Another monitor buying advice question

[kinkladze10]

Hi all.
I'm also looking for some advice.
I'm in the market for a new monitor, I really like the 27" Mac retina displays that you see on display but obviously I need something for the PC.

It's purely for games and I will probably buy a new PC Gaming rig as well which will be powered by an Nvidea card.

27" looks good but I'm lost with the jargon of the different display types and the various tech that's out there.
I know it needs a low response time but it seems to be a minefield to chose from.

I happy to pay for a quality product that will last me for the next 5 years.

Does anyone have any ideas for someone who's not been in the market for a while?

Cheers in advance.

[KeyboardDemon]

If I were in the market now then I would buy one of these little beauties.

It supports G-Sync, NVidia's variable refresh technology that will give you smoother rendering, runs up to 144hz refresh, has an IPS panel for excellent colour reproduction with massive viewing angles and a very fast 4ms response time. On paper at least, it sounds like a winner. If you're not far from Bolton you might be able to pop into Scan's store and see them on display there.

[kinkladze10]

That is rather nice.
How does it compare to the IMac 27 retina display?

Bolton is 50 minutes away so quite doable if they have them on display, for that amount of cash I'd like to see one in action.

I need to read up about the G-sync as I'm not sure what it does, does the G-sync have to have a compatible GPU?

[KeyboardDemon]

Yeah, it needs to be an NVidia GPU, here's a link, AMD offer Freesync which is a competing technology, it has lower costs of ownership due to not requiring a chip in the monitor to run the variable refresh rate technology, but as you said that it's an NVidia card that you wanted I didn't mention that above. Here's a link for more on Freesync.

[kinkladze10]

Thanks, I've always been an Nvidia person as opposed to AMD so I would go with them.
I notice the monitor above is 2k am I selling myself short by not going for a 4k?

I've no idea what the imac retina standard is but even though I can't use a mac I've always been impressed with the screen output.
How does this compare?

[KeyboardDemon]

Personally I don't think that there is a single GPU with enough grunt to power a 4k monitor and I don't think there is a 4k monitor that can work at a high enough refresh rate for me to be happy, so I wouldn't go 4k at the moment, but who knows what's around the next corner.

[DanceswithUnix]

What resolution are you used to?

Say you are used to a 24" monitor that is 1080p. At a normal viewing distance, can you see the individual pixels? Really clearly?

If you upgrade to a 1440p monitor, then that is 1440/1080 = 1.333 times more pixels on an axis, so the equivalent size would be 24x1.333 = 32"

So a 27" monitors which is 1440p has better pixel density and more usable pixel area than 1080. Seems about the ideal to me. More pixels will mean more work for the graphics card, so lower performance, so unless you have a heck of a budget I don't think 4K is ready yet.

[kinkladze10]

ah ok thanks guys I didn't realise that was the case.
My current monitor is 1920 x 1200 I think it's 24" It's a Viewsonic syncmaster 2693HM
It's served me well for the last 5-6 years but it's time to improve so if I'm going to splash out I want something really decent where I can really tell I have a quality display and something that will do justice with a decent gaming rig.

I did see that someone reviewd an extra wide monitor on here which was impressive but I can't find the link to it. think the aspect was 21.10 or something like that?

[kinkladze10]

Well I've been reading up on the monitors on Scan's sites both the Acer and the Asus top end models.
It's seems they are littered with problems, dead pixels, backlight bleed, dust behind the screens? one version it seems is on V2 already and this doesn't seem to have resolved anything.

So I've no idea what to do, for that amount of money I would expect something flawless but it seems they are far from it?

[jim]

Well I've been reading up on the monitors on Scan's sites both the Acer and the Asus top end models.
It's seems they are littered with problems, dead pixels, backlight bleed, dust behind the screens? one version it seems is on V2 already and this doesn't seem to have resolved anything.

So I've no idea what to do, for that amount of money I would expect something flawless but it seems they are far from it?

If you want a 144Hz 1440p screen then you can't guarantee getting something perfect right now. For one thing, there are just far too many pixels for them to guarantee that there won't be a single one that's dead.

You'll see more problems with the IPS screens because of people complaining about IPS glow - the TN screens don't have that issue which gives a better probability of people being happy with them.

The final thing you have to bear in mind is that you'll always see the complaints, and not the satisfied customers. So it's easy to think that there's a major issue with a monitor when actually it's say 1% of the population. But I would strongly recommend looking into warranties, your return rights (i.e. what used to be the DSR), etc.

[KeyboardDemon]

If you want a 144Hz 1440p screen then you can't guarantee getting something perfect right now. For one thing, there are just far too many pixels for them to guarantee that there won't be a single one that's dead.

My ROG Swift developed a dead pixel with a few months of ownership, I contacted the reseller and they sent out a new monitor plus a shipping return label and then arranged to have the old monitor collected.

You'll see more problems with the IPS screens because of people complaining about IPS glow - the TN screens don't have that issue which gives a better probability of people being happy with them.

I didn't know about this, I was starting to think I'd made a mistake but reading has been quite reassuring, thanks.

The final thing you have to bear in mind is that you'll always see the complaints, and not the satisfied customers. So it's easy to think that there's a major issue with a monitor when actually it's say 1% of the population. But I would strongly recommend looking into warranties, your return rights (i.e. what used to be the DSR), etc.

