Hackl
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Jul 4, 2015 14:09:47 GMT -5
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Post by Hackl on Jul 4, 2015 14:09:47 GMT -5
Anyone know what the latest and greatest is in IPS monitors in 28 to 30+ Inch?
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Stecher
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Post by Stecher on Jul 5, 2015 11:45:38 GMT -5
If you are thinking about an IPS monitor larger than 27 inches, but still in a normal widescreen format (16:9 or 16:10), you're in $1,000+ territory at this time. Some of the new 32 inch 4K (4096/3840X2160) monitors for some reason aren't priced that differently than the 30 inch 2560X1600 models. Things get weird in the monitor market over 27 inches.
If you're looking for something substantially less than $1,000, there's a growing selection of 29 inch 21:9 ratio ultra wide monitors in 2560X1080 from $400-600. Larger 34 inch ultra wide monitors in 3440X1440, some of them curved, hang around the $1,000 mark. The 29 inch ultra wides have the same pixel density as what you are currently using (a 16:10 24 inch at 1920X1200, 94ppi). The different ratio results in an extra 3 1/3 inches of view on each side, but you'd lose 2/3 of an inch on both the top and bottom. That's pretty much the landscape above 27 inches. Super expensive, ultra wide ratio, or both.
The 27 inch size in 16:9 ratio offers two distinct branches of screen size upgrade over the 23/24 inch monitors. Unfortunately you have to choose between noticeably higher or noticeably lower pixel density. Nothing is offered in this bigger size with the same density. Normally, higher would be considered better, until 4K's density starts to mess with text. For image quality and general usefulness, 27 inches at 2560X1440 looks great for just about everything. But we have this ball and chain around us when it comes to picking monitors. We play a game that is largely dependent on picking up distant aircraft represented on screen by a few pixels long before they become actual aircraft shapes. It does not scale the pixel count of the plane's dot to our resolution, it just shrinks its screen footprint on higher density displays. That makes higher pixel density potentially detrimental to our gameplay.
If you simply want something bigger than your 24 inch, a 27 inch at 1920X1080 would have the opposite tradeoff with its lower density, increasing dot visibility, but making everything else look not as good. While the screen would be physically bigger, you'd also lose 60 pixels of view top and bottom from what you can currently see, because of the shorter ratio. There's a fair selection of these from $200-400. The 16:10 ratio has become extinct in the 27 inch size, and it simply does not offer any resolution with similar density to the 23/24 inch sizes which, in my opinion, are a better balance of image quality and dot spotting. I wish they had coded plane dots to draw differently in IL-2/CLOD.
I know you asked about 28 and above, but as far as gaming is concerned, some great things with IPS panels are happening right now at 27 inches. 2560X1440 monitors are starting to get really good with faster IPS panels making their way into the market, and increased adoption of frame/refresh rate matching technologies. 109 ppi, <5ms response time, accurate and consistent IPS colors, with smooth G-sync/Freesync goodness up to 144 fps. So far, this feature package exists as only 1 model, and another to be released soon, as far as I know. It's the start of some really great gaming monitors that combine capabilities which never existed in a single product before. The next few years are going to see 4K become less of a high end fringe segment, which should push down prices of these 1440 monitors. For now, these first ones are just under $1,000.
Even if cost wasn't an issue, and even if dot spotting with high pixel density wasn't an issue, we can't overlook that CLOD is a very graphically demanding game when the settings are turned up. High resolution ground, long view distances, and a high ground object count would make things taxing enough, but since the game was never finished by the actual devs, I'm sure it never got a final optimization pass, making things worse. CLOD is harder on the GPU than almost all of the big time modern games that get benchmarked all over the place. It has a huge variance in fps as well, so it can trick you at times. Just flying around in open areas or especially over water is very easy on the system, but get over a city, or look across a large forest, or worst of all, look at clouds, and the fps plummets. When we benchmarked your EVGA 780 Ti SC, it put up a respectable 57 avg, but it dipped to 31 as a minimum. Dipping into the 30s for such a strong card, and at only 1920X1200 demonstrates how taxing CLOD can be during some scenes. Playing at 2560x1440 for instance, reduces your fps by 40% compared to the 1920X1080/1200 resolutions. So we're looking at periods of under 20 fps, and that's with one of the faster cards available, less than a year removed from it being THE fastest card. Look at the new fastest card today, released just last month, the $700 custom 980 Ti cards are 35% faster than the 780 Ti SC. Even that won't cover the fps decrease you get from running 2560X1440, leaving you with fps dips into the mid 20s. For a game to do that to a brand new mid-2015 $700 fastest card ever is downright scary. That's what CLOD can do. Be careful buying high resolution when we don't really have cards in existence yet that can power this game's more challenging moments.
