasses while gaming for the first time last night and I hopped in a public. Holy shit, what a difference. My peripheral vision and concentration was so improved that I was hitting endless sprees and aiming 5x better without my normal squinting and extreme concentration.

So, in addition to wearing my glasses from now on (and planning for lasik surgery in the near future), I've also decided to upgrade my monitor (asus vg248qe) to something bigger and higher res, in hopes that this will also allow me to sit farther back and concentrate better without squinting.

There are 2 options for 27", 2560x1440, 144hz monitors:
Asus ROG SWIFT PG278Q (http://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/ROG_SWIFT_PG278Q/)
BenQ XL2730Z (http://shop.benq.us/monitors/gaming/xl2730z.html)

Questions:

-Is the 2560x1440 res practical for gaming? Can I be confident that older games like ut99 will support this res? Can I be reasonably confident that I'll get 144+ fps in ut4 at this res with max gfx settings with my gtx980?

-Why is the Asus almost $200 more expensive? I can't find any major differences in their feature set and the Asus is the older monitor of the two. I don't mind paying more for even slightly better performance, and surely there are differences somewhere, but I can't find what they are.

-Who else (if anyone) here has a 27" 2560x1440 monitor? Can you attest to it's performance and usefulness over a smaller monitor for gaming in general?

-What do you guys think about these new monitor options in general? Do you think they can beat the dominant Asus vg248qe and comparable BenQ panels?

[finalzje]

Cheapest option is to stick to your current monitor, play with an 4:3 resolution with black bars so you dont have to pay attention to alot of surface area, works wonders for the ingame focus for me.

[RickJames]

[blade]

[Blue_Armature]

Haha, I have exactly the same problem. My eyesight is pretty bad and I got used to sitting pretty close to the monitor when gaming, I don't even notice it. But recently I tried sitting a bit further away and it really helps with aim, especially things like Flak and Rockets, where you need prediction.

However I'd warn against a bigger monitor, I would guess it won't help you much. I had a laptop with an 11" screen before, was mostly fine playing on it since at least it was small enough to where most of it was in sight even if I was sitting close to it. Then I changed to a 24" desktop monitor, and I really felt the problem more there - I still sat about as close as before to be able to see things, but now I couldn't see the whole monitor at once and it made me play a lot worse.

On the desktop when reading forums and stuff it was even worse, since there's no scaling (windows scaling sucks, at least in Win7 it did) and the text was almost as small as before, but spread over a much larger area.

Right now I'm on a 17" CRT monitor, and for me it's perfect. It's not too big or too small, and if make myself sit a bit further away, it doesn't feel like it's limiting me in-game. So I doubt bigger monitor is always better.

Also, before getting LASIK maybe you should wait a few years for this technology to advance: http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/22/bion ... ct-vision/

[d3R]

[HULKSMASH]

Game on 24. Do rest on 27. Trust me. I'm a musketeer.

[kud]

moving your monitor further away introduces latency. god damn casuals

[Blue_Armature]

[blade]

[RickJames]

[blackout\\]

i game on a 24" and do the rest on a 27" and im perfectly happy with that.

[Hermione]

I have a 24 inch, you could get a 27 inch, but i dont see the difference at all.Some pple are still gaming with 15 inch

[unrealshots]

just buy the damn thing already its not like your short on money.

[Darkside]

[csnafk]

[kevinsan1ty]

[PACO]

When it comes to gaming and performance.. bigger isn't always better. If you want it, get it but don't expect to be purchasing the magic monitor, otherwise you'd be seeing all of the fps pros make the jump to it.

[Hatchet]

i jumped from 20 inch to 24, did not make much difference,

I have bad eyesight so wear glasses for gaming and contact lenses for everything else.

Can play about 20 mins with contact lense, and generally play better. But I seem to forget to blink so my contacts start drying up which causes a bit of discomfort.

144hz is great but you want to be looking as other areas aswell such as input lag and latencey

[-swift-]

Don't buy that BenQ model! It's a FreeSync monitor and since you have NVIDIA gpu, you will not be able to use FreeSync (currently only supported by AMD gpus, NVIDIA doesn't want to support it yet, they have their own similar solution (G-Sync, exclusive for NVIDIA cards only)).

I do have that same ASUS monitor (since mid October) and GTX 980 (Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming), so I'll try to share some details.


-Is the 2560x1440 res practical for gaming? Can I be confident that older games like ut99 will support this res? Can I be reasonably confident that I'll get 144+ fps in ut4 at this res with max gfx settings with my gtx980?

Yep, 1440p res is practical for gaming. I had the same concerns when I was planning to buy it. UT99 works normally on 1440p and I'd say that most of the games that you can play at 1080p, you'll be able to play at 1440p. I can't claim this for every single game, but I never had a problem with resolution.

About UT4, not sure what you consider for max settings? All Epic and AA turned on? In that case, you'll not be able to have a constant 144 FPS. Even without AA, you'll probably want to OC your gpu good. I'll test it a bit more, though the game will probably be more optimized later, as it's still pre-alpha. Honestly, I'm not sure why would you want to turn max details on (considering you probably want to play it competitively). It'll look pretty, but I found it a bit distracting and turned the settings to low to have a better visual clarity. The game still looks great, but less distracting and feels better (higher FPS and less frame drops doesn't hurt either). I think it's still too early to comment on the optimal settings (considering the stage that the game is now).


-Why is the Asus almost $200 more expensive? I can't find any major differences in their feature set and the Asus is the older monitor of the two. I don't mind paying more for even slightly better performance, and surely there are differences somewhere, but I can't find what they are.

