Question Noob question about getting an external monitor for my gaming laptop

Alexoferith

Distinguished
Jun 13, 2013
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Hi, I wonder if any experienced PC (laptop) users can help me. After I retired last year, I got myself an ASUS G513R laptop with RTX 3080, 16 Gb RAM and 1 TB NVMe SSD. And after spending a couple of weeks at my brother-in-law's place, using his ACER 27" monitor as an external monitor, I decide to get myself one. Since I don't have much experience with laptop, I didn't take notice of the connectors offered by the laptop at purchase. After spending days of reading, eventually I got help here at Tom's Hardware. Someone advised me to get a USB-c to DisplayPort cable but make sure it is DUAL communication. And finally, I could play Black Myth - Wukong at 2K, running at an FPS of 74 on average.
Now, I have spent a few weeks, at least 3 weeks reading and searching. I found myself a lttle confused. Well, I have decided not to go for a 32" monitor as I cannot really see the edge area of the screen. So, I have decided to go for 27" IPS with G-Sync or adaptive Sync. What is confusing me is that for those 27" 4k monitors, from the users' comments, it seems to me that they cannot display in 2k or if so, it will be poor quality. I would be most grateful if someone can confirm this info for me. I assume that if a monitor can display higher resolution, it should have no problem displaying a lower one.
I am currently looking at ASUS ROG Strix XG27UCG and ASUS ROG Strix XG27UCS. On ASUS website, only thing mentioned about the resolution is 3840x2160, nothing about lower resolution with the UCS but with the UCG, it says 3840x2160 at 165hz and 1920x1080 at 320 hz, but nothing about 2560x1440 in both cases. Does that mean that I would not be able to choose the 2k resolution? Many many thanks in advance for your help. Thanks.
Regards,
Alex
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
DUAL communication
You mean bi-directional?

I got myself an ASUS G513R laptop with RTX 3080
I'm assuming you got the ROG Strix G15 (2022) G513RM-HF281W as listed in this chart;
?

If so, then you have access to a;
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with support for DisplayPort™ / power delivery / G-SYNC (data speed up to 10Gbps)
so you can hook up any display that accepts USB-C input.

Both the monitors you're looking at;
have;
USB-C x 1 (DP Alt Mode)
so you're good to go.

Does that mean that I would not be able to choose the 2k resolution?
4K is higher than 2K, so if your panel can do 4K, you can reduce the resolution in Nvidia's control panel or Windows OS to 2K.
 

Alexoferith

Distinguished
Jun 13, 2013
141
5
18,715
DUAL communication
You mean bi-directional?

I got myself an ASUS G513R laptop with RTX 3080
I'm assuming you got the ROG Strix G15 (2022) G513RM-HF281W as listed in this chart;
?

If so, then you have access to a;
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with support for DisplayPort™ / power delivery / G-SYNC (data speed up to 10Gbps)
so you can hook up any display that accepts USB-C input.

Both the monitors you're looking at;
have;
USB-C x 1 (DP Alt Mode)
so you're good to go.

Does that mean that I would not be able to choose the 2k resolution?
4K is higher than 2K, so if your panel can do 4K, you can reduce the resolution in Nvidia's control panel or Windows OS to 2K.
Thank you very much for your quick response.
1. Yes, sorry, I mean bi-directional.
2. It is a G15 G513RS 2022 model but with a RTX 3080 and yes, CPU is 6900HX.
With regard to the resolution, if I can set my display to 2K, does that mean that the frequency will be the same as the 4k max, 160 Hz? My laptop screen has a frequency of 300 Hz max. Many thanks for your help.
Regards,
Alex
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
The display output will be different than what your laptop's screen can output due to internal motherboard wiring/soldering. Generally when you go for higher resolutions, the refresh rate drops. So the inverse is possible when you reduce your resolution.