Advise on Dual Monitor Upgrade (TN &/or IPS )

[Jimscreen]

Hey guys

I used to have a Dual Monitor Setup, one 22inch TN and one 24inch TN. One was my main gaming monitor and the other was used for Youtube/Guides/Disco/etc, also the dual setup is very usefull for working from home. My main game is WoW/LoL but i spent a lot time on FPS games (OW and PUBG, maybe Valorant in the future) cause of IRL friends (I also play random 60fps locked games, when bored).

Everything was fine till 3weeks ago i stayed at a friend, who had 240Hz Monitor (PG258Q if not mistaken) and when i returned to my screens it felt wrong. So i decided to upgrade and for 1 week i have been reading countless posts, concluding that there isnt a perfect monitor and that the differences between top monitors are personal choises (but i have zero experience on those extras, i dont even know if strobing tires my eyes). Unfortunately 3 days ago one of my monitors died (10 years old) and because my other panel is even older (12years old) i am in search of two new Monitors, so i wanted to speed up my search by getting some opinions. My main thought is one "Fast" screen (TN?) for FPS games and one IPS with better image (and i guess 144Hz) for Movies and other games.

One setup im getting close is : MSI MAG251RX 480e (or Alienware AW2521HF 350e) and Zowie XL2546S 490e

In the "fast" monitor category, things are easier
Zowie XL2546S 490e (Most ppl top choise even my friend was talking about upgrading to this)
Asus PG258Q 500e (If its the one my friend had, i have already played with it and had no problems. Safer choise?)
Asus XG258Q 480e (I have seen some ppl swearing thats its the fastest Monitor and complain about overshooting outside of games)
Asus PG259QN 800e (Not a lot reviews out there but seems to be on par with above monitors. How is it on lower Hz? Could i play all my games here and get a cheaper 2nd Monitor? )
Most likely any choise will be fine.

Better image/colour 2nd Monitor
Here i had a lot harder time to find reviews and monitors, as most sides are talking about 27ich IPS panels. While i havent anything against 27inch, i ve never played on that size, but i have a feeling that its going to be BIG (i tend to go very close to my screens). When i filter my country e-shops i only get 3 24ich IPS 144Hz G-sync monitors: Msi MAG251RX 480e, Alienware AW2521HF 350e and ASUS VG259QM 400e. I turned down Asus cause its not very good at lower Hz (the main use will be low Hz games/movies and desktop apps) and some ppl talked about worse colours than the other two.
Is MSI/Alienware pointless if i have one of the above monitors? Do you have any other monitor to suggest?

Sorry for the long post, but i cant make up my mind for what is the better choise.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Don't get 144Hz IPS. The new "Fast IPS" technology is mainly found in newer 2020-era 165Hz-and-higher IPS monitors.

Almost all 240Hz+ monitors now offer both optional VRR and/or strobing, so you can turn ON/OFF those whenever you feel like it.

If you play console games and want 240Hz, the XG258 is deliciously low latency, the panel syncs better to the fixed refresh rate of the signal. But this doesn't matter for 60fps material on PC, since you can simply use VRR for ultra-low-lag 60fps in your locked-framerate games.

If you want a good general purpose monitor that can be used for both gaming and competitive, the new "Fast IPS" is suitable for most people except maybe for the ones earning money in esports playing on BenQ XL2546's. However, even the 360Hz PG259QN can now out-compete the BenQs in specificultrahigh-framerate games (line-item) with specific optimizations (2000Hz mouse poll rate, framerates 360fps+) necessary to milk the 360 Hz advantages properly.

If you are using a dual monitor setup, you probably want both of them to be the same refresh rate. On the other hand, you can lower the high-Hz monitor to match the refresh rate of the 2nd monitor. Software such as DisplayFusion can make multimonitor management easier via the press of a hotkey. Stutters can appear if you run windowed apps on two different-Hz monitors. The best way to play games on multimonitor is making sure the highest-Hz is primary, and running fullscreen exclusive (rather than borderless or windowed).

If you wanted the best of the best, and you preferred 2 monitors, I'd go for a 360Hz monitor (PG259QN) and an XL2546=series combo. If you are super-competitive, some games will win better with the XL2546 and other games will win better with PG259QN.

If you just wanted one jack-of-all-trades monitor to do everything, one of the upcoming 1440p 240Hz IPS monitors might fit the bill.

You might want to make one of the two a wide-gamut (e.g. NanoIPS type), the 1440p 240Hz IPS monitor is supposed to be wide-gamut -- combines wide gamut, high resolution, great colors, and high refresh rate. An RTX 3080 should be able to push 1440p at high frame rates in many popular competitive games.

