Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games? [Old Thread]

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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 21 Apr 2017, 16:10

There are some situations where you can go less than 9ms difference, but sometimes you can't do better than that in some games. Some game engines just can't co-operate very well, and some framerate capping utilities add unwanted lag.

We're equipping ourselves to test GSYNC latency even further, so keep an eye out.
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by RealNC » 22 Apr 2017, 01:59

hammelgammler wrote:I would really like to know the secret to get ultra low V-Sync input lag!
It's not that complicated. Three things need to be done.

1: Find out your EXACT refresh rate. You do that on https://www.vsynctester.com using a supported browser.

2: You cap the game's frame to 0.006FPS below the refresh rate.

3: You set "pre-rendered frames" to 1 in your driver ("flip queue size" on AMD cards.)

That's it. I've been doing this since forever prior to getting a g-sync monitor, and it makes vsync quite nice. Read this post on how to cap with 0.001FPS precision using RTSS.

Another way of doing this is to modify your refresh rate using CRU. For example, if your monitor uses 59.94Hz and 119.998Hz refresh rates, you just modify them with CRU to 60.006Hz and 120.006Hz. Test on vsynctester.com to see if that's really what you've got. If not, adjust accordingly. Finally, cap directly to 60 or 120FPS. This method works best with in-game limiters. For example, Overwatch and Paladins have near ZERO vsync input lag using this method.

External limiters always will add at least one frame of lag though. RTSS is best as it adds only 1 frame of lag, NVidia's limiter (through Inspector) is not so good, as it adds 2 frames of lag.

Note: It doesn't have to be EXACTLY a 0.006 difference. Somewhere close to is fine. 0.007, 0.008, 0.009 all work. Just don't go lower than 0.005 (could fail to reduce input lag) and not higher than 0.012 (could introduce a frame skip every so often.)
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by Dew » 22 Apr 2017, 05:29

RealNC wrote:
1: Find out your EXACT refresh rate. You do that on https://www.vsynctester.com using a supported browser.
Can you please suggest a browser to use for this test? The site says Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Internet explorer are all broken.

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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by RealNC » 22 Apr 2017, 06:50

Chrome is not broken in this case. The site uses a method that works around the Chrome bug. If the "VSYNC" logo on the test is gray instead of having a severe flicker, then it's working.

I use Chrome on that site and it detects the refresh rate spot-on.

The "browser X is broken" links on that site are there to inform users about vsync timing bugs in popular browsers in order to raise awareness and get the browser vendors to fix them. But the test itself has workarounds for those bugs. Again, if you use Chrome, you should get a very accurate result.
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by ModifiedFootage » 28 Apr 2017, 00:14

Is the prevailing opinion here that the ASUS ROG PG258Q is the current best monitor for competitive gaming (which I assume means input lag and motion blur reduction are being considered before anything else) ? Why is it better than the other 240hz monitors on the market? How should it be operated (ULMB, G-Sync)?

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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by RealNC » 28 Apr 2017, 00:37

ModifiedFootage wrote:Is the prevailing opinion here that the ASUS ROG PG258Q is the current best monitor for competitive gaming
No. There is no "best monitor". If you're looking at raw numbers, then there's monitors with less lag than this one, for example:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asu ... 8q.htm#lag

If competitive gaming to you means the least input lag possible, then no, it's not "the best". It's extremely good at that, but not "the best."

My recommendation is to drop the notion of what's "the best" and instead focus on what's important to you and pick a monitor that's good at those things.

Also, if you're not competing in a professional team and going to LAN tournaments for example, there should be no reason for you to seek out the "best competitive gaming monitor."
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 29 Apr 2017, 00:29

Easy, RealNC. Blur Busters has a "Be Nice To Newbies" policy. The repetition of quoted "the best" sounded a little condescending -- You probably didn't mean to be, but just a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, y'know?

ModifiedFootage, what RealNC probably meant to say is:
Generally, there isn't an ideal best monitor. They vary so much in differing pros/cons, but AFAIK, there's some monitors with less lag by a very tiny fractions of milliseconds:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asu ... 8q.htm#lag

If competitive gaming to you means the least input lag possible, then according to TFTCentral, there's multiple monitors with a fraction of a millisecond less lag. Any monitor that get into this territory, even if not the best, is extremely good at latency anyway.

Personally, I recommend focussing on what's important to you and pick a monitor that's good at those things.

Also, if you're not competing (or planning to) in a professional team and going to LAN tournaments for example, most don't generally necessarily need to seek sub-millisecond differences between monitors for the best competitive gaming monitor.
Side note:

Also, TFTCentral uses SMTT method of lag testing, which has a fairly significant error margin (sometimes multi-millisecond huge, with some less-properly-controlled setups), given the need to visually interpret partial GtG transitions in photography. Especially if you change camera exposures or change cameras. Usually, SMTT error margin is roughly +/- 1ms, sometimes worse, depending on how well you repeat the testing methodology -- even things like different camera settings can affect how visible GtG begins to show. I've seen some reviewers (other than TFTCentral) mess up SMTT tests and create a new error margin caused by a camera's rolling scan (e.g. 1/250th second rolling shutter, where top edge of camera shutter can open before the other end), adding a huge 4ms jitter to SMTT results if the rolling shutter direction swipes from one display to the other. To minimize the odds of this, displays need to be tested side by side (at the same horizontal level) with the camera in landscape mode to minimize camera rolling shutter error. Center 1/4 of photo works best (reduces rolling shutter area to 1/1000sec rather than 1/250sec, and the scan is synchronous on both displays). In theory, some SMTT setups (not necessarily TFTCentral's) have an error margin big enough to make ASUS the absolute best. Probably not (TFTCentral is very careful with SMTT) but it's certainly within a stone's throw of possibility, especially if one borrow a different camera than during usual reviews which has different rolling-shutter characteristics (Adding unexpected error). I've seen SMTT results return 1-2ms better results in SMTT with monitors set to maximum brightness, simply because it made beginnings of GtG visibly exposed into the camera frame earlier. Either way, I'd roundoff TFTCentral results to the nearest millisecond and give it a ~1-2ms errorbar, just to be safe. Also, different monitor settings, if readjusted, may actually flip a pair of models in latency-winning order. In theory, it is wholly possible that ASUS may have less lag or that the lag of all the 240Hz monitors are perfectly identical (to the microsecond). Generally these days, when monitors are down to 1 to 4ms of lag, the display lag pretty much doesn't matter to most users...

