Thoughts on Asus MG279Q monitor

JustGetOwned

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Jan 23, 2015
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Hey guys!

I am planning to buy the Asus MG279Q monitor and I was interrested in what you all think of this panel.

The MG279Q is a 1440p IPS 144hz freesync monitor. The freesync has a range of 35hz to 90hz, so r somewhat lower fps should still play smooth.

In my current pc I am rocking an r9 290X so I can make use of the freesync technology, and I will hopefully get some good fps on 1440p. I play some pretty graphically heavy games like BF4 and GTA5.

What are your thoughts on this monitor and do you think my r9 290X will be able to give me a smokth experience?

Thanks for reading!
 
Solution
I guess I must be an idiot or something. I thought the last official drivers, 14.whatever had freesync support. Apparently, they didn't. Just updated to 15.7 last night and now it's actually working! Turns out I was only getting the benefit higher refresh rate, which was nice by itself. Now it shows the actual refresh rate in real time when I open the OSD. Cool feature. Wish the game plus mode could put that number up in a corner of the screen. Would be much cooler than a cross-hair or a timer..

So, yes, falling below the 35 fps cutoff pretty much sucks because you get left at 35-36hz... That said, even 36-40 fps is quite smooth now. Once I'm up into the mid 40's it's pretty much liquid. The low end of 35hz this thing offers vs. other...
Hello.

The Asus MG279Q uses a 27" 2560x1440 resolution 8 Bit AUO AHVA panel, a nearly grain free matte coating, excellent colour presets when the Racing mode is selected, a high quality matte grey bezel which vastly increases the perceived black depth, fast pixel response times and a 144hz refresh rate. Free-Sync (AMD GPU required) works from 30-90fps, eliminates tearing and lag, but has >10ms delay when not set to 144hz.

Overall, is a great monitor, the best with freesync available. An r9 290X is sufficient to be able to consistently stay in the 30-90 fps, if you can afford it go ahead and buy it.
 
I've had my MG279Q for a few days now. Also rocking a 290X. First of all, yah, it's fast enough for 2560x1440 in current games. Freesync seems to be helping, as it should. Compared to running v-sync, motion will still appear choppy at low frame rates, but it won't stutter the same way. It stays consistent. If you drop below 35 FPS though, the physical refresh will get left at 35hz until you come back up and it will stutter really bad. That said, medium to high frame rates look really good. Above 60 it's very quick! I'd still like more power for games like Witcher 3, but it's definitely playable.

Ok, now here's the bad part. The hardware itself seems really good, but the firmware cripples it. You get very little actual control over the setup. There's 6 presets to choose from. Of the 6, only Racing mode and sRGB mode seem to have accurate color. The others have really wacky gamma, contrast and color settings designed to make them stand out for their intended application. It's a joke. Scenery mode makes a bright environment pop and shows vivid color in medium lighting by adding way too much contrast and making dark areas really dark. Cinema mode is hopeless. FPS and RTS are similar. FPS has pretty flat color and a hard grey haze effect. It does pull up a lot of detail from dark areas. Good for munchkins who don't care about quality and just want to win. Those guys might still be better off with a TN I guess. RTS is very similar, looks better in some situations, but completely crushes color detail in low light. Not at all suitable for a typical roll player looking for immersion in a game with dark areas. Like you know, most RPGs. Racing and sRGB modes seem to have the same basic, fairly accurate color profile with no obvious errors. No banding, squashed detail, all together wrong colors, etc. They aren't terribly vibrant either. sRGB locks you out of everything, even brightness. I guess they think it's calibrated really well just the way it is... Racing mode lets you change brightness, contrast and color levels. BUT, it still locks you out of the sharpness control. Text actually looks good, but images and games at native res. are conspicuously blurry compared to a higher sharpness level on one of the other settings. So that's a real bummer. They give you no gamma control anywhere, so I haven't been able to make any of the other settings really usable. Another source of sharpness that's available on another page is "Vivid Pixel." It adds sharpness, but has a really horrible embossing effect that makes everything look like ass.

This lack of control is what I expect from a low end screen. It's what they do to differentiate the lower models from the higher ones. I'd like to think this is a higher end screen. They marketed this screen precisely at people who wanted a capable gaming monitor but weren't willing to give up their high quality IPS screens to get it. Being forced to choose between blurry graphics or grievous color errors wasn't what I was expecting when I decided to take the plunge on this "high end" IPS, QHD gaming monitor. If they'ed only enabled sharpness in racing mode, I may have been satisfied. As it is, I think I'm going to look into newegg's return policy. It's a real shame, this was supposed to be exactly the screen I was waiting for, albeit, not in 32". If it could be setup properly, I think the panel itself could have been really Good. IPS glow off-angle is no joke on this panel, but when you're in position, it looks fine. Nothing like being off-angle with a TN.. I think this is a typical example of engineers making a fantastic product, while the marketing guys stand over their shoulders and force them to ruin it with gimmicky features that break its functionality.
 


