Vicarious on 17/1/2016 at 08:28
Basically reposting this from Doomworld. I'm planning to upgrade my monitor very soon. Primarily for gaming purposes, it has to be 27" (or at least not smaller than that) and 120Hz. My target resolution is 1080p and preferably 16:9 aspect ratio. That's about it, I think. Are there any specific models you guys can recommend that fit those requirements?
Also, like I said in the DW thread, I'm not going above 1080p simply because I won't be able to afford a PC that can sustain smooth framerate at such resolutions.
ZylonBane on 17/1/2016 at 16:54
You know you don't HAVE to run your monitor at native resolution, yes? Monitor resolutions are so high these days, and scaling hardware so good, that the scaling artifacts from running a game at non-native res are all but imperceptible.
Vicarious on 17/1/2016 at 19:18
I don't know, I'm running 1080p and I can clearly see the blurriness of the image when for whatever reason the resolution switches to a non-native one. Admittedly I haven't seen the 1440p+ monitor running 1080p... but I'm concerned the difference might be noticable to me so I'd rather stick to whatever models have 1080p as native.
bikerdude on 17/1/2016 at 20:57
The Eizo Foris FS2333 I mention in the TDM post is a 1080p panel.
What GFX card are you running btw?
Vicarious on 17/1/2016 at 23:09
I did a quick search and found those models, all of them are 27" - 1080p - 144Hz - 1ms response - TN panels. They also appear to be within my budget limit for the monitor.
ASUS VG278HV
Acer XB270H Predator
iiyama G-Master Red Eagle GB2788HS
iiyama ProLite GB2773HS-GB2
I'm not sure which specs to consider. As far as I know TN panels are better for faster games so I guess I'll stick with that. Response time... what about input lag? Acer has the best contrast, everything else seems to be roughly the same.
Quote Posted by bikerdude
The Eizo Foris FS2333 I mention in the TDM post is a 1080p panel.
What GFX card are you running btw?
My ancient GTX 260 died and now I've got GTX 750 as a temporary replacement. I'll be overhauling my PC completely in a couple of months but I'm not yet sure about the future components. My lofty goal is to be able to rock some of the upcoming games at a decent framerate (primarily DOOM4 but also DX4, Dishonored 2 and Shadow Warrior 2, as far as graphics-heavy titles go).
Nameless Voice on 18/1/2016 at 23:48
TN panels have terrible colour reproduction, viewing angle and black levels, though they are cheap and have fast response times.
It really depends what you want to do on it, but if you're looking to play TTLG-style games (e.g. dark games), then TN isn't the best choice.
For good picture, you want OLED > (VA / IPS) > TN.
OLED looks really awesome, with amazing colours and perfect blacks, but is prohibitively expensive (there's only two prototype desktop monitors and they are in the $3000-5000 range, though larger TVs are more affordable for some reason.)
IPS is very sharp but has a disturbing blue "IPS glow" in the dark. It has slightly better viewing response times than VA too, IIRC.
VA has better colours but isn't quite as sharp. Slightly slower response times, but should still be in the ~4-8ms range on modern ones. They also only comes in 16:9 - but that's fine, that's what you said you want anyway.
Generally, IPS is for "work" and VA is for "films".
TN, as mentioned above, has poor colours, viewing angle, but good response time and is cheap.
Sulphur on 19/1/2016 at 07:24
Keep in mind that some OLED screens tend to have colour drift over time besides also being expensive. Relatively new tech, kinks still to be worked out.
Vicarious on 19/1/2016 at 08:17
I'll stick with TN, no two ways about it. My budget is fairly limited at this point. If it was just the monitor that would be different story but I also have to get a brand new PC in the near future. So roughly <$500 is as much as I can spend (maybe less, depending on the price situation here in Poland).
Either way, it sucks I can't really thoroughly test it out myself. Honestly, all of those things, response time, viewing angles, color reproduction... how important would they really be for me? Say response time, IPS react slower but maybe I wouldn't even notice. Colors, I'm sure TN aren't great in comparison but I've been using one for years so I'm used to it anyway. I don't know but I would rather get a cheaper monitor and a better GPU at this point. Beautiful colors won't matter in a slideshow gameplay.
Still looking for the specific model though. I'm considering iiyama GB2788HS or BenQ XL2720Z.
heywood on 19/1/2016 at 11:06
Well, there's good TN and bad TN. Much depends on the backlight and diffuser and polarizers. Bad TN will have poor blacks, light bleed, non-uniform illumination and very restricted vertical viewing angles. As seen in most cheap laptops. Good TN can be pretty good. I used to have a 24" HP with a wide gamut 1920x1200 TN panel that had black levels almost as good as VA. It calibrated to SRGB pretty well too. I had to give it away when I moved unfortunately.
If you're thinking of getting an AMD GPU, that Iiyama monitor has FreeSync. Iiyama's gaming monitors don't seem to be that popular and there's not a lot of reviews out there to go by. Likewise, the Acer you were looking at has G-Sync, but the image quality isn't that great for price. Of the lot you mentioned I would probably take the BenQ. However, if you drop down to 24" there will be more choices.
