Monitor vs HDTV For Gaming

zorrodude

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Aug 2, 2012
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I've always been told for pc gaming, you would need a monitor over a TV because TV's cause input lag. While I understand the ms response time on tv's is way higher than monitors, how come consoles aren't effected? Or are they and I just didn't notice.

I have an Acer predator monitor at 144hz with g-sync that I spent a pretty penny on, but now that there are 55inch 4k HDR tv's in comparison of price, I'm wondering if I should have gone with that instead. I do both console and pc gaming.

So that's my question, besides g-sync and reaching over 60 fps, is there really a benefit of buying a high end monitor over a big 4k HDR tv?
 
Solution
Consoles are most certainly affected except its less noticeable with a controller than a mouse since usually when using a mouse your moving the camera around much faster than with a controller. Also developers seem to implement quite a bit of motion blur in console games which may make the delay feel less noticeable as well. After experiencing a monitor playing on most HDTV's is very annoying for me, which I will admit was not so until I got my monitor now I can very clearly notice the difference between a decent monitor and an HDTV.

Dunlop0078

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Consoles are most certainly affected except its less noticeable with a controller than a mouse since usually when using a mouse your moving the camera around much faster than with a controller. Also developers seem to implement quite a bit of motion blur in console games which may make the delay feel less noticeable as well. After experiencing a monitor playing on most HDTV's is very annoying for me, which I will admit was not so until I got my monitor now I can very clearly notice the difference between a decent monitor and an HDTV.
 
Solution
If you need over 43", you are looking at a TV.
The main problem is that most TV's do not have fast enough input to let you run at 60hz at 4k with full color.
DP1.2 does that which you will find on current high end graphics cards.
You will likely need hdmi 2.0 to get adequate frame rates.
I have not checked recently so perhaps there are some qualifying new TV's around.

Console gaming works because the graphics are less complicated.
 
1) running games at 4K is problematic, and there's no 2560x1440 (AFAIK) when using a PC attached to a 4K HDTV. You have to choose 1080p or 2160p.

Even if you got a 4K monitor (monitor..NOT an HDTV) and ran games at 2560x1440 to be upscaled you will get added scaling artifacts compared to processing and displaying both at 2560x1440.

2) Input latency. YES.
Unless there is a specific gaming mode which can bypass some of the video processing you might see a noticeable delay. Add that to the comparative sluggishness of 60FPS using VSYNC (to avoid screen tear) and that's much more sluggish than 60FPS using GSYNC.

3) 55" HDTV?
Uh... that's about 4X the viewing area as a 27" monitor so I don't understand where you have your PC that you can choose one or the other.

You don't want to be much closer than a 1:1 ratio which is about two feet for the 27" and about 4 feet for the 55" HDTV.

So assuming the HDTV is in the living room I doubt you're sitting four feet from the HDTV. In fact, 4K is very problematic anyway. If you don't sit at least 1.5X the diagonal (closer than seven feet) you'll see no benefit to 4K anyway. However, if you DO sit that close then lower quality video shows all the issues such as artifacts so that's not ideal either. Sort of a catch 22.

4) LESS noticeable delay with a controller?
Uh, I disagree completely.

5) GSYNC is really awesome.
With a 60Hz monitor/HDTV you have to make decisions for each game on how to tweak it if you want the best experience. If you turn on VSYNC to get rid of screen tear then you get added STUTTER if you drop below 60FPS.

With GSYNC you just crank up the settings to maximum the observe the frame rate. If it's too low (say 40FPS or below depending on type of game) you can simply change a few settings to raise the frame rate. Then it should run really smooth, minimal LAG, no screen tear.
 

IDProG

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You can argue with me, but what I like from a 4K TV:
1) You can upscale most contents and get great scaling (except 480p and 1440p as far as I know), while 1440p upscales the most common content (1080p) poorly.
2) It's big, which means it's great for watching contents.
3) With big screen size and resolution comes advanced multitasking.
4) If you say that 4K games are so hard to run, standard 1440p @ 144Hz and ultrawide 1440p @ 100Hz ones are even harder.
5) If you demand more than 60Hz, you can buy a 4K TV that supports 1080p @ 120Hz and you'll get close to 4K quality (thanks to 4K upscaling) and at 120Hz.
6) a 4K TV can be set to 21:9 aspect ratio (if you don't mind black bars, which I don't) and get a resolution that's a little bit more than the ultrawide 1440p monitor.
IMO those reasons can justify the drawbacks of a 4K TV.