It's been 8 years since I bought a monitor - question

McClintoc

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I just build a new Ryzen 7 rig. My previous computer was 5 years old but my current monitor is about 8 years old. It's a Samsung SyncMaster T240HD. It's 24", 60hz and max resolution of 1920x1200. It's been a great monitor and still works just fine but I want to upgrade my monitor to take advantage of my new rig.


I have decided on the following:
  • 27"
  • 2560x1440
  • 144mhz

I found the ASUS MG27 monitor(s) I really like with the specs above but my question now is: which is better, a TN panel with 1 ms response time or and IPS panel with 4 ms response time?
 
I think you should make it 9 years, because every monitor out right now sucks a big fat cock.
 
I think you should make it 9 years, because every monitor out right now sucks a big fat cock.

Pretty much this. Everything you can buy now is going to force you into some sort of massive compromise. You can have fast refresh rates, but you are limited on sizes, panel types, and resolution. If you go with something super high resolution with nice image quality, you get stuck with shit refresh rates. You also lose out on HDR on most computer displays too.
 
I agree that everything is a compromise, but I wouldn't say everything sucks. There are tons of amazing options, especially for someone coming from ancient LCD technology.

A 27" high refresh 1440p panel will do you fine. I was using the Asus PG278Q for a while and it was great. It's a little old now, but Asus has been solid to me, I'm sure they have an updated model for you.

I would definitely recommend getting a GSync/FreeSync monitor (for whichever flavor of GPU you have). High-refresh rate with adaptive-sync is a huge breakthrough. I think you'll be happy with it.
 
I agree that everything is a compromise, but I wouldn't say everything sucks. There are tons of amazing options, especially for someone coming from ancient LCD technology.

A 27" high refresh 1440p panel will do you fine. I was using the Asus PG278Q for a while and it was great. It's a little old now, but Asus has been solid to me, I'm sure they have an updated model for you.

I would definitely recommend getting a GSync/FreeSync monitor (for whichever flavor of GPU you have). High-refresh rate with adaptive-sync is a huge breakthrough. I think you'll be happy with it.


This is what I am thinking. I am currently looking at the ASUS MG278Q (TN panel with 1 ms response time) or the ASUS MG279Q (IPS panel with 4 ms response time). Hence this thread. Both monitors are 27", 1440p, 144Mhz FreeSync monitors. I'm just curious if I should go with the TN-1ms or the IPS-4ms.
 
I think TN is not so bad (I know some people will fight me), but IPS would probably win in straight picture quality.

That said, I haven't really tried any of the newer high-refresh IPS panels, so I don't have enough experience to say for certain.
 
This is what I am thinking. I am currently looking at the ASUS MG278Q (TN panel with 1 ms response time) or the ASUS MG279Q (IPS panel with 4 ms response time). Hence this thread. Both monitors are 27", 1440p, 144Mhz FreeSync monitors. I'm just curious if I should go with the TN-1ms or the IPS-4ms.

What machine are you running/specs and what games do you plan to play?
 
Good TN panels today are miles ahead of the good IPS panels of yesterday, but if you ask me, VA is the way to go for best overall LCD image quality.
 
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It's all shit now. 144hz 1440p ips moniors have yellow bleeding and tn montiors have banding more than ever
 
I'd expect similar "next year's stuff will be a lot better" suggestions to wait for each of the next half dozen or so years. IPS/VA will still offer different tradeoff's for better image quality than TN while having lower maximum refresh rates. Bandwidth/GPU performance limits mean you'll still have to choose between higher resolutions and higher refresh rates. And while backlight dimming zones will shrink, they'll still be big enough to cause haloing in an LCD based display, while burnin fears with respect to 24/7 task/titlebars on the OS desktop will keep any major OEM from making an OLED based PC monitor despite their intrinsic superiority in HDR modes.

There will be heated religious arguments between fans of all 3 types of LCD and OLED displays (and probably still a handful of people stubbornly trying to keep their ancient CRTs working) over which has the least objectionable set of tradeoffs. SPOILER: Depending on what personally bothers you most and least any of them can be the best or worst option. There is no single right answer to "What is the best type of display" today, tomorrow, or at any time since at least when LCDs first began to challenge CRTs for supremacy.