Many of those people complaining will complain in more than one place, sometimes registering with multiple sites so they can 'warn' as many people as possible like they think they are doing the world a service when in reality all they are doing is venting steam and then making things look disproportionately worse than they really are. Look at the complaints, but reading customer reviews stick to one or two trusted review sites such as Trustpilot, trusted reviews and reviews posted directly with google as all of these sites are validated before the reviews are posted publicly online.

[EndlessWaves]

AMD offer Freesync which is a competing technology

Not exactly the case. Freesync is AMD's program to support and promote the variable refresh technology that's been added to the DisplayPort standard (called Adaptive Sync) rather than introducing a vendor specific technology as nVidia did with G-Sync.

I did see that someone reviewd an extra wide monitor on here which was impressive but I can't find the link to it. think the aspect was 21.10 or something like that?

21:9 monitors are available in two resolutions right now. 2560x1080 and 3440x1440.

The former is available in 25", 29" and 34" sizes and the latter in 34". Wider screens exaggerate diagonals, so the 29" 2560x1080 is the closest to your current screen in sizing (i.e. it'd be the same height if it had the same number of vertical pixels, so it's slightly shorter) while the 34" 3440x1440 is the widened version of the 27" 2560x1440 screen.

Normally resolution is linked to the size of stuff on screen. The higher the resolution the more stuff you can have on screen. The size of the screen only scales everything equally and doesn't determine how much fits on.

This is a bit limiting so there is a move towards unlinking resolution from sizing so extra pixels can be used to add more details. Very high resolution (high DPI) screens that allow this are coming onto the market at the moment and this is what Apple markets using the Retina label.

So the 27" iMac has the space of a 2560x1440 screen but actually uses four times that resolution at 5120x2880 (whole naming scaling works best, so 2x in each direction).

HP Also offer a monitor at that resolution (Z27p) and I believe Dell have one planned. That particular resolution is fairly expensive at the moment though (the HP is £1k) and a more cost effective option is 3840x2160 which is quad 1920x1080. Almost the same resolution as your current monitor but with more detail. These start at around £200-250.

3840x2160 is also the resolution that 4k/Ultra High Definition TVs use so you may also see it marketed as that.

Bear in mind that after years of everything being circa 96dpi not all programs are ready to support High DPI displays yet so you will run across the occasional program that's tiny or distorted.

Because whole number scaling tends to work very well, you should be able to run games at the much less demanding 1920x1080 without many of the disadvantages you'd normally get from running at non-native resolutions. Although curiously enough there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for implementing the simple scaling method (nearest neighbour interpolation) to make them look exactly as they would on a 1920x1080 display which I feel is a bit of a shame.

It's seems they are littered with problems, dead pixels, backlight bleed, dust behind the screens? one version it seems is on V2 already and this doesn't seem to have resolved anything.

A combination of people being extremely picky and cutting edge technology. You can assume an expensive monitors is going to be very good even when they're not perfect.

You'll see more problems with the IPS screens because of people complaining about IPS glow - the TN screens don't have that issue which gives a better probability of people being happy with them.

I thought IPS Glow was the tendency of contrast to reduce when viewed sideways (or at the edges of the screen)? While TN screens don't tend to suffer that specific problem they're much worse when it comes to distortion at the edges and from an angle generally. This would be the classic test:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing...p#angle_purple
On a TN it's very hard to see as anything other than a gradient because of the top/bottom distortion instead of the solid single colour it is (see depiction at the bottom of the page if you don't have a TN screen).

Generally though all LCD flaws (including ghosting, 'low response times') are fairly under control these days and it comes down to what you personally notice as to which you need to prioritise. Personally I really struggle to see ghosting but TN top to bottom contrast change can really annoy me in some games (dim cave systems and other low contrast images are the worst).

[jim]

I thought IPS Glow was the tendency of contrast to reduce when viewed sideways (or at the edges of the screen)? While TN screens don't tend to suffer that specific problem they're much worse when it comes to distortion at the edges and from an angle generally. This would be the classic test:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing...p#angle_purple
On a TN it's very hard to see as anything other than a gradient because of the top/bottom distortion instead of the solid single colour it is (see depiction at the bottom of the page if you don't have a TN screen).

Generally though all LCD flaws (including ghosting, 'low response times') are fairly under control these days and it comes down to what you personally notice as to which you need to prioritise. Personally I really struggle to see ghosting but TN top to bottom contrast change can really annoy me in some games (dim cave systems and other low contrast images are the worst).

If you look at modern IPS panels, you'll typically see lighting distortion of some degree from straight on, typically referred to as IPS glow / backlight bleed - in bad cases you'll see complaints that look like this: http://i.imgur.com/wHeDp.jpg

I think the thing is that TN panels have become much better recently, whilst IPS have become much worse (or at the very least less consistent). Right now, using a Samsung TN alongside Dell IPS, I can't tell the difference. If I put my chin on my desk, then the TN looks off - but why would I do that?

The problem is that many web communities (HEXUS as much as any) are so pro-IPS from the experience a few years ago when TN was terrible and IPS was great that we'll recommend IPS no matter what. And honestly, right now, I think in many cases people might be better off with TN.