Asus Rog Swift PG278Q

[Squeetard]

I love my VG278he. Sold my Dell U2711 as soon as I got this one.
You guys rave about the color accuracy of ips but who really [cares] when it all washes out as soon as you have to move. And color accuracy only matters if you intend to print what you are viewing, think about that. I actually liked the colors on the TN better, seemed more vibrant, but that is a matter of personal preference.
As far as gaming goes there is nothing like blur free movement. You can strafe and pan and everything stays in focus, like the CRT's of 15 years ago. We really took a giant leap back in order to have flat screens.
I've got to run at 120fps though for perfect blur free gaming(xfire 7970's), this monitor will be no different. I'm waiting for a variable refresh + variable strobe solution before I'll spend my money.

Profanity isn't allowed in the technical forums.
-- stahlhart

 

[Kronvict]

In stock on newegg GOGOGO!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236405

 

[jackstar7]

Out of Stock already.

Really hope we see something similar from BenQ/Acer/etc. soon to just help people get these so we can hear more reviews.

 

[jackstar7]

With regards to the newegg listing, does anyone think the MSRP is actually $899?

 

[Canbacon]

Nope, definitely stated from ASUS to be 799 in the US. I bet it is a newegg auto pricing thing.

Unfortunately for Canada it is slated for a 899 release price. Hopefully my contact can get me a better deal.

 

[BrightCandle]

Mine arrived today and I have been trying out the gsync mode initially. My experience differs depending on the game.

The crew beta
I updated the config so it ran at 60hz. The issue was that one the FPS dropped to 57 I noticed. It was more a momentarily obvious change and then it was smooth again. At 30 fps it wasn't playable even with gsync. So all in all I am not convinced gsync works well with this game, if at all. But then its capped to 30 fps out of the box and has a frame limiter so yeah its a rubbish engine.

Watchdogs
I got quite a lot of stutter on ultra graphics (with high textures) and I thought it would be nice to see that gone. Gsync in this case was worse, I could see how poor the engine is and how much it stutters. The game was not playable on settings I have previously played the game on with vsync off. If I set vsync on then gsync doesn't enable and with vsync off it enabled but didn't feel right, had an inherent stutter I couldn't get rid of even with lower settings.

BF4
After messing with the settings and getting to similar setting as before I had gameplay in the 70-120 fps ranges. With vsync off gsync enabled but the game wasn't smooth, there was something wrong. I turned vsync on and the microstutter went away and it was smooth, smoother than I have ever played on. I felt in control and in touch with the game in a way I haven't experienced before, I was a lot more accurate with my assault kit than I usually am, I expect my K/D will go up even further now.

Arma 3
This game has frame rate issues, it pretty much can't get above 80 fps no matter what you do. Played some single player and fps was regularly down to high 30's. Vsync on or off made no apparent difference and it ran well. I notice an amount of input latency that I haven't noticed with vsync off before, but that could very well be the game, its always had "weight" on the guns.

So far I wouldn't call it exactly perfect, I can only really say it worked as I expected in 1 out of the 4 games I played, and that is a game that for me is running at 70+ hz for me.

The colour and contrast is great, it equals my Dell 2410 (10 bit IPS). But the monitor also has really good overdrive and in motion the image remains pretty clear, its a little better than the Benq XL2411T. The TN colour shift is really very much reduced on this monitor compared to the Benq as well. At a normal seating directly in front of the monitor there isn't an issue with corners being shifted.

So far I wouldn't say I would recommend a lightboost 2 user to upgrade unless you normally run sub 60hz games that are likely to benefit. Gsync seems to be buggy and of marginal value above that and so far I have found it to be kind of buggy/poorly supported in games. I will keep testing other games and see how it goes.

 

[jackstar7]

First-hand experience.

Thanks for the personal experiences. Hopefully your issues can be addressed and you'll get the experience you want across the board.

 

[thedosbox]

Mine arrived today and I have been trying out the gsync mode initially. My experience differs depending on the game.

Cool, it'll be interesting to hear about how G-sync compares with vsync enabled at different frequencies.

 

[BrightCandle]

We talked about the bezels before and I measured it with a ruler. The "effective" total bezel for an eyefinity/surround user is either 11mm or 13mm. The main part of the bezel itself is quite thin, but there is the black area around the pixels, there is the outer bezel and it is also sloped outwards to the rear which adds another 2mm or so to the total width. If your surround setup was sloped perfectly such that the two sets of slopes matched then you could get it down to 11mm, but it looks far too steep to me for that purpose and worst case is more like 13mm.

That compares to a normal monitor which is 15mm-17mm. So it is a thin bezel, just no where near as thin as Asus claims it is in practice when you actually account for pixel to pixel distance.

 

[3DVagabond]

@BrightCandle,

Any idea/guesses as to how Gsync could be game dependent?

 

[Mand]

@BrightCandle,

Any idea/guesses as to how Gsync could be game dependent?

