Dual Monitor Set-up Help. IPS or 120hZ for gaming.

beegeepee · Nov 17, 2013

Hey all,

So with the help of tomshardware I made this pc last year:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.98 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($24.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($124.98 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Patriot Gamer 2 Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($114.57 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.94 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card ($348.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair 600T White Graphite ATX Mid Tower Case ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Pro 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1058.41
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-17 11:42 EST-0500)

At the time I just picked a cheap 60hZ monitor because I couldn't decide between IPS and 120Hz. I always had the intention of upgrading to 2 monitors and now that black friday is coming up I think I will commit.

But, now I must decide on 120hZ or IPS monitor. I have a lazy eye so 3D will not factor in (making 120hZ less valuable). With my current set-up I can run most games on the highest settings well over 60FPS so running close to 120fps is not out of the question. I am by no means a pro-gamer or have plans to ever be, but I am fairly competitive in the games I do play.

The only FPS i am playing currently is Battlefield 4 (when it doesn't crash). So, I am not sure how much the 120hZ has impacts on other games such as League of Legends, Starcraft 2, etc.

I went to best buy to check out both kinds, but they didn't have any 120hZ available to try out so I have no concept of how much of a difference they make. I did see some IPS monitors and they look great.

The last thing I need to know is whether or not I should get 2 of the same monitors. I would rather just keep my current monitor Asus VS247H http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236174 as my second monitor and use my new monitor for the actual gaming. I plan on getting either a 23" IPS or 23" 120Hz (I sit very close to my monitor).

For a dual monitor set-up are there any other accessories i should get to like hold the monitors together or anything. I am a complete noob to dual set-up so any advice would be very appreciated. Also, is there any new monitor technology coming out within the next year that I should just wait for?

**TLDR** Want to have a dual monitor set-up. Currently have a Asus VS247H. Want to get either 23" IPS or 23" 120Hz monitor. Not sure which is more noticeable difference for gaming. Also, any suggestions/good black friday/Thursday deals. Do I need any additional accessories to make dual monitor better.

Thanks very much!

BeeGeePee

sora · Nov 17, 2013

I'd go with the IPS, more colors.

ssddx · Nov 17, 2013

does 60hz bother you at all?

does the poor viewing angle on tn monitors bother you at all?

does poor color reproduction and dithering bother you at all?

personally i'd go with ips (not e-ips... i mean p-ips, h-ips or s-ips) for the wide viewing angle and excellent color reproduction but thats me.

i'd also suggest two of the same monitor as things will look a whole lot nicer. its quite possible to run two different monitors but it might look strange unless you arent bothered by this. having an ips next to a tn will also make the tn look pretty bad so keep that in mind.

another option would be to run a single 30" 2560x1440 monitor but you may have trouble keeping up decent framerates in some games depending on the settings. if not now then definitely in the future. shooter games play best on one monitor so a dual monitor setup would only be good if you play on one and use the other for music, teamspeak and other tasks.

lostmenoggin · Nov 17, 2013

IPS all the way. I just got 3 of these guys. So far they are awesome. The colors blow my other 1080 monitors I had out of the water for not a lot of money. The cool part is they dont have bezels on the front, just a really thin one on the sides. The image doesnt stretch to the very edge though theres like 10mm of pixel-less screen around the edge. No light bleed lol. Very nice for putting them next to each other. These monitors look just as good off as they do on. Posted a couple pics. Cell phone camera pics best I can do lol..

http://www.microcenter.com/product/415435/I2369V__23_IPS_LED_Monitor

ssddx · Nov 17, 2013

@noggin

thats a pretty nice wraparound you have there. it would probably work out better with a corner desk though don't you think?

is that a stinkbug crawling on your monitor?
what is that silver cylinder under the monitor

-----

as i said i'm a fan of ips as well and i'm using s-ips (8bit) but not on a monitor. my television uses this type of panel so i play on the big screen 40"

lostmenoggin · Nov 17, 2013

I almost bought one big screen TV to play on but I really enjoy the extra FOV with 3 screens and I do a bunch of multi tasking so the extra windows are a plus. I can never go back to one screen. It probably would work better in a corner but I dont have a decent spot to put a corner desk due to windows and limited space. Yea that's a stinkbug lol. Didnt even notice him til I took the pic. Gave him a good flicking though once I found him. The silver thing.. Hmm. Thats a medicine grinder of sorts. I actually just picked this desk up off a guy from CraigsList. He said it's a server desk. It's pretty big and I got it for dirt cheap. Even has a slide out tray underneath the desk. Here's a better pic.

@OP If you dont care about the difference in picture get an IPS monitor as your main gaming one. If you think that having two different monitors having different picture qualities will bother you get the same one you have or sell the one you have and get 2 IPS.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

Whoa Sorry guys I missed most of your comments until now. That three monitor set-up is pretty sick. Unfortunately, my current desk/room isn't large enough to accommodate such a set-up (nor could my single GPU handle that kind of output).