I believe you are correct on both counts. I did in anger, set the monitor aside and plug my old screen back in last night. My old screen is, don't laugh, a 1080p 32" TV. It does sit much farther back on my desk, and it is the hands down winner for watching movies and netflix and what-not. BUT, I couldn't go back. I fired up a game and looked at the pixels again and I'm just like, "I can't look at this garbage, I might as well go back to Doom 2."

So I plugged the MG279 back in this evening and set it to racing mode and tried really hard to stop playing with the settings and just use it. And I did go and load up TFT central's ICC profile and color settings.. And I will say, the color went from very decent (in Racing or sRGB modes) to really outstanding. The grey sheen (seen mostly in games) is all but gone, the colors are deeper and more vibrant and I still don't feel that I'm missing out on any detail I ought to be able to see in dark areas. Color banding in many situations is greatly reduced or eliminated. Beats my TV, which has very vibrant, if not totally accurate color, but fell down in dark detail retrieval. To me, this did help with the blur factor to a small extent. In part because the overall definition is improved and in part because my over all satisfaction is higher and it's easier to try and overlook the one flaw. BUT, try as I might, it's still blurry. I could actually go either way on text. In fact, I think the extra sharpness available in other modes makes it a little too sharp.. Still, when I look at an image with fine detail or especially a game that should be very sharp at 1440p, I just can't stop the feeling that my eyes aren't quite focused on the image. It really bothers me.

That said, in Racing mode, with its lack of a sharpness dial, Witcher 3 set to high sharpness in it's own settings (which was way over sharpened on my TV) looks outstanding on the MG279. MAYBE still a hair soft, but switching to FPS and setting the sharpness up, leaves it plainly over-sharpened.

So here's (to me) the million dollar question; Is there any way to dial a permanent sharpness setting into the computer, the way you can plug in an ICC profile or change desktop color settings? A cheap work around for the blur problem would elevate this monitor to absolute-must-have status. Or Asus just needs to listen up and address the issue with a firmware update.

 
I should add an update to this. I was really hard on the MG279Q for being on the soft side, even though everything else about it is great. I still feel that it is a bit too soft on Racing mode with no sharpness adjustment. I am getting used to it though and also finding that I simply need to change some settings in games. I'm having better luck turning off anti-aliasing in most games. QHD at 27" is sharp enough that I don't really need it, especially pared with the monitor's slight softness. I had been using a lot of FXAA or whatever post process setting was available. On my 32" 1080p, any AA was good AA and I didn't see much difference with more advanced techniques. Now that I have such a fine dot pitch, post process AA just makes it blurry.

I'm also starting to play with SweetFX to inject sharpening. MWO looks really good with it, as does Witcher 3 using it's own high sharpness setting. Far Cry 4 looks great on its own with no AA. I might try SweetFX on Mass Effect 3 next.

I still think it would be a great improvement if Asus tweaked the firmware to allow sharpness control in Racing mode AND gave finer control. You currently only get to choose between too blurry at 50, or slightly too sharp at times on 60. If you could choose a sharpness setting of approximately 55 to 58, in Racing mode, with TFT Central's ICC profile, this would be absurdly good. Again, I'm getting over it and working around it and would certainly recommend the MG279Q to a friend at this point.
 
I guess I must be an idiot or something. I thought the last official drivers, 14.whatever had freesync support. Apparently, they didn't. Just updated to 15.7 last night and now it's actually working! Turns out I was only getting the benefit higher refresh rate, which was nice by itself. Now it shows the actual refresh rate in real time when I open the OSD. Cool feature. Wish the game plus mode could put that number up in a corner of the screen. Would be much cooler than a cross-hair or a timer..

So, yes, falling below the 35 fps cutoff pretty much sucks because you get left at 35-36hz... That said, even 36-40 fps is quite smooth now. Once I'm up into the mid 40's it's pretty much liquid. The low end of 35hz this thing offers vs. other screens with 40-48(!) is definitely key. Forget everything I said about sharpness. Yes it's a hair soft, but just turn off AA and it looks quite good. The colors are spot on with TFT's profile and freesync is the real deal. If you're on the fence, just go buy it.
 
Solution