27'' Monitor Showdown (2560x1440) HELP!

[yanxtar]

I'm upgrading my monitor/display, specifically to a 27'', 2560x1440 pixel monitor.

These are my preferences/needs in a monitor:
-High pixel density/sharp image quality and great colour depth in 1440p > 120Hz smooth twitch gameplay in 1080p
-I am mainly an FPS gamer (Battlefield 3), and I find response time important in the sense that I don't want to be able to notice input lag. For example, I find gameplay such as the one found on this video deeply disturbing and I'd rather avoid this.
-I'll also be using this screen for watching films every now and then, and I am quite OCD, so minimal or null bleeding issues would be ideal



After many hours of research, watching reviews, reading forums, I've narrowed down my contenders, in no particular order:

1) Asus PB278Q 27'' Monitor

Pros
·It ticks every box in terms of sharp image quality, as well as large size (solid DPI and Pixel Pitch) and on paper is exactly what I'm looking for
·Comes at a very affordable (relative) valuable price
·Not heard of many complaints regarding input lag so this would be the one for me except...

Cons
·Many people on forums who claim to own this monitor say they love the first 2 days of it, but then encounter small to horrific backlight bleeding issues, it seems almost everyone who buys this monitor is stuck with horrible bleeding, I have yet to find someone who hasn't been bothered by their Asus PB278Q's bleeding. This really puts me off buying it, as I can just imagine unpacking and installing it, only to find some bleeding somewhere, which would really bug me after spending a lot of money on it.

Comments
I'm pretty convinced I won't buy this one, just because I don't want to risk the bleeding issues that I know I'll hate. Unless someone here owns this Asus and can tell me otherwise, I won't be ordering this one unless the discussion sways me toward it.



2) Samsung S27A850D 27.0" Monitor

Pros
·It does everything that the Asus^ does well, but a lot better, people (including me) seem to be more impressed with the picture quality and colour depth that Samsung provides with this monitor

Cons
·Input lag seems to be a big issue with these Samsung monitors, and that tends to sway people into saying they're absolutely not gaming monitors. Out of the 2 Samsungs on the list, I get the feeling (from research) that this one has a lot less noticeable input lag. Again, to emphasise my referrence point, I'm not sure I'm interested in monitors with input lag as noticeable as it is on this video.
·A few bleeding issues here and there, though not as severe as the Asus^, I'm convinced I won't be too bothered by the level of bleeding I've heard people claim about this monitor.

Comments
Of the three monitors, I'm gearing towards this one, mainly because it's a middle ground, in terms of cons. It has fewer bleeding issues and less noticeable input lag.


3) Samsung S27B970D 27.0" Monitor

Pros
·Absolute best picture quality, contrast ratio, colour depth, sharpness of all three monitors, in fact, of all 27'' Monitors, this one blows all other 27 inchers out of the water in terms of picturesque beauty
·Slick design, really digging this monitor, it is actually my favourite
·Best reputation in terms of minimal bleeding issues, due to their guaranteed 90% uniformity or some similar term.
·This really is Samsung's créme de la créme for 27'' monitors, real premium stuff, and in my opinion the best 27'' monitor on the market.
Cons
·The only thing stopping me from buying this one straight away, is the complaints I've heard of major input lag, frustrating for FPS gamers such as myself, as featured once again on this video. I am aware the video isn't 100% accurate, the perceived lag to us viewers could be the result of many other variables, but I'm just highlighting my big problem with this monitor, is that I'm unsure I'll be satisfied with the response time.





In Conclusion

Please help me out here, if you have experience with any of these monitors or have good advice on the matter please step in and discuss.


PS: All of the assumptions, claims and statements I've made above are based on my extensive research and opinion but I'm not saying I'm correct so please correct me wherever necessary if the need is there, thanks a lot!

 

[bystander]

You seem to be wanting it all, and I don't think it is possible.

Input lag is mostly determined by FPS and refresh rate. Going 1440p is going to lower FPS, though it can be counteracted by higher end GPU's and lowering graphical settings. However, 60hz is all you will get unless going with one of these overclocked Korean or Japanese IPS monitors, but they have ghosting issues due to high response times.

You are going to have to make a choice between twitch gaming or high quality color and high resolution.

It may be possible that 60 FPS/hz is enough for you, though it is not enough for me. The video you showed looks like someone with very low FPS or the monitor is running some special conversions that is adding latency.

 

[yanxtar]

You seem to be wanting it all, and I don't think it is possible.
==
You are going to have to make a choice between twitch gaming or high quality color and high resolution.