G-Sync doesn't remove all sources of stutter, just ones that come from variable render time. If the game engine, itself, is stuttering, then that will still show up. And it'll look far worse on G-Sync because you don't have other visual artifacts for it to hide behind. No other sources of stutter, no tearing.

Bad engines will show their true colors.

 

[wand3r3r]

Thanks for the impressions.

Is there updated firmware or anything that could fix it?

It sounds a little disappointing but perhaps the benefits will become more noticeable when you get more accustomed to it? I thought it would be clearly smoother even down to lower fps (due to the lack of tearing). If it's not as good as hyped I'm losing interest in waiting for 4k (gsync/async).

 

[Mand]

Brightcandle, after reading your feedback I'm not clear you had G-Sync properly enabled. It certainly doesn't sound like pretty much any firsthand experience of G-Sync I've read before. What specific steps did you take to turn it on? My understanding is that when properly configured, the G-Sync controls will override a game's in-game vsync option, so that if you were toggling it in a game nothing should happen. I could be mistaken, but I think it's worth checking if all the necessary settings were enabled.

"buggy and of marginal value" is so completely at odds with everything else I've heard, from both reviewers and users. And it's not as if the games you picked are all that unusual. Something's got to be wrong.

 

[BrightCandle]

Metro last light seems to have a problem. Frame rates on high and medium graphics are well below 30 a lot of the time, game is unplayable. When the frame rate is being gsynced its actually OK but once we are down into vsync territory its awful. This game needed vsync off for gsync to enable.

Its becoming a weird thing to note actually, some games need vsync on to enable gsync properly, some off, and some behaving oddly if you choose the wrong one.

1/5 worked as well/better with gsync so far!

The way you can determine if gsync is working is via the monitor light. Its white if its normal vsync mode and it goes red if its gsync mode. This is the primary way to tell the difference (visually its also obvious based on the smoothness of motion). I am certain its enabling, there is no vsync stutter when its working as it should.

 

[Mand]

Its becoming a weird thing to note actually, some games need vsync on to enable gsync properly, some off, and some behaving oddly if you choose the wrong one.

Okay this is definitely not supposed to happen. Did you both enable G-Sync, and go to Manage 3D settings to force G-Sync as the vertical sync option in global settings, as described here?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rog-swift-pg278q-g-sync-monitor,3897-2.html

Also, were you running any of these games in windowed mode, or fullscreen windowed?

 

[bystander36]

I wonder if your experiences are a result of SLI.

 

[BrightCandle]

GeForce experience's frame counter certainly isn't working right. Its only really displaying every other frame when gsync is enabled. So perhaps I can't trust the frame rate numbers its pumping out either.

Tomb Raider - vsync off - gsync does enable. However one moment in the opening game FPS dropped to 57, immediate stutter. Its fine when its running at 100 fps as it usually does but the moment it drops down its useless.

Metro LL - just a quick update, turns out it doesn't change settings properly, game needs a full restart. FPS is fixed on high settings (very high was potentially running out of VRAM in some scenes by the looks of things) and then vsync off is better. With vsync on this game seemed to be capped to 60 fps for some reason, vsync off its varying as it should be.

I am absolutely enabling gsync correctly, I have gone through the instructions and checked everything, although it was all setup correctly the moment the monitor was detected. Its not rocket science, it does work in BF4 without a doubt, its just not working very well in a variety of other games. Based on reviews I was expecting that the game setting for vsync wouldn't matter, but it clearly does for me and varies per game.

My initially impressions is this is extremely buggy. It enables just fine but a lot of games are not running well, it could very well be the impact of SLI breaking things. Tom Paterson claimed the other day it helps reduce SLI stutter, my experience is the exact opposite, some games are unplayable with gsync enabled and fine with vsync off.

 

[Grooveriding]

Perhaps it is the monitor that is buggy. The gsync upgrade kit for that other monitor has been available for some time and we haven't heard about these levels of issues with gsync prior to now, whereas the monitor is new and may be the problem.

I'd try using a different DP cable. Are you using the one that came with the monitor ? I suppose that is probably not the problem, but I have heard of DP cables causing all sorts of weird behaviour before.

 

[bystander36]

@BrightCandle: Could you try disabling one of those 680's and see how the experience is? I'd like to know if SLI plays a part in your troubles.

 

[toyota]

@BrightCandle: Could you try disabling one of those 680's and see how the experience is? I'd like to know if SLI plays a part in your troubles.

yeah I was about to ask the same thing

 

[3DVagabond]

G-Sync doesn't remove all sources of stutter, just ones that come from variable render time. If the game engine, itself, is stuttering, then that will still show up. And it'll look far worse on G-Sync because you don't have other visual artifacts for it to hide behind. No other sources of stutter, no tearing.

Bad engines will show their true colors.

Sorry, that doesn't make any sense. Remove the stutter Vsync creates with the violent FPS changes and now you notice other stuttering that's always been there but you couldn't see?

 

[know of fence]

If you want no tearing, you want G-Sync.

