What do you suggest?
144htz will forever ruin 60htz monitors for you, so be warned.
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At first its really really smooth, but soon it just looks normal and every 60htz monitor will look unacceptably choppy.
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Not really - the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS is noticable, but it's still less than the difference between 60 and 144. If you jump from playing 60 FPS game straight to 30 FPS title, then you'll feel at least uneasy, but probably annoyed by lack of smoothness. Yes, you'll get used to it eventually, but then if you do jump from 30 back to your 60 title, you'll feel smoothness being restored instantly.
The same thing happens with 144 FPS, but it's even stronger as here we're talking not about 30 FPS difference, but about more or less 60 FPS. Yes, not 84 FPS, because based on my own tests "maximum smoothness" is between 105 and 120 FPS, anything higher is not possible to observe without being super-human, and I do have 144 HZ monitor myself.
Games being rendered in less than 90 FPS are completely unacceptable for me today, and it's a fact - once you go 120/144 you'll never want to go back to 60. I tend to intentionally lower my graphic details to medium or even low if I can achieve 90+ FPS instead of "only" 60. It's a good change though - even if you have older GPU, you'll be able to render desktop and indie games at 144, and that alone is worth the effort, since you can always upgrade your GPU later, and unless there is some gigantic technological jump, I don't see how current 144 HZ monitors are getting obsolete anytime soon.
Thing is, MagnificentOne is right - I don't want to buy, neither use any 60 HZ monitor anymore - I can notice lack of smoothness even when I'm using such monitors in college while in desktop - cursor is just not as smooth as it is on my desktop PC. And it's not just a monitor itself, because in another room with 120+ HZ monitors I feel exactly the same as in home. The difference is noticable, and I also don't know any person who would use 120+ HZ monitor every day without feeling bad when looking at anything interactive rendered in 60 FPS or below.
Interactive is also a key word here, since I'm completely fine watching typical movies that are rendered in 30 FPS. It seems that part of the brain involved with interaction is different from part of the brain just observing something happening - I can't explain it otherwise.
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My eyes don't start noticing the frame rate until below about 50fps and input lag becomes unbearable below 40. I don't know how people deal with 30fps.
I'm currently playing a heavily modded game of Fallout New Vegas. I use the stutter remover mod to get rid of that annoying stutter present in that old game engine. Vsync is disabled, but I enable the FPS cap in the stutter remover and set it to 60 FPS. Without the FPS cap it starts out at over 200 FPS and my GPU fans get loud. With it capped at 60fps I don't think it gets hot enough for them to even turn on.
Anyway, due to the amount of 4-8k texture packs installed and the number of mods loaded, over time the game slows down. It seems to get worse each time I transition from indoor to outdoor cells, pretty much any time where I get a load screen. I generally get about 2 hours before it becomes noticeable, but I have had longer sessions of 4+ hours without it if I'm not going in and out of a lot of places causing load screens. I enabled Steam's built in FPS meter to see just when it becomes noticeable, and when I visually notice it, the FPS is around 50 or so. When it gets to 40-45fps the input lag becomes so bad and I have to restart the game.
That's one reason why I was wondering if 144Hz would make a difference if I mainly play single-player games. Obviously I'll still get lower input lag at higher refresh and frame rates, but is it worth the price for single player games where the difference in input lag at 60Hz vs 144Hz isn't a game changer?
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It depends on what GPU you are using or can afford to upgrade to. If the games you play only run 30-60 fps because of lack of GPU power there's no point in going for a 144hz monitor.
Apart from the option of free-sync or G-sync.
There, you have to be aware that different monitors work at different ranges. Some don't snyc the frames when they go below 45 or 60 for example, which should be the main advantage of these monitors. Namely no tearing or halved framerate under normal v-sync when the GPU can't deliver frames fast enough.
If I had to choose I'd prefer a AMD freesync 1080p over a 60hz 1440 monitor.
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Editing your post to specify a price (in your local currency) will allow members to better help you.
I say if you have the money, go for a 4k 24" Monitor by ASUS.
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Aside from buying a whole new monitor it sounds like the backlight bulb just went out, you can probably buy a replacement bulb and save some money.
Or you could try doing this: http://www.instructables.com/id/A-very-Simple-LCD-Backlight-Fix/ ;)
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The monitor I had before this one died due to bulging capacitors. The symptoms of that are the monitor taking a long time to come on. This monitor is LED back-lit and it still comes on instantly, it is just that one side that flickers/went dark, which means one of the LEDs is defective.
After I bought this one, I intended to fix the other one to have as a spare or run as a 2nd monitor. I took it apart and found three capacitors that were bulging. They were all in a cluster together of five, so I planned to replace that whole cluster. I couldn't find a local electronics store that carried the capacitors I needed, and every place I found online it cost more for shipping than the parts. I still have it sitting over on my work desk after all this time. I've torn apart old PSU's and looked at old motherboards before disposing of them to see if I could get the parts out of it, but sadly I haven't found them.