Thanks for the reply bystander,

Well, as I mentioned at the beginning of the thread

These are my preferences/needs in a monitor:
-High pixel density/sharp image quality and great colour depth in 1440p > 120Hz smooth twitch gameplay in 1080p

To clarify:

I am choosing sharp picture quality over smooth twitch gaming, this is why I'm in the 27'' 1440p department, otherwise I'd have picked BenQ 2420T or similar.
So now it's a matter of choosing the best gaming monitor out of the high quality 1440p monitors.

I am aware going up in pixels and quality, is going down in gameplay smoothness, but I'm looking for the best compromise here. So I'm looking to avoid high input lag, which has nothing to do with what game I'm playing, or my GPU or anything other than the Monitor's panel.

The reason 1080p/120Hz "gaming" monitors are so fast and smooth (high response time/low input lag) is because they use TN Panels, very high processing speeds but they sacrifice the oh so beautiful picture quality I desire.

So I'm in the IPS, or more specifically, PLS panel department, a better image quality but lower response times.

Basically I'm asking people who own any of these monitors or have experienced them to have their say in terms of input lag and anything else important

Hope this helped you understand my predicament, bystander

Thanks again for the reply!

 

[bystander]

I think you are unaware of where much of your input lag comes from.

Input lag is how long it takes for an action to register from the mouse and become displayed. There are multiple places this input lag occurs. The biggest one is typically FPS. The reason is simple, your mouse moves, the game reads it, then renders a frame based on the information it received. This rendering process adds latency as it takes about 16.67ms of time to render when you are getting 60 FPS, that drops to 8.33ms at 120 FPS. That is more input lag than most monitors.

Now there is more input lag based on refresh rate. Your monitor refreshes its image every 16.67ms on a 60hz monitor. That means that once an image is rendered, it now sits in a buffer waiting for the monitor to display it. That occurs once every 16.67ms on a 60hz monitor and every 8.33ms on a 120hz monitor. That means that an additional 0-8.33ms is added to every frame on a 60hz monitor compared to a 120hz monitor.

There are actual studies out there on this, but I first learned this the hard way, as I suffer from nausea with high input lag.

 

[yanxtar]

I think you are unaware of where much of your input lag comes from.

Input lag is how long it takes for an action to register from the mouse and become displayed. There are multiple places this input lag occurs. The biggest one is typically FPS. The reason is simple, your mouse moves, the game reads it, then renders a frame based on the information it received. This rendering process adds latency as it takes about 16.67ms of time to render when you are getting 60 FPS, that drops to 8.33ms at 120 FPS. That is more input lag than most monitors.

Now there is more input lag based on refresh rate. Your monitor refreshes its image every 16.67ms on a 60hz monitor. That means that once an image is rendered, it now sits in a buffer waiting for the monitor to display it. That occurs once every 16.67ms on a 60hz monitor and every 8.33ms on a 120hz monitor. That means that an additional 0-8.33ms is added to every frame on a 60hz monitor compared to a 120hz monitor.

There are actual studies out there on this, but I first learned this the hard way, as I suffer from nausea with high input lag.

I'm running two GTX 690's at quad-sli with a i7-3960X and 32Gigs of RAM, so I'm relatively happy with the GPU powering what shows up on screen.

So, am I to assume that you would agree with the following;
With my current set-up, I wouldn't notice a (significant) difference between the 3 monitors above (in terms of input lag), because any source of input lag has been minimised?

The reason I'm sceptical about ^this statement, is that the guy in the video I linked, has a pretty damn good set-up too (not quite as good as mine but definitely more than necessary for Battlefield 3), and his input lag looks horrible!

 

[bystander]

I'm running two GTX 690's at quad-sli with a i7-3960X and 32Gigs of RAM, so I'm relatively happy with the GPU powering what shows up on screen.

So, am I to assume that you would agree with the following;
With my current set-up, I wouldn't notice a (significant) difference between the 3 monitors above (in terms of input lag), because any source of input lag has been minimised?

The reason I'm sceptical about ^this statement, is that the guy in the video I linked, has a pretty damn good set-up too (not quite as good as mine but definitely more than necessary for Battlefield 3), and his input lag looks horrible!

V-sync will play a big part in my answer.

V-sync will force 16.67ms of input lag on any of those 60hz monitors. Without it, it's more wonky, as parts of your screen will display images that have been sitting in there longer than other parts of the screen.

Also, the above latency could also be attributed to special processes done on the monitor. My above explanation is in addition to a monitor input latency (not to be confused with response time). Response time will cause ghosting, another thing you want to keep low. Input latency is directly added to the above delays.

Another source of input lag, which you can't control, is some games will add another layer of polling for input, like Skyrim. These mostly are done with console ports.