I advise picking a display whose features best suit your current needs and enjoying all the ways its better than your current one for the next 4-10 years before worrying about all the incremental improvements in newest ones that launch each year while spending your money on other things.
 
What machine are you running/specs and what games do you plan to play?


MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC
AMD Ryzen 7 2700x @ 4.1 GHz
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 @ 2933
XFX RX 580 8GB Black Edition @ 1405 Mhz
Window 10

Playing PUBG and Rainbow 6 Siege for now. Will probably get BF5 when it comes out. Also note, if video card prices ever come back down, I may upgrade to a Vega 64.
 
I advise picking a display whose features best suit your current needs and enjoying all the ways its better than your current one for the next 4-10 years before worrying about all the incremental improvements in newest ones that launch each year while spending your money on other things.

This is what I am trying to do but have hit a fork in the road. I found a monitor that meets my wants/needs in terms of size, resolution and refresh rate. I am now trying to determine how much response time maters. Is a 1 ms TN panel better or is a 4 ms IPS panel better? That is the only difference between the 2 monitors I am current looking at.
 
MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC
AMD Ryzen 7 2700x @ 4.1 GHz
Corsair Vengeance 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 @ 2933
XFX RX 580 8GB Black Edition @ 1405 Mhz
Window 10

Playing PUBG and Rainbow 6 Siege for now. Will probably get BF5 when it comes out. Also note, if video card prices ever come back down, I may upgrade to a Vega 64.

I'd probably push towards your original choice in the IPS variant. Unless you're playing competitively, you'd be very very hard pressed to notice any 'delay' between IPS and TN, and the viewing angles/colour of IPS just stomps all over TN. For general/casual gaming, the IPS will be nicer on your eyes too IMO.

If I had money to buy a new screen, noting I already run a 27" 1440p 60hz panel, it'd just basically go from that to 27" 144-165hz g sync (as I have nvidia) IPS. I find this res/size to be near perfect, and reasonable to drive, whilst giving you good pixel density and clarity.
 
I'd probably push towards your original choice in the IPS variant. Unless you're playing competitively, you'd be very very hard pressed to notice any 'delay' between IPS and TN, and the viewing angles/colour of IPS just stomps all over TN. For general/casual gaming, the IPS will be nicer on your eyes too IMO.

If I had money to buy a new screen, noting I already run a 27" 1440p 60hz panel, it'd just basically go from that to 27" 144-165hz g sync (as I have nvidia) IPS. I find this res/size to be near perfect, and reasonable to drive, whilst giving you good pixel density and clarity.

I tend to agree. Outside of quasi-pro level gaming the only time I'd recommend a TN outside of tight budget reasons would be for a higher refresh rate; and with commenters on another thread saying that the 240hz TN panels on the market have significantly worse image quality than normal 60/144 hz TN displays would advise anyone to check one out in person first or buy from a seller with free no question asked returns.
 
This is what I am trying to do but have hit a fork in the road. I found a monitor that meets my wants/needs in terms of size, resolution and refresh rate. I am now trying to determine how much response time maters. Is a 1 ms TN panel better or is a 4 ms IPS panel better? That is the only difference between the 2 monitors I am current looking at.
If you have to ask, you won't even notice the difference most likely. 4ms is still ridiculously fast.
 
1ms ofd TN is a big fat LIE as is 4ms of IPS

TN have very fast transactions from brighter shades to darker and from darker to brigher it can be order of magnitude slower and on part with the same transactions on IPS panels. IPS is more 'symmetric'. Biggest offender here is of course VA tech.

I would strongly recommend to never take TN into consideration when buying monitor... or VA for that matter because on those all you will see is gamma shift artifacts and smearing

and if you get Freesync then get AMD card. VRR is worth much more than few more fps in benchmarks
 
Just got an Acer xb1 xb271hu 27 IPS 1440p 144 hz and its really great.
From what i read you have to get really lucky on these monitors...
I had an asus TN PG248Q before and it was really bad for anything besides gaming.If you moved your head just a little the image would shift contrast and colors....
I won't be buying anything under IPS technology ever again for my main monitor.
 