With regards to the comment made by SSDX "personally i'd go with ips (not e-ips... i mean p-ips, h-ips or s-ips) for the wide viewing angle and excellent color reproduction but thats me." I am not sure what this means. I am assuming it has to do with the viewing angle.

Additionally to SSDX questions:

"does 60hz bother you at all?

does the poor viewing angle on tn monitors bother you at all?

does poor color reproduction and dithering bother you at all?"

1. 60hZ doesn't bother me since it is all I have ever used. However, that doesn't mean I wouldn't like 120hZ more

2. I am not that bothered by viewing angles. that might be mainly due to sitting close to my monitor and them being fairly small. However it is annoying when I watch a movie from my bed and I have to keep getting up to adjust the monitor so it doesn't look awful.

3. Yes. Vision and sound are my two favorite senses haha. So, I try and get the highest quality of both. This is probably the biggest benefit of IPS for me. I hate not having true black colors currently.

Also, I read there is a huge price increase from 23" IPS to 24" IPS. Some people claim this is because the 24" monitors are higher quality not just because of the extra 1". I was wondering whether or not there is truth behind this.

I am fairly certain I will get an IPS monitor. Not sure if I will go 23" or 24" depends on whether or not the price increase is due to quality increase or simply due to the extra inch. Lastly, I would probably buy 2 of them if I can find a really good deal near black friday (any suggestions would be greatly appreciated).

Are there certain specs in these IPS monitors I should look for in terms of the best gaming experience. I think I read anything under 8ms for latency. Not sure how quick of response time I would need.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

Whoa Sorry guys I missed most of your comments until now. That three monitor set-up is pretty sick. Unfortunately, my current desk/room isn't large enough to accommodate such a set-up (nor could my single GPU handle that kind of output).

With regards to the comment made by SSDX "personally i'd go with ips (not e-ips... i mean p-ips, h-ips or s-ips) for the wide viewing angle and excellent color reproduction but thats me." I am not sure what this means. I am assuming it has to do with the viewing angle.

Additionally to SSDX questions:

"does 60hz bother you at all?

does the poor viewing angle on tn monitors bother you at all?

does poor color reproduction and dithering bother you at all?"

1. 60hZ doesn't bother me since it is all I have ever used. However, that doesn't mean I wouldn't like 120hZ more

2. I am not that bothered by viewing angles. that might be mainly due to sitting close to my monitor and them being fairly small. However it is annoying when I watch a movie from my bed and I have to keep getting up to adjust the monitor so it doesn't look awful.

3. Yes. Vision and sound are my two favorite senses haha. So, I try and get the highest quality of both. This is probably the biggest benefit of IPS for me. I hate not having true black colors currently.

Also, I read there is a huge price increase from 23" IPS to 24" IPS. Some people claim this is because the 24" monitors are higher quality not just because of the extra 1". I was wondering whether or not there is truth behind this.

I am fairly certain I will get an IPS monitor. Not sure if I will go 23" or 24" depends on whether or not the price increase is due to quality increase or simply due to the extra inch. Lastly, I would probably buy 2 of them if I can find a really good deal near black friday (any suggestions would be greatly appreciated).

Are there certain specs in these IPS monitors I should look for in terms of the best gaming experience. I think I read anything under 8ms for latency. Not sure how quick of response time I would need.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

lostmenoggin :

I almost bought one big screen TV to play on but I really enjoy the extra FOV with 3 screens and I do a bunch of multi tasking so the extra windows are a plus. I can never go back to one screen. It probably would work better in a corner but I dont have a decent spot to put a corner desk due to windows and limited space. Yea that's a stinkbug lol. Didnt even notice him til I took the pic. Gave him a good flicking though once I found him. The silver thing.. Hmm. Thats a medicine grinder of sorts. I actually just picked this desk up off a guy from CraigsList. He said it's a server desk. It's pretty big and I got it for dirt cheap. Even has a slide out tray underneath the desk. Here's a better pic.

@OP If you dont care about the difference in picture get an IPS monitor as your main gaming one. If you think that having two different monitors having different picture qualities will bother you get the same one you have or sell the one you have and get 2 IPS.

I have the same mousepad as you haha. Mine is getting pretty beat up though.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

ssddx :

I am fairly certain I want dual monitors. Usually when a game is loading I like to be able to do other things with my computer ( I have bad attention span). Even during games such as LoL I might check up on builds and stuff.

Also, I use my computer for work/studying which it is very nice to have two monitors for so you don't constantly have to switch through windows.

