Monitor upgrade

[cookiemonster]

Hi keeping the same size 27" monitor would I notice any difference graphic wise if I upgraded to a 144hz or 4k.

 

[Kei]

Well that depends honestly. I have had now 1080p, 2k, and 4k all in the last month roughly. There is no question that the resolution on the 4k is the 'best' of the three HOWEVER I do not think that it is the best decision overall for me. I no longer have the 4k monitor (I use a 27" monitor just like you, for many years now), the resolution bump is nice but it's not earth shattering in how much clearer it is (though the PPI goes from 81 to 108 to 150 for the three monitors). If the panel was in the larger 34" range then yes it would definitely be worth it to me for resolution anyway.

That said, I just finally settled on a new monitor this weekend past. I now have an Asus ROG Swift PG279Q, it's an IPS panel (I've been an IPS man for many years and just can't do TN panels anymore). The 4k monitor I had was a 60hz panel which is okay, but running 4k at 60fps or higher is pretty darn demanding so unless you're willing to dumb the graphical fidelity down then it's just not going to happen. For me frame rate is far more important and I like to play every single game with the highest settings the game has available....so that's just not something that 4k can offer right now.

2k with ALL of the options enabled, and on top of that up to 165hz (max on the Asus, normal is 144hz), and on top of that gsync (which is awesome!!!). That is the sweet spot for me, the gameplay is so silky smooth it's incredible just incredible.

If you make a change, I say go with a high refresh rate panel that has gsync. I'm very very glad I did. (previously my other panel was 1080p 60hz IPS)

 

[RCoon]

The answer is very much personal preference. I've run 1080p 144hz TN, 4K 60hz IPS, and now after all these years I've settle on 1080p 75hz GSync on IPS.
What do you value more?

1. Colour accuracy/viewing angle
2. Refresh rate
3. Resolution

Pick two of the above.

 

[Kei]

I agree, and you have things listed in my personal order already lol. I almost went with another 1080p panel, but I decided that I would just stick with the 60hz panel I had and wait until 4k was easier to run at high refresh rates if I was going to stay 1080p.

I did think pretty hard about an ultrawide 29" panel at 2560x1080 but I was spooked off unsure about what games support ultrawide resolutions on a single panel because I've never used it before and would hate to have black bars on the sides lol.

I knew though that since I had an Nvidia card in my box these days, I HAD to have a gsync panel no matter what. I thought about getting a Vega 64 Strix card and freesync, but the cost comes out to be pretty equivalent just buying the gsync panel instead of buying a new card and selling the old one.

 

[Vayra86]

Best of worlds option list for a monitor (performance ingame/viewing experience/viewing distance)... based on personal experience with many different setups and monitors:

Display tech:
- IPS works best for brightly lit rooms in typical use case, very high risk of IPS glow in dimly lit room - only the most expensive IPS avoid this problem, though not entirely
- VA works best for dimly lit rooms in typical use case, and also works in brightly lit rooms

- IPS wins the day in color accuracy and uniformity but loses in static contrast
- VA wins the day in static contrast and color vibrance while maintaining good (neutral) color calibration
- TN lacks high static contrast of VA and lacks the high accuracy of IPS while adding contrast shift at angled view. Above all its cheap and *can* be fast.

- On a fast/responsive panel, the button-to-pixel lag between TN/IPS/VA is barely or entirely not noticeable
- IPS and TN have a very constant G2G curve across the whole color spectrum, VA can lag a bit in G2G in darker hues/tones creating a 'smearing' effect. Its a characteristic you can get used to and cheap/slower VA's suffer heavily here.

Resolution/Refresh:
- Higher than 120/144 hz is pointless and can be detrimental to frame time variance
- More important than resolution is the PPI or Pixels Per Inch. Aim for 95~120 PPI displays, going lower = counting pixels, going higher = wasting performance on pixels too small to see AND introduces scaling problems with text and UI
- Current sweet spot is 1440p/27in or 1440p/25in with current GPU hardware available. High refresh at this res requires top end hardware.
- 4K is of questionable use, since it requires a very large display diagonal to really pay off, which introduces ergonomy issues (having to turn your head all the time, or crawling into the screen to view detail, or losing performance that nets no visual benefit)
- For 1080p stick to 24in. High refresh at this res can work well with higher midrange hardware.
- Gsync or FreeSync: personal preference but by no means a requirement. Proper hardware + settings tweaks can achieve perfectly stable FPS and frame times + no tearing + low input lag.

