Any reason not to buy the 27" Acer XB272 240hz?

[idred]

I really want a 27" 240hz monitor and I believe this Acer XB272 is the only one out there right now. I want the ultimate overwatch gaming monitor and I believe this may be the one. 24" monitors are too small for me and I prefer 27".

Is there any reason I should not purchase this, like perhaps the 24.5" 240hz monitors are that much better? Or some other reason?

Thanks

[lexlazootin]

Na, there is only currently one 240hz 27inch panel, what ever monitor you get with that spec is going to be identical. The board inside also matters but since it's using a G-Sync chip it's going to be pretty good configuability wise with good settings to adjust and a pretty good default setup.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Yes, the G-SYNC premium also provides a lot of non-G-SYNC benefits

- Generally better quality overdrive. The AOC 240Hz G-SYNC has vastly better motion (less ghosting/blurring) than the AOC 240Hz non-G-SYNC.

- ULMB mode. Super easy blur reduction mode that can be turned ON/OFF via monitor menus.

- Non-G-SYNC mode usually has slightly less lag on G-SYNC variants of the same display, thanks to G-SYNC encouraging monitor panel line-buffering (less laggy) instead of full frame-buffering (more laggy).

[idred]

Thanks guys, very helpful information.

Just got a schedule date when the monitor will be back in stock for next week.

One other quick question I was hoping you could answer. My original intent was to buy a 1080Ti, but I'm a little hesitant to pay $800 and there were no deals during this holiday week on the card.

Right now I am using a 120Hz Samsung S27A950D TN panel, and I must say this monitor works great. Maybe you remember this one from years ago.

If I use my current video card the 970GTX with the 27" 240HZ Acer XB272 monitor, will I be getting any benefit with this new monitor over my old Samsung if I am not hitting the 240HZ rates in overwatch? I may only hit like 100-120HZ in overwatch with the 970GTX.

Thanks.

[open]

You will have the benefit of smoother gameplay with gsync with a higher gsync celing of 240hz. So if your framerate spikes it will stay in gsync.

Also when you set it to 240hz gsync, the frames will scanout at 240hz speed from top to bottom at any framerate. So compared to a 120hz monitor you will have about 2ms less input lag in the middle of the screen and about 4ms less input lag on the bottom of the screen.

If you are into competitive overwatch I reccomend trying the game on low graphics settings. Everything you do adds up. My gpu takes about 3ms to render a frame on low vs about 6ms on high. Thats 3ms less input lag. Also when the gpu renders faster, it avoids making the cpu wait as often. This improves cpu performance and lowers input lag more. You also get the benefit of higher fps which helps alot. If you turn the MAIN graphics setting to low it turns off alot of physics objects and improves cpu performance more. You can have the MAIN graphics setting on anything and still adjust the individual settings to any value. All in all I highly reccomend this setup as it will provide a noticeable change in responsiveness. Also you can have the texture sampling on 4x or even 16x and textures on highest with little to no performance hit. So leave those up.

I am using a 1070 (laptop variant with 20% lower power cap) and a 6th gen i7 at 3.1ghz and can maintain very high fps. Usually I stay within the 200-300 fps range in teamfights. (Cpu is my limiting factor)

Finnaly advice would be to set overwatch to have vsync off in the nvidia control pannel. This way if you go over 240 fps, you will seamlessly roll over the vsync off and back to gsync on when you go under 240 fps again. Vsync off is less noticeable at 240hz and high framerates and your input lag will remain very low this way.

[RealNC]

That is so much wrong information, I don't even know where to begin correcting it :-/

I'll just say two things:

A) Don't waste money on a 240Hz if you're using a 970.
B) If you want lower input lag, cap your frame rate in OW.

[Chief Blur Buster]

A) Don't waste money on a 240Hz if you're using a 970.

Depends.
(A) Still benefits CS:GO, as it'll run amok at high framerates.
(B) Roughly halving lag jitter. The lag jitter of aiming is one refresh cycle during VSYNC OFF. 100fps@240Hz has less MIN/MAX lag variance than 100fps@144Hz = easier aiming.
(C) You still get lower input lag of a 240Hz scanout velocity, even if you run at only 50fps or 100fps.
(D) A monitor purchase usually lasts longer than a GPU purchase. He might be planning to buy a new GPU immediately on the GTX 1100 series, for example.
(E) This is a G-SYNC monitor, and G-SYNC versions of 240Hz are already confirmed to be more mature versions of 240Hz. Currently, the 240Hz GSYNC panels have less 'sample-specific' artifacts than inexpensive 144Hz panels -- less panel lottery issues (scanlines artifacts in the corner of cheap 144Hz monitors), no frame skipping issues, etc. From what I am seeing with my eyes, the G-SYNC 240Hz's do 144Hz better than most 144Hz monitors, and they do 240Hz with less artifacts than some of the cheaper 144Hz monitors.

B) If you want lower input lag, cap your frame rate in OW.

I know you already meant with G-SYNC, but readers might miss this, so:

With G-SYNC, yep.
With VSYNC OFF, no it still keeps going down
(input lag keeps going down the more and more framerate you go above refresh rate -- Benefits of Frame Rates Above Refresh Rate)

[RealNC]

B) If you want lower input lag, cap your frame rate in OW.

I know you already meant with G-SYNC, but readers might miss this, so:

With G-SYNC, yep.
With VSYNC OFF, no it still keeps going down
(input lag keeps going down the more and more framerate you go above refresh rate -- Benefits of Frame Rates Above Refresh Rate)

Latency is reduced by frame capping in all cases, at least when being GPU-limited. In OW, if you hit the 300FPS hard-cap constantly, you're fine. It's capped to 300, you hit the cap, you get the least amount of latency possible.