There are few reasons why the ASUS model is quiet more expensive (I can't say it's justified ).
Major reason is that the ASUS model is a G-Sync monitor. G-Sync adds roughly around $150 to the cost, which is not the case with FreeSync monitors. The reason is that G-Sync requires piece of hardware (G-Sync module) to be built in inside the monitor. FreeSync doesn't need that, cause the FreeSync utilizes the feature (Adaptive-Sync) present in the DisplayPort 1.2a standard. Practically, every new monitor that supports DisplayPort 1.2a should be able to use FreeSync (if you have AMD gpu).
Both G-Sync and FreeSync do the exact thing most of the time (remove screen tearing and stutter), though there are few little advantages of the G-Sync. FreeSync also needs some more in depth testing to be able to tell if there are any more differences.
Second reason for the higher cost is because it's ASUS and ASUS components are usually a bit higher priced than the most of the competition, especially their ROG brand, which is reserved for their best and highest performing components, means top quality, but also the top price. It was also the first 1440p 144Hz monitor, plus the high sales, so that probably affects the price too.


-Who else (if anyone) here has a 27" 2560x1440 monitor? Can you attest to it's performance and usefulness over a smaller monitor for gaming in general?

I guess this depends on the individual. Imho, it's useful cause of the bigger display, it feels more natural and comfortable to me, covers more of your vision. The higher resolution also means that you might need less AA in some games.


-What do you guys think about these new monitor options in general? Do you think they can beat the dominant Asus vg248qe and comparable BenQ panels?

23"-24" 1080p monitors are current standard and will probably be for a bit long time, till the higher resolution monitors become cheaper. 27" 1440p monitors are becoming more affordable and more popular now. Those new monitors don't have any disadvantage over their 1080p counterparts and the few best monitors currently are 1440p, cause the industry seems to have put the focus now on 1440p monitors.

Beside that ASUs model, which I can totally recommend, there is one more that I think you should look at - Acer Predator XB270HU. This one was presented recently and the main thing about it is that it's first 144Hz IPS monitor (it's actually new AHVA panel, which is IPS like, but such panels (AHVA, PLS...) are advertised as IPS cause they share the same characteristics), plus it also has minimal input lag, which is generally not the case with IPS monitors.

If I'd be buying now, I'd choose between these two. I'm really more than satisfied with the ASUS, though I might be leaning toward the Acer model, only because it's IPS. Just to share the few facts and the experiences of others:

- ASUS model has better design and look, material and the build quality is better and feels more premium compared to Acer
- disatvantage of ASUS is that it's TN panel (slightly worse picture and worse viewing angles), though it's one of the best looking (if not the best) TN panels (it's first, not sure if it's still the only TN panel with full 10bit colors). It has great factory calibration out of the box and the people from ROG team had to really tweak it good and set to have the best picture as possible, cause it wouldn't be easy to sell TN monitor for such a price. I can tell you that the picture and colors are great for TN monitor. Acer model is IPS, which means much better viewing angles and a slightly better picture overall.
- both have minimal input lags (don't look at the advertised values, but those measured in the actual tests) and have DisplayPort only

I should maybe also note that some people seem to had specific issues with ASUS model (like dead pixels or few other display issues) and had to return it and exchange for another one. You should maybe check that on the net, though I think that talk about it is a bit exaggerated and that the problem was more present with those first batches. I had zero problems and I'm totally satisfied with mine.

I'll post a two links for these two models with full tests, so you can have a better insight and more detailed picture:

ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asu ... pg278q.htm
Acer Predator XB270HU http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_xb270hu.htm

Feel free to ask anything more.

[RickJames]

Thanks swift and everyone else! Really helpful. I got the asus but I'm keeping my vg248qe and I'll switch back to that if I perform worse.

[-swift-]

Good choice, hope it serves you well.

I'll also give you few tips and infos (not sure if you know already):

- Set your desktop refresh rate to 120Hz and use 144Hz for games. If you set more than 120Hz on desktop, then your idle gpu frequency will be much higher (900MHz+ I think) than default (300Mhz+). Seems that 1440p and 144Hz put more stress on the gpu in idle state.

- Since the last two versions of NVIDIA drivers, some things about G-Sync were changed to adjust to display changes for Windows 10. Side effect is that the LED indicator at the bottom of the monitor will not show the G-Sync status correctly (it should be white when it's not active, red when it's active...). Now you'll see red LED both when it's active and not (like on the desktop). LED will only change if you disable G-Sync in drivers (in the G-Sync section in nV control panel). Generally, everything works correctly as before, it's just that the status is not reported correctly to the monitor.

- I recommend you to read this article and testing about G-Sync, as it's useful to know how to tweak it for the best performance (imho, mostly matters for FPS games) for the games you want to use it with:

http://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/preview/
http://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/preview2/

- Make a check that your UT99 crosshairs are centered (the easiest way is to enable one of those crosshairs in your monitor's OSD (as they are centered by default), just make sure not to move them from the center)

- This one is more of my own personal feeling, but in case you use OpenGL in UT99, you might want to try and test using the latest D3D9. It feels slighly more responsive for me. I was using OpenGL for years, but changed since I use this monitor

[DREW-TANg]

[Lineage]

just tested the 120/144 idling at desktop thing swift posted using gpu-z, completely 100% true..will be using 120 at desktop, cuts mine down to 300mz core /150mz mem instead of pegged to the max on both..using AMD stuffs

[-swift-]

I've made a two screenshots with GPU-Z for comparison, both in idle state, first is 120Hz, second is 144Hz.



It will not be the case with every monitor, but the best is to test your own setup and check. I know this is normal with mine (ASUS PG278Q). You can also google more about this issue.

[Lineage]

I am using the Asus vg248qe with an R9 270x