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Hackl
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Post by Hackl on Jul 5, 2015 12:50:09 GMT -5
Presently I am torn between using 1680x1050 res to see dots better upping my SA, and using 1920x1200 res for the eye candy and IDing targets better but loosing SA. My eyes are getting older and fatigue much more easily than they used to I was also eyeballing Asus MG279G monitor. Is there any real advantage to upping to a larger monitor or do I just suck it up and deal with the situation at hand.
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Stecher
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Post by Stecher on Jul 5, 2015 20:37:16 GMT -5
I tried playing with the resolution lowered to 1680x1050 and it just wasn't worth it. Technically dots were bigger on screen, but they were faded into other pixels. When you run native resolution, the dots are always perfectly hard, which helps them stand out. The overall effect of upscaling a lower resolution was negligible for dot visibility, but at the expense of everything looking noticeably worse. So I went back to 1920X1200. My SweetFX settings made a bigger difference.
The Asus MG279Q has Freesync, so it's for AMD cards. If you were sticking with Nvidia, you'd need G-sync if you wanted the refresh/frame rate matching. The Acer XB270HU is the total package one with G-sync right now, at $800. Asus will soon be selling their ultimate G-sync monitor, the PG279Q for at least that much. For most games, and people with powerful cards, those monitors are going to be incredible. But with CLOD, I just don't think it's worth it right now. If we had cards that could muscle through the tough parts at the higher resolution (and the price got under $500), I'd probably try to see if I could make do with the dots being smaller, just because everything would look terrific. But I don't see us getting consistent performance right now, even with current flagship cards, at 2560X1440 and settings cranked up.
A lot of people have high hopes for the next generation of graphics cards. In 2016, AMD will have been on 28nm for 5 years, and Nvidia for 4. Next year you'll see 16nm chips from Nvidia and 14nm from AMD, and they'll both be hooked up to Gen2 HBM. So we're talking about fundamentally new technology that should impress more than your usual generational bump. Personally, I just bought an Asus Strix GTX970. I want to have solid performance on the monitor I (we) have for its life. I think the right time for a monitor upgrade is down the road when the GPUs are up to the task of playing CLOD at higher resolutions, and prices for each part aren't flirting with 4 digits.
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Hackl
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Jul 6, 2015 1:30:52 GMT -5
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Post by Hackl on Jul 6, 2015 1:30:52 GMT -5
Can't you get one of those high res monitors and scale back to 1920 x1200 either thru game setting or monitor setting?
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Post by Stecher on Jul 7, 2015 1:34:20 GMT -5
Running on 1920X1080 with a 27in display that's meant for 2560X1440 produces 82ppi (rendered). That's the same as running 1680X1050 on a 24in meant for 1920X1200. If you haven't already, you can try that with CLOD and see how it looks to you. As I said, I did that, and didn't like it at all, as the blurriness cancels out the slightly larger plane dots. When you upscale a non-native resolution, every rendered pixel of the image has to be displayed by more than one physical pixel, which of course can only actually be 1 color at any moment. So the rendered pixels are fighting each other for control of the physical pixels, instead of working in perfect concert with them.
In the case of upscaling 1920 onto 2560, each rendered pixel is the size of 1 1/3 actual pixels. So every physical pixel is displaying a color that is 2/3 the color of one rendered pixel blended with 1/3 the color of another rendered pixel. It's never actually displaying what is being rendered. If you are supposed to have 1 black dot rendered on a white background, you wind up with dark gray surrounded by light gray. This isn't too noticeable if you are looking at a large area of similar color, or a very complex area. But if you are looking at simple and high contrast images (like a plane dot against the sky or sea) it surrounds that plane dot in a blur of itself. That's how it makes it bigger, but you lose that nice sharp definition of it against the background, which is more important to your eye catching it.
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Hackl
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Post by Hackl on Jul 7, 2015 2:21:08 GMT -5
choices choices. spring for something now or forever play the waiting game.
Looks like the Asus PG279Q is due lease for 3Q this year, speculation maybe August. I'd be very tempted by this one. Also very likely to "go for it" and grab a GTX 980 Ti Classified when thet become more available.