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Yeah, I saw FreeSync has a range of 35-90Hz on that monitor. Thanks for the ToastyX rec.
 
That's a little short of your criterion of 144 MHz in your original post.
 
Wouldn't you want a lower range? I'd want 24hz-whatever so that I could run movies without juddering.
 
Ordered the monitor on Wednesday. It arrived yesterday. The picture is really nice. I changed my background picture to several solid colors and didn't find any dead pixels.

Now I have some trouble-shooting to do. I hooked up the monitor to my PC via the DisplayPort cable. It worked fine until I started to play Rainbow 6 Siege. Every 30 seconds or so my screen would go all black and say it had no DisplayPort signal. I switch to HDMI and it works fine. This issue may be video card related and not monitor related.
 
Monitors will get better every year. Moving up to 27" and a higher DPI will still be a major improvement.
 
Ordered the monitor on Wednesday. It arrived yesterday. The picture is really nice. I changed my background picture to several solid colors and didn't find any dead pixels.

Now I have some trouble-shooting to do. I hooked up the monitor to my PC via the DisplayPort cable. It worked fine until I started to play Rainbow 6 Siege. Every 30 seconds or so my screen would go all black and say it had no DisplayPort signal. I switch to HDMI and it works fine. This issue may be video card related and not monitor related.

Same thing happened with the one I got. Had to return it.
 
Ordered the monitor on Wednesday. It arrived yesterday. The picture is really nice. I changed my background picture to several solid colors and didn't find any dead pixels.

Now I have some trouble-shooting to do. I hooked up the monitor to my PC via the DisplayPort cable. It worked fine until I started to play Rainbow 6 Siege. Every 30 seconds or so my screen would go all black and say it had no DisplayPort signal. I switch to HDMI and it works fine. This issue may be video card related and not monitor related.
Try a different DP port on the video card.
 
Try a different DP port on the video card.

My card has 3 DPs. All 3 black out during gaming.

It's really odd that everything works fine while I am in Windows, just using my computer for mundane stuff. Everything even works fine when I launch a game and am just in the game menus. The DPs only stop working once I am actually playing the game. It's fucking weird. The HDMI port works just fine in game but locks me at 60MHz refresh.
 
My card has 3 DPs. All 3 black out during gaming.

It's really odd that everything works fine while I am in Windows, just using my computer for mundane stuff. Everything even works fine when I launch a game and am just in the game menus. The DPs only stop working once I am actually playing the game. It's fucking weird. The HDMI port works just fine in game but locks me at 60MHz refresh.
return the card.
 
Can you try a different DisplayPort cable? Are you sure the cable is the latest standard?

I remember having black out issues with a bad HDMI cable, but in that case it happened all the time, not just in game.
 
Ok, I think it is definitely the video card. I just took out the RX 580 and put in my old R9 290x. Granted, my overall FPS are lower but I am not getting any blackouts. I test the same 3 games and no issues. The DisplayPort on my old R9 290x works just fine.
 
This is the crap that is keeping me on a PS4 Pro vs. building a nice Ryzen 2 or upcoming 9700K system.... the damn video cards and monitors! For my thinking, the only reason to do this and spend those dollars is to get out of the 1080p and 60Hz world.... Only thing that makes sense to me is a 2K or 4K 144Hz 27"+ monitor with Gsync, because if I actually want to push 120+ FPS on max settings at 2K, I need an Nvidia GPU. Heck yeah I want a 2080 GTX.... but have you seen the prices on Gsync monitors? Just DUMB. Not to mention pigeon hole me into Nvidia GPU..... Okay then... let's try Freeync… you're stuck with one choice, Vega 64, which really is not going to push the frames past 90 in most cases if you max out settings @2K.