This should help in making the right choices Remember that any monitor choice is making a trade off in one way or another.

 

[bug]

Hi keeping the same size 27" monitor would I notice any difference graphic wise if I upgraded to a 144hz or 4k.

Nobody can tell what you will notice. You must go into stores and, I don't know, look at monitors in order to establish that.

 

[John Naylor]

1. Panel wise, the best viewing experience available today is 165 Hz, IPS at 1440p using 10 bit panels made by AU Optronics (M270DAN02.6). Asus PG279 and Acer Predator XP271HU. Lag on these panel is < 3 ms and avg response time is about 4.9 (peak 6.0 ms) ... these are real measured times not "as advertised". Note that any classification can not be used to accurately describe any monitor aspect. For example, the best IPS pane;s are bettwer than the best TN panels, but a $250 IPS [panel is not better choice than a $250 TN panel. That quality only comes at higher price levels. Response times and lag are also all over the place

2. You must resist the popular notion the G-Sync and Freesync are comparable technologies. Both provide from synchronization; G-Sync's impact is
most readily observed between 30 and 70 fps, Freeseync betwem 40 and 60 fps. Where the two technologies differ is in that G-Sync has a hardaware module which provided Motion Blue Reduction whereas Freesync does not. If you have enough GFX horsepower, I'd urge you to try turning off G-Sync and use the UMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur) option. It does a great job in eliminating ghosting. With a 1080 Ti for example mot games will easily exceed 70 fps and this is the preferred setting for many gamers.

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/
https://www.blurbusters.com/faq/motion-blur-reduction/ (See Flicker Test)

3. Unfortunately, visiting a store to see panels directly is a crap shoot. Most don't carry the high priced panels and the flourescent lighting typically used in stores makes viewing difficult.

4. Size depends on pixels per inch ... the human eye can distinguish individual pixels below a PPI of 96, after 120 or so, "graininess" is not a worry tho color accuracy does to an extent

Max Screen sizes based upon ppi:

1080p = 23 - 24"
1440p = 27"
3840p = 45" too big for ya desk

5. I can not recommend jumping into 4k at this time ... a) Every panel in use today will be rendered ireelevant once the ne AU Opttonics 144 Hz IPS 1000 nit, 4 ms panels drop and b) Currently no card exists that tho some news sites ... however, the 1180 may have a shot

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/3224/geforce-gtx-1180

Shading Units 3584
TMUs 224
ROPs 64
SM Count 28
Pixel Rate 101.2
GPixel/s Texture Rate 354.4
GTexel/s Floating-point performance 11,340 GFLOPS
Memory Size 16384
MB Memory Type GDDR6
Memory Bus 256 bi
Bandwidth 384.0 GB/s

As to what you will notice, that's a hard question to answer ... main thing is is not so much what ya notice when ya switch, it's what ya notice when ya switch back. My son has the Acer above and his college roomate had a wide screen (3440) 60 Hz LG. Playing on the wide screen I welcomed the sense of immersion when playing (Witcher 3) .... but when I went back to the Predator, the colors just shot off the screen, everything was sharper, no ghosting. Its like in college when ya living on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese / Ramen Chicken Soup and McDonalds. it doesn't seem so bad day to day. Then ya take ya 1st job and start eating at better joints, it doesn't seem like a big upgrade, but when ya try the ole college staples again, ya wonder how ya ever ate that stuff.... that fast food hamburger now tastes like you bought it on the way home after a night at the pub, found it the next day on the car seat and ate it as a hangover breakfast by comparison.

 

[Easy Rhino]

The answer is very much personal preference. I've run 1080p 144hz TN, 4K 60hz IPS, and now after all these years I've settle on 1080p 75hz GSync on IPS.
What do you value more?

1. Colour accuracy/viewing angle
2. Refresh rate
3. Resolution

Pick two of the above.

You forgot 4. Epeen.