What ULMB does is strobe the backlight behind the liquid crystal panel. It turns off the backlight while the pixels are transitioning, then turns it on while they're static and unchanging, then turn it off again as they transition to the next frame.

Since you're not seeing intermediate pixel transitions, the "persistence" of an image is drastically reduced. If you have a high enough strobe frequency, you also don't see any flicker. The result is clean, sharp animation with no blurring for moving objects, and that motion blur is what ULMB is trying to reduce (Ultra Low Motion Blur).

What ULMB doesn't do is affect tearing in any way whatsoever.

Double and triple buffering refers to different ways you can run traditional vsync, and they have pros and cons. G-Sync, however, does away with all of the cons, and leaves only the pros.

From what you describe, you'll be wanting to use G-Sync rather than ULMB. That's my plan as well, as tearing in particular is something I just can't stand. I also don't trust basically any game to not have drops in framerate, and G-Sync compensates for that without causing stutter as well.

I mostly agree, but tearing is a bigger issue for 60 Hz Monitors. A high refresh rate [85-120 Hz] with and without Vsync does reduce tearing and it's a requirement for ULMB.

Firstly all possible V-sync delays are halved at 120 Hz. Where G-sync ideally removes all the synchronization errors, a 120 Hz monitor has already reduced the brunt of those delays.
Secondly on 120 Hz monitor (V-sync off) tears are either smaller at high FPS or less frequent at low FPS. It's probably still visible but not nearly as bad as an average 60 Hz screen.

 

[BrightCandle]

So I have spent a couple of days with the monitor now and have got to the bottom of the issues I was having. Anyone getting one of these monitors new you need to heed the following:
1) If you are coming from 1080p you'll be changing settings, restart the game after you do it! The Nvidia gsync drivers don't seem to like changes in resolution, anything that causes the monitor to reset its mode can cause issues. In game it'll show stutter or worse performance, something a game restart will solve.
2) Almost all games are better with vsync in the options set to off. Some games seem to do frame capping when vsync is on, setting to 60hz usually and you want to avoid that. I have also found in Arma 3 it causes some input lag which isn't there with vsync off. But just like (1) changing and then using it straight away sometimes doesn't turn out so good. I blame the drivers, bad Nvidia hasn't tested that scenario and it shows.
3) Reinstall your Nvidia drivers after the install of the monitor. For whatever reason my games did not perform right until the driver was reinstalled. Metro last light was the first example but the Crew beta also suffered.

The odd thing that has happened this week as graphics settings have been going up. I had gotten used to running at 60+ hz all the time (vsync off) for smoothness shake on my Benq XL2411T and having used gsync for a while I can say I am pretty happy at 50hz or more with gsync and maybe as low as 40 in some games like Arma 3. So quite a few games (Tomb Raider, Metro Last Light, Witcher 2) now all look quite a bit better with higher quality settings and gsync has allowed that to happen. Even playing BF4 where I like really high frame rates I have gone from 120-170 fps to 70-90 with some improved AA that reduces the crawl in the distance and the higher resolution and don't notice the difference in performance. I can't take it down to 50 ish however because the thing I want more of is AA and I am hitting into VRAM limits.

Its definitely an improvement over vsync. There is still some game stutter here and there, but at least now I know its the game (looking at you Tomb Raider!) not the GPU. I don't notice big reductions in frame rate now, and they are definitely happening they just aren't important any more. I can now use Nvidia's recommend settings for games and never really have a problem. 30 hz still isn't smooth, its more playable to drop into the 30-40 range than it was with vsync on or off but its still not pleasant. The one thing the crew has taught me is just how bad 30hz really is, I can't believe the console guys are happy with that because on this monitor 30hz locked doesn't look good, its not stuttering its just really obvious its low frame rate. I do run with motion blur and such off which only makes low frame rate that much worse but that game better not come locked to 30 out of the box!

Colour quality is significantly better than the Benq before. Its a lot more vibrant and it also supports a lower brightness so I can run it at the brightness I want without messing with anything else. Its definitely better than the Dell 2410. The static image compared to the IPS is about the same, I can't tell any quality difference by eye but when the game is moving its so obvious how good the blur reduction is on this monitor. Its a little better than the Benq in that department, there is a little less overshoot so the image is a bit sharper. Enormously sharper than the Dell of course but also better than the light boost 2 monitor.

All in all it meets its tag line, ultimate gamers monitor for an extortionate price.

 

[Mand]

2) Almost all games are better with vsync in the options set to off.

This rings a bell, I believe they said that you should do this as part of enabling g-sync, that all games should be set to vsync off in-game, while using the global settings to enable g-sync.

Nice to hear you got the issues resolved. Changing resolutions causing issues is something I hadn't heard of before. Is there any way to communicate that to Nvidia so they can fix it in the driver?

And yeah, whoever decided 30 FPS was accepable...uhh....yeah......

 

[jackstar7]

more thoughts.

Thanks for coming back and extrapolating on issues and resolutions.

If you don't mind, have you tried playing anything non-demanding (CS:GO, TF2, etc.) to check out the ULMB option and how well that does?