If you don't hit the 300FPS cap, you can reduce latency by capping lower than your average FPS. When hitting the frame cap, you basically get latency that would be similar to single-buffered rendering.

For example, if you run 100FPS uncapped (vsync OFF), you can get ~5ms of average latency reduction by capping to 99FPS. To get the same amount of latency reduction by targeting a higher frame rate, you'd need to render at 200FPS.

This effect was observed by jorimt by making OW GPU-limited and thus unable to hit the 300FPS hard-cap, which is the situation the OP is in.

As for the higher scanout rate of 240Hz, that's 2.8ms best-case (1.39ms average) latency reduction over 144Hz scanout, right? It's not worth the cost and the 240Hz capability is going to be wasted. For this monitor, I really recommend a 1070, which I think had a price reduction recently due to the release of the 1070 Ti.

[lexlazootin]

He gets less noticeable tearing running at 240hz without G-Sync and he also gets G-Sync which is dope. I had a 970 with a 240hz and i just lowered my graphics settings or played older games. It's a dope monitor either way.

I personally think it worth it for either of those things, but that's just me.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Latency is reduced by frame capping in all cases, at least when being GPU-limited. In OW, if you hit the 300FPS hard-cap constantly, you're fine. It's capped to 300, you hit the cap, you get the least amount of latency possible.

While you can get less latency with capped 300fps in many cases, not always -- lag can still keep going down if you uncap (in VSYNC OFF situation). Also, you can still have more lag-jitter at 300fps than at 500fps (MIN/MAX variances -- lag random jittering).

It is system dependant, there are still advantages to uncapping (in VSYNC OFF situation), which many CS:GO players do. For VSYNC OFF specifically, the benchmarks show capping to 1000fps or uncapping still outperformed 288fps capping in our charts, at least on the system Jorim tried it on.

If OP does not play CS:GO and nearly all framerates are below 240fps, this is moot anyway, but it's a worthy consideration.

It's more complicated of an interaction than all of this (e.g. you know, like early days of 1000Hz mice where it caused CPU-constraints and performance problems, and some judicious capping helped alleviate that). But the benchmarks show that uncapping is useful for CS:GO, assuming the system is not constrained in a way to require a cap.

That said: Bottom line -- from what I know, 970's are more than fast enough that uncapping outperforms capping in CS:GO for specifically the "VSYNC OFF" situation (not G-SYNC)

(Moot of course, if OP doesn't play CS;GO)

This effect was observed by jorimt by making OW GPU-limited and thus unable to hit the 300FPS hard-cap, which is the situation the OP is in.

Yes, but that's Overwatch, not CS;GO
Lag quirks can show up in a very game dependant way.
You can see Jorim's benchmarks on CS:GO where uncapping is still beneficial for at least one game (namely: CS:GO + VSYNC OFF).

Just saying that 240Hz is still worth it with a 970+CS:GO (in any mode, VSYNC OFF, capped, uncapped, G-SYNC). If the OP plays CS:GO or similar engines too, in addition to Overwatch. You might have meant "There's fewer benefits to 240Hz if you're only using 970 with OW" (there's still benefits)

As for the higher scanout rate of 240Hz, that's 2.8ms best-case (1.39ms average) latency reduction over 144Hz scanout, right? It's not worth the cost and the 240Hz capability is going to be wasted.

It's not that simplistic. Look beyond absolute latency.
-- MIN/MAX latency reduction is human-noticeable -- it's roughly the difference between a 125Hz mouse and a 500Hz mouse.
It's actually bigger than that when you think of min/max.
-- Things look less microstuttery during VSYNC OFF -- microstutter vibration is almost half amplitude. 100fps@240Hz is less microstuttery than 100fps@144Hz (that's VSYNC OFF microstuttering).
That's because of smaller aliasing effects with refresh-rate (partial VRR effect by sheer refresh-rate brute force -- eventually 1000Hz makes VRR mostly unnecessary) if you prefer VSYNC OFF instead of VRR.
-- Tearlines are shown almost half as long. For tearing-sensitive people who prefer VSYNC OFF, that's quite significant. Tearlines at 100fps@240Hz show half as briefly as 100fps@144Hz.

It's up to the OP to decide whether it is worth it or not -- we have readers of all budgets and "worth it" is an opinion. The misinformation against 240Hz is huge (sigh). The microstutter reduction from 144Hz to 240Hz is not quite as good as enabling G-SYNC.

Oh, and another bonus. 240Hz G-SYNC monitors have reliably brighter ULMB (I've never met a G-SYNC 240Hz without an approx 300-nit ULMB mode) and their ULMB go up to 144Hz. Another bonus, for those interested in "the best, brightest, and most colorful blur reduction mode".

Needless to say, it's surprisingly how little other websites know about the benefits of 240Hz. It's like the 1000Hz mouse days to me, all over again -- 1000Hz mice still benefitted 50fps and 100fps games -- and my experience is that lower framerates still gain other unexpected benefits that few people really pay attention to (like we do). The 240Hz misinformation on other websites is sheer stupidity, full stop. I still remember those early "Is 120Hz not worth it?" clickbait type headlines from almost a decade ago.

That said, whether or not 240Hz is worth the $, is a legitimate opinion. However, it's an opinion -- the OP needs to decide for themselves if it's worth it for them. Some of the benefits are truly worth it, and some are not. Overwatch may not be the only game they play, the person may have a desire for the "best ULMB possible in a 1080p monitor", or they may be very stutter/tearing sensitive (if VSYNC OFF), or they may be planning to buy a newer GPU this coming year or Boxing Day or such.

For this monitor, I really recommend a 1070, which I think had a price reduction recently due to the release of the 1070 Ti.

Good advice, and that is my recommendation too. But in this case, you can choose which one is the cart, and which one is the horse. You don't have to buy in a specific order.