 

[Vayra86]

1. Panel wise, the best viewing experience available today is 165 Hz, IPS at 1440p using 10 bit panels made by AU Optronics (M270DAN02.6). Asus PG279 and Acer Predator XP271HU. Lag on these panel is < 3 ms and avg response time is about 4.9 (peak 6.0 ms) ... these are real measured times not "as advertised". Note that any classification can not be used to accurately describe any monitor aspect. For example, the best IPS pane;s are bettwer than the best TN panels, but a $250 IPS [panel is not better choice than a $250 TN panel. That quality only comes at higher price levels. Response times and lag are also all over the place

2. You must resist the popular notion the G-Sync and Freesync are comparable technologies. Both provide from synchronization; G-Sync's impact is
most readily observed between 30 and 70 fps, Freeseync betwem 40 and 60 fps. Where the two technologies differ is in that G-Sync has a hardaware module which provided Motion Blue Reduction whereas Freesync does not. If you have enough GFX horsepower, I'd urge you to try turning off G-Sync and use the UMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur) option. It does a great job in eliminating ghosting. With a 1080 Ti for example mot games will easily exceed 70 fps and this is the preferred setting for many gamers.

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/
https://www.blurbusters.com/faq/motion-blur-reduction/ (See Flicker Test)

3. Unfortunately, visiting a store to see panels directly is a crap shoot. Most don't carry the high priced panels and the flourescent lighting typically used in stores makes viewing difficult.

4. Size depends on pixels per inch ... the human eye can distinguish individual pixels below a PPI of 96, after 120 or so, "graininess" is not a worry tho color accuracy does to an extent

Max Screen sizes based upon ppi:

1080p = 23 - 24"
1440p = 27"
3840p = 45" too big for ya desk

5. I can not recommend jumping into 4k at this time ... a) Every panel in use today will be rendered ireelevant once the ne AU Opttonics 144 Hz IPS 1000 nit, 4 ms panels drop and b) Currently no card exists that tho some news sites ... however, the 1180 may have a shot

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/3224/geforce-gtx-1180

Shading Units 3584
TMUs 224
ROPs 64
SM Count 28
Pixel Rate 101.2
GPixel/s Texture Rate 354.4
GTexel/s Floating-point performance 11,340 GFLOPS
Memory Size 16384
MB Memory Type GDDR6
Memory Bus 256 bi
Bandwidth 384.0 GB/s

As to what you will notice, that's a hard question to answer ... main thing is is not so much what ya notice when ya switch, it's what ya notice when ya switch back. My son has the Acer above and his college roomate had a wide screen (3440) 60 Hz LG. Playing on the wide screen I welcomed the sense of immersion when playing (Witcher 3) .... but when I went back to the Predator, the colors just shot off the screen, everything was sharper, no ghosting. Its like in college when ya living on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese / Ramen Chicken Soup and McDonalds. it doesn't seem so bad day to day. Then ya take ya 1st job and start eating at better joints, it doesn't seem like a big upgrade, but when ya try the ole college staples again, ya wonder how ya ever ate that stuff.... that fast food hamburger now tastes like you bought it on the way home after a night at the pub, found it the next day on the car seat and ate it as a hangover breakfast by comparison.

Great post. The chart with response times contains a very good example of 'see it in person!' with my (VA) Eizo FG2421: the 44ms G2G you see there shows as the 'smearing' effect. The moment you notice it in-game is when black moves against a dark tone (so: small variations of color within the darkest hues) and other than that its blazing fast, which you can see by the strong average/min ms result. Its a good example of why looking at just the numbers isn't going to suffice - you need to see things in person. I've not seen a single other panel at 1080p that exceeds it on the other aspects like contrast ratio and overall smoothness or the unique strobe it offers. I would never trade this monitor for anything else at 1080p

When you order a monitor online make sure you do it somewhere with a good return policy and where they allow you to see it and return it with no explanation required.

 

[Eric3988]

Excellent information in this thread for sure. As for the upgrade question, it really depends most on the budget. As indicated earlier performances are all over the place and not as easy to judge as a GPU. In general, you will get what you pay for, but that is not always the case. I would have to agree with the other users and say 1440p is the way to go for a 27" display. The refresh rate to me is nice to have above 60, but I don't notice that much of a difference even with freesync. Perhaps I am just accustomed to 60, but you know my bias now.

 

[cookiemonster]

thanks for all the fantastic advice you have given me a lot to digest and think about also what I value more is 1 and 3. I know I have a good enough quality monitor but I suppose I am looking for the best quality graphics my system can give, games are Fallout 4 Skyrim Battlefield and Call of Duty and others like, I don't play online.

Got my eye on these,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017DG09WM/ref=psdc_428652031_t1_B01LWQGIUR

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01784K78A/ref=psdc_428652031_t3_B01LWQGIUR

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-PG278QR-Gaming-monitor-USB3-0/dp/B01LWQGIUR