Alas -- lag measurement methodologies are pretty complex creatures, e.g. measuring differential relative to CRT, rmeasuring button-to-pixels-lag, measuring SMTT-style, measuring LeoBodnar-style, measuring using oscilloscope, measuring to beginning of GtG visibility, measuring to fully GtG visible pixel, measuring to 50% GtG point, etc. None of the lag measuring methodologies "map" very cleanly to each other (different website's lag-measuring techniques can't be easily compared accurately). Even a different model camera creates slightly different lag results with SMTT due to a different camera sensor rolling-scan adding a fudge factor to SMTT results of a different website, etc -- many situations, you see two different websites use SMTT and post several-milliseconds-different results for the exact same monitor. So, because of these error margins, it's quite possible all the 240Hz monitors using the same panel creates exactly identical lag test results. (I've seen evidence in many situations where same-panel-same-scaler situations, when "Instant Mode" enabled, creates identical results under microsecond-accurate photodiode tests). This topic is of big interest to me and I've recognized many flaws of many lag test methodologies and recognize the problems/subjectiveness of these.

Either way, getting off topic ;)
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by RealNC » 29 Apr 2017, 01:57

Oh. Yeah, reading what I wrote now indeed sounds condescending. Not my intention :)

I'll blame this one on the language barrier :P
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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by ModifiedFootage » 29 Apr 2017, 03:43

Heh, yeah that response triggered me. Decided to leave it a day instead of responding immediately. Looking at your other forum activity it was clear you where just doing your best to help, but it's always hard to take a step back and perceive the likely experiences others have had to arrive at what they've said instead of the implications that jump out at you.

It sounds like variance in latency in the class of monitors I'm interested in is of little significance.
What about variance in blur reduction? Increased clarity of image while turning in games is of importance to me.
Aside from that I'm unaware of what else I should care about.

I understand that when I say 'best for X' I'm asking a complex and poorly defined question.
I'm essentially seeking someone who can derive what I value from my question context (competitive gaming) and apply their knowledge on monitors to point me to a reduced solution space, hopefully with an explanation of the factors I might value differing between the solutions.
Since I'm mostly ignorant of what factors vary between these monitors that may be of significance to me, and to what degree these factors vary, I can't make a good call on how large the solution space is.
I mean as far as I knew there may have been a 240hz monitor that was better than the rest in ALL factors.

I also understand that we could arrive at an unsatisfactory solution because my values where not specific enough. For instance with competitive gaming as the only stated value one could end up trading 1ms of response time away for significantly better colour representation.
Once again the problem is I don't understand the nature of the solution space, and the ones that do don't understand my values. Finding a good solution would likely involve good judgement and back and forth between both parties.

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Re: Best monitor for fast-paced FPS games?

Post by RealNC » 29 Apr 2017, 05:03

I play a lot of CS:GO (maybe not so much lately, but I have over 1700 hours total). The most important thing for me was having a monitor that does not put me at a disadvantage compared to other players, but is still able to produce a decent image. Meaning excellent performance for competitive games, but at least good enough performance for other tasks.

If you're in the same boat, then what I'm saying is quite simple: shaving every last bit of input lag is not really important. A difference of 3 or 4ms really doesn't matter and is not worth sacrificing image quality, unless you're in a LAN setting where network latency doesn't exist (it's insignificant compared to server tickrate latency.) And even there, the situations where a 4ms difference actually influences an outcome are few and far between. How many times are two actions performed by two players closer than 5ms apart? It doesn't seem plausible that this happens more than maybe once every blue moon.

Where I'm going with this is that virtually all gaming monitors will give you excellent competitive gaming performance. So I would go the reverse route of what you're trying to do: compile a list of high-refresh (144Hz and up) gaming monitors that have the best image quality characteristics, and don't even consider the ones that have obvious image quality issues. Then see which of those that are left have the lowest input lag, highest refresh rates and best image quality.

As for G-Sync and ULMB, those are usually not used in competitive gaming, since tearing is not important there, and motion blur is "good enough" at 144Hz and up for most competitive games. They are still awesome to have for non-competitive gaming though.

(There's still a use for ULMB in some games where motion clarity is more important than input lag. Chief's example here has always been scanning the ground while flying a helicopter in, say, Battlefield. Although I'm not sure Battlefield and other games like it count as competitive.)

So is the PG258Q a bad monitor? Nope. It actually does tick the "excellent competitive gaming performance" checkbox. However, at $600 it gets you awfully close to a 1440p 165Hz 27" G-Sync IPS screen (about $30 difference) like the AG271QG, which are still very good for competitive gaming, but offer a quite improved image quality.

If the PG258Q would cost $500 or less, then I'd say sure, solid choice. But right now, I'm not sure its input lag difference is big enough to compromise image quality at that price.

(As a side-note: at least for CS:GO, player model size actually helps, and since on 27" monitors things are bigger, you have bigger heads to shoot at :mrgreen:)
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