[1mthedudeman]

Don't get 144Hz IPS. The new "Fast IPS" technology is mainly found in newer 2020-era 165Hz-and-higher IPS monitors.

Almost all 240Hz+ monitors now offer both optional VRR and/or strobing, so you can turn ON/OFF those whenever you feel like it.

If you play console games and want 240Hz, the XG258 is deliciously low latency, the panel syncs better to the fixed refresh rate of the signal. But this doesn't matter for 60fps material on PC, since you can simply use VRR for ultra-low-lag 60fps in your locked-framerate games.

If you want a good general purpose monitor that can be used for both gaming and competitive, the new "Fast IPS" is suitable for most people except maybe for the ones earning money in esports playing on BenQ XL2546's. However, even the 360Hz PG259QN can now out-compete the BenQs in specificultrahigh-framerate games (line-item) with specific optimizations (2000Hz mouse poll rate, framerates 360fps+) necessary to milk the 360 Hz advantages properly.

If you are using a dual monitor setup, you probably want both of them to be the same refresh rate. On the other hand, you can lower the high-Hz monitor to match the refresh rate of the 2nd monitor. Software such as DisplayFusion can make multimonitor management easier via the press of a hotkey. Stutters can appear if you run windowed apps on two different-Hz monitors. The best way to play games on multimonitor is making sure the highest-Hz is primary, and running fullscreen exclusive (rather than borderless or windowed).

If you wanted the best of the best, and you preferred 2 monitors, I'd go for a 360Hz monitor (PG259QN) and an XL2546=series combo. If you are super-competitive, some games will win better with the XL2546 and other games will win better with PG259QN.

If you just wanted one jack-of-all-trades monitor to do everything, one of the upcoming 1440p 240Hz IPS monitors might fit the bill.

You might want to make one of the two a wide-gamut (e.g. NanoIPS type), the 1440p 240Hz IPS monitor is supposed to be wide-gamut -- combines wide gamut, high resolution, great colors, and high refresh rate. An RTX 3080 should be able to push 1440p at high frame rates in many popular competitive games.

Would a VG259QM(main) and VG27AQ(secondary) be a good combo? Assuming cant afford the PG259QN

[Chief Blur Buster]

Would a VG259QM(main) and VG27AQ(secondary) be a good combo? Assuming cant afford the PG259QN

VG259QM is a good compromise for a Fast IPS. That said, VG27AQ is not Fast IPS, as far as I know.

However, if you can get that panel much more cheaply than any new 165 Hz Fast IPS ("1ms GtG IPS") such as LG 27GL850 or Viewsonic XG270QG, then it's certainly a very good pleasing monitor. I suspect, though, you can now find a Fast IPS 1440p 165Hz for almost the same price as yesteryear IPS, if you looked carefully and watched for sales. Anything with a "NanoIPS" label or a "2020 release date" would qualify. While not all Fast IPS panels are Nano IPS, the Nano IPS high-Hz monitors are all Fast IPS (converse is true). Plus, the wider color gamut of NanoIPS is quite pleasing to the eyes in casual gaming. Despite its problems with strobing (red phosphor ghosting), high-framerate wide-gamut Fast IPS is very eye-pleasing for non-strobed casual gaming -- brilliant colors.

For example, out of the dozens of monitors I have at Blur Busters headquarters, I personally fully intend to play Cyberpunk 2077 on one of my 165Hz NanoIPS monitors since RTX ON won't allow me to reach 240fps+ anyway for all that delicious raytraced goodness, even with DLSS 2.0 frame rate amplification. Unless I get a FALD (locally dimmed G-SYNC Ultimate) or a LG CX OLED in a Black Friday sale -- then that will be my CyberPunk 2077 display of choice.

Now, in some respects the VG259QM can outperform a PG259QN, since VG259QM has ELMB-SYNC. While it has its "quirks", it is quite usable when your game is running near maximum framerates.

If you're hell bent on staying dual monitor, these would also be legitimate options:
- An expensive jack-of-all-trades primary + keep one of your TN as a secondary

Which could be:
- Get the 360Hz PG259QN as a primary + keep one of your TN as a secondary
- Wait for 1440p 240Hz NanoIPS (2021) + keep one of your TN as a secondary

But this is also a great choice:
- Get the VG259QM as a primary + get a NanoIPS 1440p as a secondary

[Jimscreen]

Thank you for your response, already helped to clear up some of my choises.

About console, i dont use any of them. But dual monitor set up, is a must for me. I already fill blind with one of them gone.

