Upgrading my single monitor. Using the form posted in the sticky

[Aalistor]

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

1. What Is Your Country Of Origin?
USA

2. What do you plan to do with this monitor? (ex. Games, Movie Watching, Photo Editing, etc.)
Primarily gaming. Secondary stuff includes watching streams (YouTube, TwitchTV, etc.)

3. What resolution and screen size do you want?
At least 1080p. At least 24"

4. What refresh rate do you want? (ex. 60 hz , 70 hz.)
At least 120hz

5. How much are you looking to spend?
Under $800.

6. Brands Preferred (ex. Samsung, Acer, Asus, AOC, HP, Viewsonic, etc. )
Anything with known high quality/a good track record/good reviews

7. Brands Not Preferred (state reason why)
Anything with a bad track record/known bad quality/known low reliability

8. Are You Buying More Than One Monitor?
No

9. How Many Displays Can Your GPU Support Maximum? And what GPU and driver version are you using if applicable?
Using one EVGA GTX 780 with ACX cooler & the latest nVidia driver. Overclock varies depending on my mood. Future SLI in mind

10. What Port Do You Want To Connect To (ex. DVI-D, HDMI, etc).
DVI-anything. Not HDMI

11. Is This Monitor A Primary Display Or A Secondary Display?
Primary

12. Is This A Secondary Display For A Laptop?
No

 

[enemy1g]

Have you considered the ASUS VG248QE? 24", 144 Hz, great response time and low input lag.

 

[ubercake]

The ASUS VG248QE is "the" gaming monitor for right now. 144Hz and 1ms response.

 

[Aalistor]

The ASUS VG248QE is "the" gaming monitor for right now. 144Hz and 1ms response.

I know this thing's picture quality is crap (as is all 144HZ 1ms TN panels). Is there any happy medium between smoothness/response, refresh rate, and picture quality?

 

[ubercake]

The ASUS VG248QE is "the" gaming monitor for right now. 144Hz and 1ms response.

I know this thing's picture quality is crap (as is all 144HZ 1ms TN panels). Is there any happy medium between smoothness/response, refresh rate, and picture quality?

I have to disagree. From a gaming standpoint, the monitor has all the contrast you want. This is very important when picking out enemies in shadows, for instance, in a game like BF4.

If you're shooting for color accuracy, viewing angles and not concerned with gaming performance so much, expensive IPS monitors are the way to go. If you don't care about contrast but want accurate colors, cheap (<$500) IPS monitors do the trick.

From the standpoint of gaming performance, nothing is going to beat a high refresh, low response time TN panel. Especially if you have a video card that pumps out frame rates well beyond the 60fps mark. The offer far less noticeable tearing, little to no motion blur, good contrast and little to no input lag. All things competitive gamers look for. Where they are lacking is in the viewing angles and color accuracy categories. From a viewing angle standpoint, I'm not sure I know anyone who games on a monitor while sitting at some angle to the side of it. They sit right in front of it. In my opinion, unless you are presenting something that needs to be color accurate to a group of clients standing around a monitor, viewing angles are not so important when it comes to gaming. From a color standpoint, I would definitely trade color accuracy for contrast any day when it comes to gaming. Cheap IPS monitors show shadow areas with far contrast making it hard to pick out enemies hiding in shadows or indoors.

We can't yet have our cake and eat it too. I would like colors like those on an IPS monitor with all of the performance benefits the TN monitor has to offer, but no one makes anything like this yet.

If you're not really competitive about gaming or you're primarily playing MMORPGs or RTSs, an IPS might be the way to go, but if you want one with good contrast, you'll definitely be paying at least $600 for this type of monitor, but you'll also get a 2560x1440 resolution out of it. These are all limited to 60Hz out of the box.

What is exciting is there will be G-sync monitors out later this year with higher resolutions. They will eliminate blur, tearing, input lag, and so on altogether and be offered in higher resolutions than the usual 1080p. They'll work as 144Hz monitors for any GPU not using G-sync, but with Nvidia cards like yours, you'll be able to take advantage of the G-sync technology. You might consider waiting.

 

[Aalistor]

The ASUS VG248QE is "the" gaming monitor for right now. 144Hz and 1ms response.

I know this thing's picture quality is crap (as is all 144HZ 1ms TN panels). Is there any happy medium between smoothness/response, refresh rate, and picture quality?

I have to disagree. From a gaming standpoint, the monitor has all the contrast you want. This is very important when picking out enemies in shadows, for instance, in a game like BF4.

If you're shooting for color accuracy, viewing angles and not concerned with gaming performance so much, expensive IPS monitors are the way to go. If you don't care about contrast but want accurate colors, cheap (<$500) IPS monitors do the trick.