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I couldn't find a local electronics store that carried the capacitors I needed, and every place I found online it cost more for shipping than the parts.
As capacitors are relatively cheap that will often be the case. For this reason I generally buy some extras. I've ordered from Digi-Key a few times before and USPS First Class Mail is only about $3 -$4, so not too bad.
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I'll check that out, but it's probably not worth fixing now. That old monitor is a 1680x1050 panel. Way back when I planned to fix it, I thought I would run dual monitors after fixing it, but I've read things gets complicated running multiple monitors with different resolutions.
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My monitor is LED backlit and those generally aren't replaceable
Or you could try doing this: http://www.instructables.com/id/A-very-Simple-LCD-Backlight-Fix/ ;)
Where I come from, that's what we call redneck engineering.
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or a 1080p 144hz monitor? I have an asus 144hz @ 1080p that works well for me. its 24"
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-24-led-fhd-monitor-black/8767099.p?skuId=8767099
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It comes down to your GPU. I made the mistake and bought myself a 144Hz monitor and I can barely see the benefit because of the lack of GPU power. If your GPU is capable of outputting constantly over 100FPS in the games you play, then you could try it.
I'd suggest these options:
Not that good GPU: 1080p, 144Hz (You'll see benefit even if the games run on 100FPS) or 1440p 60FPS
Good GPU: IPS 1440p 144Hz (I believe there are even 120Hz ones, if those are cheaper to you. I may even be completely wrong here).
Top GPU: IPS 4K 60Hz (As most games won't be able to run in the 100s of FPS)
You'll have to remember that you are not gaming 24/7 on your monitor, so those high refresh rates are not going to give you a better experience on any other tasks. However, a higher resolution will.
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I added additional info to the OP. Most of what I currently play I can run at 1080p at 100+ FPS. Whether or not it can handle a decent frame rat at 1440p I don't know. I will probably be upgrading the GPU when the next generation hits the market, so I'll have something to grow into if I go to 144Hz.
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I have a gtx 1080, and I get around 80-140 (really just depends on the game) on newer games at 1080p with settings maxed. At higher resolutions you aren't going to be able to max out settings and get a high fps like that. Thats also assuming you have a higher end gpu. For me it seems 1080p is ideal for 144hz (unless your playing alot of older games or graphics quality doesn't bother you).
Also just case this is helpful:
I7-6700k@4.0 ghz
32 gbs ram
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144hz is nice, but you'll pay extra for it, and unless you have a top of the line GPU + CPU many newer games will not be able to take advantage of it without turning the settings down.
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You'll notice it doing everyday stuff with windows, or playing older or non AAA titles.
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Not buying 144+ HZ monitor is the biggest mistake you can do today in terms of wasting money on displays. I'm serious, this is like installing Windows XP with DirectX 9 for your 1080 GTX TI. Even with old GPU and lack of power, this is still going to be noticable, and even assuming that it's not under any circumstance, then you're still not losing anything for the future, since monitors are not getting obsolete that easily.
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I run a Geforce 1060 6GB (a modern mid-range card), and can't do 144hz that on ABZU or Batman Arkham Knight, and I'm sure plenty of others I haven't tried yet (Rise of the Tomb Raider probably falls into this category). Even if that wasnt the case though, I would personally go for color accuracy over framerate any day (never seen an IPS panel that supported 100% sRGB coverage or better + 144hz).
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A GTX 970 won't give you an average of 140 FPS @1440p on newer titles tho. Even a GTX 1070 will struggle with that. So you wouldn't take advantage of a 144Hz monitor fully. Unless you plan to upgrade to atleast a GTX 1080 (in my opinion), you won't get the most out of a nice 1440p 144Hz monitor.
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I won't upgrade my GPU any time soon, but I will eventually. I tend to upgrade every other generation. That's something to keep in mind is that if I go ahead with a 1440p 144Hz, I'll already be good when I upgrade the GPU. If I get less of a monitor now just to get by, I'll just have to upgrade it later.
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It was several years ago, and I don't remember the brand name. It happened only a few months after I had built a new system. I used to only turn my system off at night because the power LED and fan noise bothered me. I had gone somewhere and left the computer on. On the way home I was going to stop and pick up something to eat, but when I saw the line, I decided to just go home instead.
I get home, put the keys on the desk and go to the bathroom. I come out of the bathroom and was going to the kitchen to fix something to eat, but before I got out of the room, I hear a noise, look over at the computer to see it smoking. By the time I got to it, it was a lot of smoke and flames coming from the back of the power supply. The PC was still on and not giving a shit too. I unplugged it and the fire went out.