Is my thought process wrong? What am I not seeing? It really bothers me that you can nab a quality 1080p VA panel for $150 but oh you want higher refresh and 2k? Add $600 to that. WTF? I see ZERO rationale to buy a new 2080 unless you are on 2K AND 144Hz.

I guess I'm not [H]ard enough... 2K 144Hz Gsync is ~ $1000 price premium (or more?) over 1080p considering card and monitor. It's nice.... but not a grand nice....
 
either 4k 60 or 144-240hz 1440/1080p.
I personally would not even consider 1440p since it's just a stop gap resolution before 4k becomes more popular.... and before 4k integer scaling is invented...
1080p 240hz gsync seems like an amazing deal then but the panel quality is not there yet... but much better than 1440p and 1080p 144hz TN panels.
 
This is the crap that is keeping me on a PS4 Pro vs. building a nice Ryzen 2 or upcoming 9700K system.... the damn video cards and monitors! For my thinking, the only reason to do this and spend those dollars is to get out of the 1080p and 60Hz world.... Only thing that makes sense to me is a 2K or 4K 144Hz 27"+ monitor with Gsync, because if I actually want to push 120+ FPS on max settings at 2K, I need an Nvidia GPU. Heck yeah I want a 2080 GTX.... but have you seen the prices on Gsync monitors? Just DUMB. Not to mention pigeon hole me into Nvidia GPU..... Okay then... let's try Freeync… you're stuck with one choice, Vega 64, which really is not going to push the frames past 90 in most cases if you max out settings @2K.

Is my thought process wrong? What am I not seeing? It really bothers me that you can nab a quality 1080p VA panel for $150 but oh you want higher refresh and 2k? Add $600 to that. WTF? I see ZERO rationale to buy a new 2080 unless you are on 2K AND 144Hz.

I guess I'm not [H]ard enough... 2K 144Hz Gsync is ~ $1000 price premium (or more?) over 1080p considering card and monitor. It's nice.... but not a grand nice....
Please stop using '2K' name :mad: It is QHD and '4K' is UHD. Thank you!

G-Sync monitors are pricey, especially G-Sync that is UHD 120Hz (I ignore 144Hz with idiotic 4:2:0 subsampling for sanity sake) but this is Glorious PC Master Race, you have to pay to play or go your peasantry ways on poor inferior hardware.
You might also want to stay in whatever FPS range your current GPU is capable of producing on G-Sync QHD monitor as it will be enough. The fact that monitor can output more frames per second doesn't mean you need to have 120+ fps on it. It will still be better than non-G-Sync monitor with whatever NV card. If you choose to buy FreeSync monitor but buy NV card... gaming experience will be inferior despite higher frame rates.
 
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Ordered the monitor on Wednesday. It arrived yesterday. The picture is really nice. I changed my background picture to several solid colors and didn't find any dead pixels.

Now I have some trouble-shooting to do. I hooked up the monitor to my PC via the DisplayPort cable. It worked fine until I started to play Rainbow 6 Siege. Every 30 seconds or so my screen would go all black and say it had no DisplayPort signal. I switch to HDMI and it works fine. This issue may be video card related and not monitor related.

I had the same issue... I heard it's because 1440p/144hz pushes the limits of DisplayPort, and the included cable is kinda crappy and you need a better quality one.

I bought a certain recommended DisplayPort cable and it fixed the problem. Let me see if I can find any further details
 
Acell B142C-003B DisplayPort Cable.

Once I bought that, everything worked fine.

The issue was really bad for me. Every time the screen went black during gameplay I'd have to restart my pc to get picture back. Even unplugging/replugging my screen wouldn't work, had to hard-reset pc.

I had so many issues with this monitor when I first got it, and eventually with new cable and AMD driver updates all my issues were fixed. Took about 6 months of raging though.

As well as the screen turning black, I'd also sometimes get a weird vertical pixel line down the center. The pixel line wasn't resolved by the new cable, but that was fixed by an AMD driver update many months later

I have AMD RX 470.

I've heard pg279q monitor also suffered the same issues with nvidia
 
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