Occasionally I would like to be able to stream like a sports game on one monitor with the sound off while I use the other monitor for other things. So while the 30" is appealing I think it wouldn't suit my needs as well. Also, I sit like a foot or 2 away from my monitor (yes I could just move further back but I don't have a ton of space) and I think a 30" would be too big if I sat that close to it.

ssddx · Nov 18, 2013

the main aspects which set ips apart from other panels is bit depth (how many colors they can reproduce) and viewing angle (how far you can view it on an angle without noticing distorted colors).

most panels people have are 6bit. this includes tn, va and e-ips. to produce colors they are not capable of displaying they use dithering. panels which can accurately reproduce the colors do not use dithering.

example of dithering

panels such as tn are notably bad for horrible viewing angles. va and e-ips offer an improvement upon this howver 8 and 10 bit ips (s/h/p-ips panels) offer near 180 degree viewing angles which means you do not need to reposition your monitor at all.

example of viewing angle

please note that there are other types of 8 and 10 bit panels. please look at my posts in this thread http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1661174/parts-guide-monitors.html as i list a few types.

---

since it appears that viewing angle and color is more important to you than refresh rate i would suggest to pursue that route.

look at some prices of the different panels in the sizes you want and get back to us with your thoughts.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

ssddx :

the main aspects which set ips apart from other panels is bit depth (how many colors they can reproduce) and viewing angle (how far you can view it on an angle without noticing distorted colors).

most panels people have are 6bit. this includes tn, va and e-ips. to produce colors they are not capable of displaying they use dithering. panels which can accurately reproduce the colors do not use dithering.

example of dithering

panels such as tn are notably bad for horrible viewing angles. va and e-ips offer an improvement upon this howver 8 and 10 bit ips (s/h/p-ips panels) offer near 180 degree viewing angles which means you do not need to reposition your monitor at all.

example of viewing angle

please note that there are other types of 8 and 10 bit panels. please look at my posts in this thread http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1661174/parts-guide-monitors.html as i list a few types.

---

since it appears that viewing angle and color is more important to you than refresh rate i would suggest to pursue that route.

look at some prices of the different panels in the sizes you want and get back to us with your thoughts.

AH I see. Is the dithering image actually that blurry or is that an artifact of sorts. It looks awful compared to the non-dithered image. I will take a read through the link you sent me and educate myself.

Thank you!

ssddx · Nov 18, 2013

the dithered image is not blurry but you would be correct to say it lacks the same detail.

how dithering works is that the monitor takes two colors which it can display at puts them next to eachother so that when viewed it looks like another color. if you are far enough away the two look almost identical.

to test this try zooming out your browser windows so that the photos appear to be 20% the size they are now. they look similar yes?

the problem is that if you sit too close... dithering looks like crap. also the monitor requires multiple pixels to imitate one color so overall detail will be lost opposed to an image which can display the exact color of each pixel.

beegeepee · Nov 18, 2013

SSDDX: It's weird my innate response was to zoom in on image to see what it looked like after seeing your post. I didn't realize that is what caused it to look bad.

Another question I came up with after reading some of your posts.

I didn't know PLS monitors existed. The first few things I read on them was that they were better than IPS in everyway (articles created right around the time Samsung first released them). Then I read they are just another subset of IPS monitors. Finally I read that a lot of IPS are actually better than PLS.

So, do you have an opinion on IPS vs PLS? Most of the things I have read up to this point about monitors has been about 120hz TN vs IPS. This throws a bit of a curve-ball my way.

ssddx · Nov 18, 2013

to be perfectly honest... ips is what everyone first thinks of when it comes to color quality (bit depth) but they arent the only solution.

an example is how normal va panels are only 6bit but mva, s-mva and pva can be 8 or 10 bit. or pls for that matter.

pls was originally designed to be a cheaper alternative to ips while retaining the quality.

s-ips, p-ips, h-ips, as-ips, uh-ips, mva, s-mva, pva or pls are all choices for a panel with better color accuracy. anything labeled as 8 or 10 bit is going to be this way.

as far as which is better...hard to say. response times may differ between the types of panels as well as how well certain panels display black and also how they look in terms of viewing angle. IPS is just the most well known type of panel.

honestly unless you are into graphic design or need something with perfect color accuracy i wouldnt dwell on it too much. i would just pick something in your budget which has a relatively good response time.

i personally use s-ips monitors. both my old vp201b (viewsonic pro) and my current 40" tv (sony bravia) use this technology and its rated at 8bit. looks much better than tn panels like the one in my laptop with good viewing angles too (near 180). there are more advanced IPS panel technologies out there which improve upon this and also other panel types like PLS which are different but honestly i dont have a whole shelf of monitors that i can compare them all and say for sure.

ssddx · Nov 18, 2013

most gamers are going to say 120hz wins... some dont even know why. this is just like how they say that you cannot play games on a wireless mouse and keyboard or on wifi however they are lies.

personal preference is what matters.

you need to pick...

faster response time, higher hz rate, bad viewing angle, average colors and lower price or higher resposne time, average response rate, good viewing angle and good colors.

pick whichever suits your needs/tastes/budget more.

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