I had only been home about 5 minutes. Had I stopped and waited in that line to pick up food or even if there wasn't a line and I stopped, I might not have had a house to come home to. Since then, my PC is only turned on when I'm at home.
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Wow, that's messed up. Fortunately I've never had that kind of thing happen to me. I was just curious because sometimes people make the mistake of skimping on the PSU when building a system and thinking that it's not that important. The truth is far from it and as far as I am concerned it's not something to cut any corners on.
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Ever thought of telling people in a polite way when they're wrong? jeez ...
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Even if your eyes can't notice the difference in frame rates above 60fps, you will still see and feel the responsiveness due to reduced input lag [Link]. I'm just trying to decide if that is worth the price since I mainly play single player games these days.
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1440p 144Hz for sure.
But, $800? Really? I got mine for €200 (was €300 RRP) It's an AOC, and quite good. Mind you, I have a TN pamel, because pf the 1ms response time. IPS panels are a bit slower (5-20ms minimal), but viewed better at angles.
Also, not all have speakers, in the same price range as the one I have, there are Philips monitors, my brother has one, without speakers.
Don't see how not having speakers is any sort of improvement, though. If you don't use them, they aren't in the way.
Edit: missed the part about the arm's load limit, but those screens usually are not 20lbs
Also, even if decide on not getting 144Hz, take 1440p, because you will definitely notice that difference.
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Response times reported for monitors can be misleading. What they should be reporting is the input lag. One of the reviews I read earlier showed that one of the IPS monitors I was looking at with a 5ms response time had a lower input lag than a TN panel with a 1ms response time.
I'm pretty much set on going IPS this time around. I do some photo editing and I want the better color reproduction that IPS provides. My last two monitors were both TN panels because IPS used to cost a lot more, but they have come way down in price and can match TN panels in input lag.
I really like having the monitor arm. It makes the monitor hover over the desk allowing me to use the space underneath it. Having the speakers adds unnecessary weight and cost. It looks like I'm going to have to get one with speakers if I want a 144Hz IPS monitor though because all of the ones I like have built in speakers.
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Why stop there? Why not a 34" 21:9 144Hz, and a new desk while I'm at it for it to fit on (I do really need a new desk though, been putting that off for a while too). I actually did see a couple of 21:9 monitors while browsing and was slightly tempted to splurge on one, but at $1200-1500, that is more than it cost to build my PC.
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IMO with the GPU power cost that comes with running 1440p, High Refresh is something that is only 'worth it' if you're fully sure you play games that are light/old enough that they can produce consistently frame rate above 80 FPS. As far as I can tell, past 90 FPS, it becomes a little hard to notice any increase. High Refresh does look smoother, BTW, but I'm not convinced that it makes any difference in the player's responsiveness other than placebo.
Some say they notice the difference in terms of eye strain even during desktop use at 120 Hz, but that frankly seems weird to me: eye strain due to 'low' refresh such as 60 Hz was something that was noticed on CRTs, LCD panels largely, if not entirely, eliminated the issue, as the screen only refreshes when the image changes, unlike CRTs.
Of course if you're planning to splurge on a high-end graphics any time soon, the assessment may change.
I'd also take a look at 4k monitors, which have the added benefit of having a panel whose resolution is an exact multiple of 1080p, meaning that you can simply run 1080p on a 4k panel without quality hits due to scaling.
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I'd also take a look at 4k monitors, which have the added benefit of having a panel whose resolution is an exact multiple of 1080p, meaning that you can simply run 1080p on a 4k panel without quality hits due to scaling.
I didn't think about that. I had almost made up my mind and now I have something else to consider.
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If you not playing fast game like CS, CoD, BF1 or other FAST FPS you not need 144hz.
AOC Agon AG271QG
NEC EA274WMi
Dell P2715Q
ASUS MG279Q
EIZO EV2450 ( I like that monitor )
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Thanks everyone. I hate making rush purchases. I usually carefully research things and take my time when buying something like this, but I had a lot to think about and a short time to make a decision. I wracked my brain all day yesterday over this trying to decide what to get. It was getting late, the deadline for Amazon's Prime shipping to get it here Saturday was closing in and I still hadn't decided. I decided to take a break, watch something on TV, have a beer, then come back and make a decision. I decided to go for it and ordered the Acer Predator XB271HU bmiprz 27" WQHD (2560x1440) NVIDIA G-SYNC IPS Display, then went and passed out in the bed.
As soon as I woke up, I was having second thoughts. My first thought when I woke up is I'm going to have to resize a lot of my desktop backgrounds. I have 100's of images of space that I use as backgrounds with Windows set to cycle a random one every 4 hours. The most recent ones I cropped to 16:9 without resizing them, but some of the earlier ones I cropped and resized to 1920x1080. I'm going to have to go through and find those, get the originals and crop them again. Then I thought about how I'm going to have to re-configure my games to run at 1440p.
