ASUS Announces A 144Hz WQHD Gaming Monitor With FreeSync
by Brandon Chester on August 19, 2015 12:59 PM EST
Today ASUS announced a new monitor targeted at the gaming market. The ASUS MG278Q is a 27" TN panel with a resolution of 2560x1440 and a 144Hz refresh rate. In the chart below you can see further information about the monitor and its specifications.
| ASUS MG278Q | ||||||
| Resolution | 2560x1440 | |||||
| Refresh Rate | 144Hz | |||||
| Panel Size | 27" | |||||
| Peak Brightness | 350nits | |||||
| Response Time | 1ms (GtG) | |||||
| Viewing Angle (H/V) | 170° / 160° | |||||
| Inputs / Outputs | 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 1 x Dual-link DVI 1 x HDMI 2.0 1 x HDMI 1.4 1 x 3.5mm audio 3 x USB 3.0 (1 upstream 2 downstream) |
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| Color Depth | 16.7 million colors (Likely 6bit+AFRC) | |||||
| Dimensions | 625 x 563 x 233mm (with stand) | |||||
Being a gaming-oriented display, the MG278Q's focus is on a low response time and a high refresh rate rather than color accuracy. Since it's a TN panel it's likely that the panel has a native 6bit color depth per subpixel and uses temporal dithering to emulate 16.7 million colors, although this has not been confirmed. In addition to the 144Hz refresh rate, the MG278Q supports AMD's FreeSync technology which utilizes the Adaptive Sync feature of DisplayPort 1.2a to enable a variable refresh rate synchronized to the GPU's rendering of frames. More information about FreeSync and how it works can be found here.
ASUS is yet to announce pricing fort he MG278Q, but we've seen TN displays with similar specifications from Acer and BenQ for $500-600. The MG278Q will be available in North America in early September
Source: ASUS
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DurzoLR - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
G-sync predates freesync, but one of the major architects for AMD also HAPPENS to be the VESA board vice chairman. AMD played dirty pool, why would Nvidia choose to lower their (unfortunately more expensive) standards to fall into compliance with a glitchy (ghosting) standard?Cow86 - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
IPS is better (and just as fast on the IPS version as TN), TN is cheaper, there I settled it :PI hope to see a comparison review of the two when it's out, I was thinking of getting the IPS version myself, but looking at recent high end TN screens it may well do for my use if the viewing angles are good enough. Would hopefully save some money :)
FriendlyUser - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Actually, recent TN panels seem to have more than decent color and recent IPS panels are much faster than older one. So, if you shop carefully (and pay accordingly) you'll find that the differences are becoming less pronounced.Personally, I'm waiting for the EIZO Foris FS27, which is IPS Freesync 144Hz...
LtGoonRush - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
The problem with TN panels isn't that they can't do decent color, it's that they only do decent color at the center of the screen when you are staring straight on. On a 24" or larger TN panel, colors at the top of the screen will be TOTALLY different. For example, it's difficult for me to distinguish green and blue at the top of larger TN monitors.BurntMyBacon - Friday, August 21, 2015 - link
This. You can have perfect color reproduction in the middle of a 27" TN screen and still have gradients from top to bottom. If you have a TN screen the viewing angle test at Lagom does a pretty good job illustrating the point. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.phpFor smaller TN screens you can see the effect by tilting the screen a little (or standing up). For larger TN screens, just looking at the top and the bottom from a fixed location is usually enough to see the effect.
BurntMyBacon - Friday, August 21, 2015 - link
Note: You may need to fix your gamma settings and/or do other screen calibrations to get the screen to respond how it should (I.E. even Dell IPS monitors show the lagom text in red when the gamma is off. When corrected, they show up as grey as they should.). The site can help you do a quick and dirty calibration that should be good enough for these purposes, but colorimeter calibrations are better (or spectrometers for those who can afford it). http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/Cow86 - Thursday, August 20, 2015 - link
I know that TN is getting to be good enough colour wise for me recently, but as LtGoonRush below you already says, the viewing angles are the main problem still with TN. It's those that would make me go IPS if the difference is big enough. My current TN screen is certainly terrible in that regard...Screen becomes much darker and colours go off when I look at any part of the screen at an angle. Wait and see I guess :)Kalessian - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
Supposedly, the technical differences between the TN and IPS technologies are what limit IPS to 60 hz. As in, the switching mechanism for IPS is physically slower than TN. Someone can make a 144 hz IPS, but this updates the screen once every 5.9 ms. If the switching time from color to color is slower than this, what would be the point? Before the switching is even finished you're giving the materials new orders, this might actually blur things, I'm not really sure.What I think is supposed to help this is the switch from amorphous silicon TFTs to IGZO. IGZO has higher carrier mobility, so that carriers move faster under electric fields. You can make the TFTs thinner, as well, and this should all help alleviate the limitations of the electronics. However, I don't think this will make IPS catch up to TN, as TN panels should become faster, too. But it should help. Also, Indium is expensive compared to silicon.
I'm not really read up on it, so I don't know any of this for sure. Someone else should probably comment.
Guspaz - Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - link
There is already a 144Hz IPS panel on the market.Kalessian - Thursday, August 20, 2015 - link
Yes, but my point is that it is simply not a decision of some manager to say take IPS and take 144hz and combine them and voila. There is/was some engineering to be done, the two are not inherently compatible.