From the standpoint of gaming performance, nothing is going to beat a high refresh, low response time TN panel. Especially if you have a video card that pumps out frame rates well beyond the 60fps mark. The offer far less noticeable tearing, little to no motion blur, good contrast and little to no input lag. All things competitive gamers look for. Where they are lacking is in the viewing angles and color accuracy categories. From a viewing angle standpoint, I'm not sure I know anyone who games on a monitor while sitting at some angle to the side of it. They sit right in front of it. In my opinion, unless you are presenting something that needs to be color accurate to a group of clients standing around a monitor, viewing angles are not so important when it comes to gaming. From a color standpoint, I would definitely trade color accuracy for contrast any day when it comes to gaming. Cheap IPS monitors show shadow areas with far contrast making it hard to pick out enemies hiding in shadows or indoors.

We can't yet have our cake and eat it too. I would like colors like those on an IPS monitor with all of the performance benefits the TN monitor has to offer, but no one makes anything like this yet.

If you're not really competitive about gaming or you're primarily playing MMORPGs or RTSs, an IPS might be the way to go, but if you want one with good contrast, you'll definitely be paying at least $600 for this type of monitor, but you'll also get a 2560x1440 resolution out of it. These are all limited to 60Hz out of the box.

What is exciting is there will be G-sync monitors out later this year with higher resolutions. They will eliminate blur, tearing, input lag, and so on altogether and be offered in higher resolutions than the usual 1080p. They'll work as 144Hz monitors for any GPU not using G-sync, but with Nvidia cards like yours, you'll be able to take advantage of the G-sync technology. You might consider waiting.

Thanks ubercake! Truly appreciate your input. I'm guessing you own this monitor? Is the Asus monitor still the only available G-sync monitor right now?

 

[ubercake]

...

Thanks ubercake! Truly appreciate your input. I'm guessing you own this monitor? Is the Asus monitor still the only available G-sync monitor right now?

Currently, the Asus monitor I recommended is the only one that you can install the G-sync module into. I wouldn't personally go that route myself, so I'm going to wait for the G-sync monitors later this year. There is currently no G-sync monitor on the market that I know of that includes G-sync out of the box.

I currently use an Acer HN274H 120Hz 1080p monitor. I tried going to a 3 monitor 60Hz setup at one point and could not stand the tearing without v-sync on those monitors. I returned the monitors a week later. I tried going with a cheap 2560x1440 60Hz monitor. I returned it the next day. Nothing compares to a monitor where the tearing is almost not perceivable at all.


Once you go to 120Hz monitors for gaming, you don't even want to consider going back to 60Hz land; higher resolution or not. If you've never had 120Hz+, you don't miss it. It's like when HD TVs came out and I didn't think I'd ever need one as my 420p TV was clear enough.

G-sync will eliminate tearing altogether if you get framerates consistently above 30fps. This is going to be a game changer as people will not need two video cards or one single mega card any longer to get consistently smooth video (if they have a single high-end card) and they'll be able to do so without the input lag associated with V-sync.

After G-sync monitors are released, I'll most likely switch to a 1-GPU PC from that point forward.

 

[Aalistor]

...

Thanks ubercake! Truly appreciate your input. I'm guessing you own this monitor? Is the Asus monitor still the only available G-sync monitor right now?

Currently, the Asus monitor I recommended is the only one that you can install the G-sync module into. I wouldn't personally go that route myself, so I'm going to wait for the G-sync monitors later this year. There is currently no G-sync monitor on the market that I know of that includes G-sync out of the box.

I currently use an Acer HN274H 120Hz 1080p monitor. I tried going to a 3 monitor 60Hz setup at one point and could not stand the tearing without v-sync on those monitors. I returned the monitors a week later. I tried going with a cheap 2560x1440 60Hz monitor. I returned it the next day. Nothing compares to a monitor where the tearing is almost not perceivable at all.


Once you go to 120Hz monitors for gaming, you don't even want to consider going back to 60Hz land; higher resolution or not. If you've never had 120Hz+, you don't miss it. It's like when HD TVs came out and I didn't think I'd ever need one as my 420p TV was clear enough.

G-sync will eliminate tearing altogether if you get framerates consistently above 30fps. This is going to be a game changer as people will not need two video cards or one single mega card any longer to get consistently smooth video (if they have a single high-end card) and they'll be able to do so without the input lag associated with V-sync.

After G-sync monitors are released, I'll most likely switch to a 1-GPU PC from that point forward.

I see. Yeah, it really sounds like g-sync is worth waiting for. And I'm usually pretty skeptical about jumping on new tech as soon as it's released due to inherent premature failures associated therein. I couldn't find anything bad written about the Asus with the g-sync chip in it.

My current monitor is a 22" Samsung 226BW at 1680 x 1050, 75hz. Really awesome for 2007... not so awesome now. Small...tearing...motion blur...