I finally get out of bed, grab a snack, sit down at the desk and then I realize that I'm not sure a 27" monitor is going to fit on my desk. It's actually a fairly large "L" style desk, but the side where the keyboard and monitor sit is on the smaller side of the L. My left speaker is already about 1 inch from the edge of the desk sitting next to the 24" monitor I have now. A new desk is something I've also been looking at for a while, but I don't want to have to deal with that right now.
Now I kind of wish I'd gone with a 24" 1080p 144Hz g-sync monitor for half the price (which I just now realized I left that option out of the poll), but it's too late because it already shipped and will be here Saturday. Then again, if I bought a 24" 1080p monitor, I might have regretted it later. I suppose I can exchange it if I don't like it. I'll find out Saturday.
--
Original Post:
For the past few months, every now and then when I turned my system on, the monitor would flicker a little bit on the left side. It usually stopped after a minute or so. I knew this was a sign that it would be going out, but I've slacked off on looking at potential replacement. I was hoping it wouldn't get worse, but when I turned my computer on yesterday evening, the screen flickered, then the bottom left corner of the screen went dark. Luckily turning the monitor off and back on got it to light up, but now I really need to replace it. I left my system on overnight with the display power saving disabled just in case it won't power back on if I turn it off, but I don't want to keep doing that. I'm paranoid about leaving my system running while asleep or not at home after having a PSU catch when I left my system running while went out to run an errand. Luckily it happened about 5 minutes after getting home.
I currently have a 24" 1080p 60Hz display. I want to go up to at least 27" 1440p. I was thinking of getting a 144Hz monitor, but I was hoping that by the time I needed to upgrade my monitor, some sort of standard would emerge between g-sync and freesync, but I can't wait any more. I do currently have an nvidia GPU, but I'm not loyal to either nvidia or AMD and have used both in the past. I hate the idea of locking myself into one brand, so that's kind of got me thinking of just getting another 60Hz display. I also don't play competitive multi-player games where it would really make a difference, but I hear that even for single-player games, the responsiveness of 144hz is much nicer. Another thing to consider is that 60Hz monitors at 1440p or even 4k are about half the cost of a 144Hz monitor.
So basically these are the options I'm considering (in no particular order):
After spending a few hours yesterday browsing, I have a few in mind. I'm open to specific monitor suggestions or general suggestions. I also don't want built in speakers. If the best monitor in the world had built in speakers, I would take the 2nd best monitor if it didn't have speakers. For one thing, I won't use them, but mainly I use a monitor arm and it has a weight limit (20 lbs. I think) and speakers add unnecessary weight I see a lot of "gaming" monitors that have built in speakers, and this makes no sense. No real gamer is going to use crappy built in speakers on their monitor.
Edit:
I'm adding additional information added to answer some questions so I don't have to reply to every individual reply with the same info. I posted this hastily this morning before having to leave and left out some information because I was in a hurry.
My price range is flexible. The 1440p 144Hz monitors I'm looking at are all around $800 USD. I can afford that, that, but it's a bit more than I was hoping to spend. I'm a bit weary on spending a lot of money on a monitor since the last two I've had died after only 4 years (1 year out of warranty both times). Maybe I'm having a string of bad luck with monitors lately. I spent about $300 on each one of those, so I'd hate to spend $800 on a new monitor and have it crap out in 4 years. A 1440p 60Hz monitor is about half the price of the 144Hz displays.
I just built my current gaming system not too long ago. It's an i7 6700K running mildly overclocked to 4.2GHz. I kept my GTX 970 from my previous system though since it was still fairly new. It can run every game I have maxed out at 1080p and get well over 60fps. I do worry that the GTX 970 won't handle the upgrade in resolution and keep high frame rates.
I didn't specify any specific monitors since I was still looking. I'm basically browsing and bookmarking ones that I like for further research. I figured if anyone had any specific recommendations and they were on my list, bonus points for it.
I've been doing some more browsing and reading reviews tonight and currently my top picks for a 1440p 144Hz are the ASUS PG279Q or Acer XB271HU. Both use the same panel, and from the reviews I've read, it seems that Acer has better QC and it's a little cheaper. Unfortunately both have speakers. I think every 144Hz gaming monitor I've seen has speakers for some odd reason.
I haven't spent as much time looking closely at 1440p 60Hz monitors, but based on price and specs, my current top two picks are the ASUS PB278Q and Dell U2715H.
I'm hoping to order something tonight. I have Amazon Prime, so if I get it ordered in time it will be here Friday. Windows is wanting to restart to install updates and I don't want to keep my system going 24/7 any longer than I have to. If I get something ordered tonight and my monitor completely craps out, I can survive a couple of days, but if it goes out before then, I'll have to buy (or "rent") a cheap one from Wal-Mart so i can keep shopping.
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