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Post by Stecher on Sept 2, 2015 23:54:03 GMT -5
I was checking one of the better monitor news/review sites and started poking around their articles section. I was surprised to learn that apparently there's a significant color issue (that is fixable) with HDMI connected monitors running 1920X1080 natively with Nvidia cards. As that is a very common combination these days, this undoubtedly affects a huge amount of people, and most probably aren't aware. If you're connected via DVI, or have any other native resolution, or an AMD card, this doesn't apply. For those interested, the whole article is here: pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus. For those who are running this specifically affected combination (I know that's at least a couple of us), this is the section you need to read: So basically, Nvidia is being stupid by assuming it's an HDTV, and not a monitor. At least it's now easy to correct. Stachl, I think you said you returned your Asus MX279H because the colors didn't look right? Unless you knew about this and already did it, I'm thinking this could be why.
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Stachl
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Post by Stachl on Sept 3, 2015 22:10:24 GMT -5
Thanks Stecher, this is an interesting article. Yes, that's right I didn't like the colors and there were those lines in the sky along with some strange cloud anomalies. I am now looking at a new MX version that has 2560X1440 resolution, however it costs about twice as much too. I'll probably hold off a while and think about it. I actually love the colors and the look of the landscape and clouds on my old 22inch Dell, but man I can't see very well either (as you all know )and I don't think it's all due to my eye sight. For now I'm just going to have to stop flying in a straight line, especially when I'm alone.
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Post by Stecher on Sept 5, 2015 16:21:56 GMT -5
Can you explain more about what you were seeing? When you say "lines in the sky" do you mean color banding or something else? And what was wrong with the clouds?
The limited RGB range would certainly make banding more obvious. Depending on what you mean with the clouds it could be something with their overaggressive Trace Free setting. Both of those (if they're the cause) can be fixed in about 15 seconds.
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Stachl
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Post by Stachl on Sept 9, 2015 21:05:40 GMT -5
It was almost like colors appearing around the edges of the clouds, very briefly, as I looked around. I guess the lines in the sky could be color banding. I hadn't really noticed it before I tried the 27 inch, but now I am also noticing it on my old Dell. So I think you are right, it was just more obvious. I should of gotten on TS with you specifically to talk about the monitor and maybe we could of gotten it to look better. My bad. When I get another I will be sure to do so.
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Post by Stecher on Sept 10, 2015 23:42:03 GMT -5
If the cloud artifacts were something that showed up during quick head movement, then it does sound like the Trace Free setting. It's Asus' version of pixel overdrive to help the response time and clear up ghosting. For some unknown reason Asus defaults Trace Free on their monitors to 60, which is too strong and causes overshoot on the pixel transitions. Virtually all of them are better off set at 20, giving a better balance between ghosting and overshoot.
Other monitors have pixel overdrive as well, but different brands call it something else and usually don't have as many settings as Asus' Trace Free. Many Dell's will have it factory set without any user configuration (like the 2209WA). Some recent Dell's have it a bit too strong and you can't do anything about it. Most of the current 2014/2015 models either have a better tuned factory standard, or they offer a couple user options.
I get minor color banding with the sky on the my monitor too, but it's very slight, and usually only noticeable during darker conditions. It's never distracting if I'm not looking for it. Nvidia's default HDMI 1080 limited RGB range will have made it look worse than the monitor is actually capable of displaying with the full RGB range selected in the control panel.
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Hackl
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Monitors
Feb 2, 2017 7:59:58 GMT -5
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Post by Hackl on Feb 2, 2017 7:59:58 GMT -5
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Post by Stecher on Feb 4, 2017 17:43:23 GMT -5
It's good to see they are pushing the quantum dot tech into more models to help with the color gamut a bit. I don't actually know if it plays a part in the CFG70 series' pixel response, but I really hope it does. Those are the first VA types that seem to not have response issues. Whatever Samsung did to figure that out, they need to keep doing it. They mention some of those upcoming models are "for gamers", but until we see not only actual specs, but professional reviews, that's just marketing. We've seen the 4ms spec on some VAs before, but there are still issues with the darker transitions. The CH711 with a 31.5 inch option at 1440, does specify 3000:1 which tells us it's VA. But will it have the speed of the CFG70? That would be a great upgrade if you have a top shelf card, and dots wouldn't be too small at that size. 4K/UHD I think is out of reach right now for CLOD, no matter what card. And dots would be so tiny unless you went with a 40-50 inch TV.
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Hackl
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Post by Hackl on Sept 15, 2017 10:23:52 GMT -5
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Baldur
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Post by Baldur on Sept 16, 2017 2:36:24 GMT -5
I'll have to look at whether or not my monitor actually supports 2048x1152... does yours?
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