If i went PG259QN and XL2546S combo, i guess Asus would be the "slower" game monitor (like WoW which have very unstable fps).

On other hand if i went for a NanoIPS (i havent done lot of research about em, but i guess u mean smthng like Asus XG279Q / Viewsonic XG270QG), would i get much better colours/image than Asus PG259QN? And with which 2nd monitor would you pair it up? BenQ?

One extra question: Isnt G-Sync / G-Sync Comp really helpfull for fps unstable games like WoW?

[Chief Blur Buster]

On other hand if i went for a NanoIPS (i havent done lot of research about em, but i guess u mean smthng like Asus XG279Q / Viewsonic XG270QG), would i get much better colours/image than Asus PG259QN? And with which 2nd monitor would you pair it up? BenQ?

The NanoIPS options has much better colors than the 280Hz and 360Hz monitor options, and better colors than all XL-series BenQ monitors. That's the conundrum until we've got 240Hz NanoIPS on the market (soon) but we are already getting closer to having cake and eating it too (unless you are tops in an esports career and need the features of a BenQ XL2546 series).

If you go dual monitor with a BenQ XL series, I highly recommend making your secondary a NanoIPS, to satiate your great-colors high-Hz needs. You can still optimize a PG259QN to beat XL2546 players in some games though (especially if you get a 2000Hz+ capable mouse that 360Hz kinda requires) but if you go for the tried and true, XL2546 series is really hard to beat if you play at least semi-proessionally or high-levelled competitive.

One extra question: Isnt G-Sync / G-Sync Comp really helpfull for fps unstable games like WoW?

Yes, it is beneficial for WoW. Use VSYNC OFF in the game, while you use "G-SYNC" + "VSYNC ON" in NVIDIA Control Panel. Use Borderless fullscreen + enable G-SYNC windowed. You'll need to make the monitor the primary. WoW doesn't support exclusive fullscreen so make sure you don't have video / animated graphics on your secondary. Static documents for walkthroughs (Notepad, Word, or a non-animating HTML page with no ad banner or single pixel of change) will be fine. It's the problem of Windows DWM being a single-Hz compositor.

For this kind of setup, you will need to occasionally switch primary. Use DisplayFusion to have a hotkey that instantly switches which monitor is the primary monitor. You can have a near-identical multimonitor profile with only the primary monitor being different.

[1mthedudeman]

Would a VG259QM(main) and VG27AQ(secondary) be a good combo? Assuming cant afford the PG259QN

VG259QM is a good compromise for a Fast IPS. That said, VG27AQ is not Fast IPS, as far as I know.

However, if you can get that panel much more cheaply than any new 165 Hz Fast IPS ("1ms GtG IPS") such as LG 27GL850 or Viewsonic XG270QG, then it's certainly a very good pleasing monitor. I suspect, though, you can now find a Fast IPS 1440p 165Hz for almost the same price as yesteryear IPS, if you looked carefully and watched for sales. Anything with a "NanoIPS" label or a "2020 release date" would qualify. While not all Fast IPS panels are Nano IPS, the Nano IPS high-Hz monitors are all Fast IPS (converse is true). Plus, the wider color gamut of NanoIPS is quite pleasing to the eyes in casual gaming. Despite its problems with strobing (red phosphor ghosting), high-framerate wide-gamut Fast IPS is very eye-pleasing for non-strobed casual gaming -- brilliant colors.

For example, out of the dozens of monitors I have at Blur Busters headquarters, I personally fully intend to play Cyberpunk 2077 on one of my 165Hz NanoIPS monitors since RTX ON won't allow me to reach 240fps+ anyway for all that delicious raytraced goodness, even with DLSS 2.0 frame rate amplification. Unless I get a FALD (locally dimmed G-SYNC Ultimate) or a LG CX OLED in a Black Friday sale -- then that will be my CyberPunk 2077 display of choice.

Now, in some respects the VG259QM can outperform a PG259QN, since VG259QM has ELMB-SYNC. While it has its "quirks", it is quite usable when your game is running near maximum framerates.

If you're hell bent on staying dual monitor, these would also be legitimate options:
- An expensive jack-of-all-trades primary + keep one of your TN as a secondary

Which could be:
- Get the 360Hz PG259QN as a primary + keep one of your TN as a secondary
- Wait for 1440p 240Hz NanoIPS (2021) + keep one of your TN as a secondary

But this is also a great choice:
- Get the VG259QM as a primary + get a NanoIPS 1440p as a secondary

Good info, one reason I was looking at the VG27AQ as secondary is its lower input lag if I want to hook up a console for PS exclusive games and its on sale at $399