So I have made my decision. Wait for IPS overclockable Gsync
Posted: 07 Jun 2014, 12:06
So after testing out gsync on the vg248qe for three hours at a friends place. I finally know what gsync is like. Firstly, I cannot tolerate the vg248qe. I'll mention again that I developed neurological issues more than a year ago out of the blue that affect my eyesight. And that probably factors in. My ips screen, the original Catleap 2b. Overclocks to 132hz without color degradation or brightness sacrifice. And it's picture quality is a 7/10 for an ips screen. While my 2560x1440, dell u2711 screen has a 10/10 picture - however the responsiveness is terrible. Whereas the catleap 2b, feels only like a 5% responsiveness degradation when compared to the vg248qe. When comparing the vg248qe to the catleap 2b, resolution aside and gsync aside, I found that the picture quality of the vg248qe was a 1/10 in comparison - and a 4/10 compared to other TN monitors. It destroys much detail. For example, I could barely see the difference between medium and ultra in watch dogs or assassins creed black flag. This is mostly due to a lot of texture detail and color grading is obviously made on higher quality screen than a low end TN. Watch dogs always looked bleached, with fluorescent colors. The detail of the textures was significantly reduced. The depth of the scene was also significantly reduced. It looked like a previous generation game. Whereas on the IPS screen. It looked better with all settings set to low, at 1280x720p (Although it's a 2560x1440 monitor). The difference in picture quality is insane.
So my decision is NOT to get any kind of TN panel unless the ROG Swift (PG278Q) manages to have a 5 or 6/10 picture quality when compared with the Catleap 2b. In other words, if the ROG Swift looks like a poor mans IPS or PLS. Then i'll be getting that. However if it looks more like the vg248qe. Forget it. The vg248qe is the ugliest picture quality on a panel that I have ever seen in my life. Bar none. My black and white antique CRT tv from the 1970's sitting in the garage looks significantly better.
That means, I'll unfortunately probably be waiting for IPS. Because the chances of the ROG swift looking like a IPS with bad viewing angles is LOW.
Ok onto gsync.
Mixed impressions. Is the technology a revolution? Absolutely. However some of my favorite games require some serious tweaking in order to get gsync running well on them. Skyrim, my favorite game, actually does seem to benefit from gsync despite some people saying otherwise (just need to make sure ipresentinterval is turned off, and gsync is enabled). Sure, it still stutters. But it no longer microstutters. Fallout 3 and oblivion are the same way. In fact, no games that I tested had any kind of microstutter anymore. All that was left was engine stutter. Microstutter was completely gone.
50fps looked like 50fps, 100fps looked like 100fps. And so on. This is not the case with vsync_off + high refresh.
The downside falls in line with what others have been saying, engine stutters become more apparent, due to microstutter vanishing. Games like deus ex, skyrim, fallout, watch dogs, and many others have a lot of engine stutter. So you need to drop settings in order to avoid that. However in every case I was able to tweak back settings until engine stutter became either less of an issue or no issue.
However this to some people, that got gsync as a way of raising every graphics setting available, might be a downside. I have noticed that setting anti aliasing to the highest does not affect engine stutter. Whereas things like texture quality and HBAO, physx effects, and the like, often do. Except in borderlands 2, which seems to manage physx without stuttering at all. While many people seem to think that gsync is a perfect fit for 4k. There will be an issue with vram. Since vram running out on 3gb cards is very likely on the most modern games. And that causes severe engine stuttering that gsync cannot fix. 6gb cards would be recommended with that situation.
And if watch dogs is any indication of vram usage in 2015, then perhaps we will all be needing 12gb cards at 4k.
Honestly, in my biased opinion, I think that 2560x1440 overclockable ips monitors with gsync are pretty much the ideal thing to have for anyone into general gaming rather than competitive for the next 5 years.
So my decision is NOT to get any kind of TN panel unless the ROG Swift (PG278Q) manages to have a 5 or 6/10 picture quality when compared with the Catleap 2b. In other words, if the ROG Swift looks like a poor mans IPS or PLS. Then i'll be getting that. However if it looks more like the vg248qe. Forget it. The vg248qe is the ugliest picture quality on a panel that I have ever seen in my life. Bar none. My black and white antique CRT tv from the 1970's sitting in the garage looks significantly better.
That means, I'll unfortunately probably be waiting for IPS. Because the chances of the ROG swift looking like a IPS with bad viewing angles is LOW.
Ok onto gsync.
Mixed impressions. Is the technology a revolution? Absolutely. However some of my favorite games require some serious tweaking in order to get gsync running well on them. Skyrim, my favorite game, actually does seem to benefit from gsync despite some people saying otherwise (just need to make sure ipresentinterval is turned off, and gsync is enabled). Sure, it still stutters. But it no longer microstutters. Fallout 3 and oblivion are the same way. In fact, no games that I tested had any kind of microstutter anymore. All that was left was engine stutter. Microstutter was completely gone.
50fps looked like 50fps, 100fps looked like 100fps. And so on. This is not the case with vsync_off + high refresh.
The downside falls in line with what others have been saying, engine stutters become more apparent, due to microstutter vanishing. Games like deus ex, skyrim, fallout, watch dogs, and many others have a lot of engine stutter. So you need to drop settings in order to avoid that. However in every case I was able to tweak back settings until engine stutter became either less of an issue or no issue.
However this to some people, that got gsync as a way of raising every graphics setting available, might be a downside. I have noticed that setting anti aliasing to the highest does not affect engine stutter. Whereas things like texture quality and HBAO, physx effects, and the like, often do. Except in borderlands 2, which seems to manage physx without stuttering at all. While many people seem to think that gsync is a perfect fit for 4k. There will be an issue with vram. Since vram running out on 3gb cards is very likely on the most modern games. And that causes severe engine stuttering that gsync cannot fix. 6gb cards would be recommended with that situation.
And if watch dogs is any indication of vram usage in 2015, then perhaps we will all be needing 12gb cards at 4k.
Honestly, in my biased opinion, I think that 2560x1440 overclockable ips monitors with gsync are pretty much the ideal thing to have for anyone into general gaming rather than competitive for the next 5 years.