1MS or 4MS does it make a difference? Between Asus or Acer?

[GillyH]

Hello,

I narrowed it down to two monitors and do not know enough to decide. Should I get the Asus ROG Swift PG278Q http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... or Acer XB270HU Gync http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I will be playing mostly FPS's or casual games. I play mainly FPS's but am not super hardcore.

From what I understand the Acer has a better panel, colors, and screen quality over the Asus, but the Asus has better MS. Is MS that important? Will it make a huge difference? Should I get the Acer?

Thank you!!

Note: I will be using Gync

 

[rolli59]

Most people will not notice the difference past 5ms only higher!

 

[GillyH]

Awesome and I will be using Gsync. Will that help even more for 4MS to not be an issue or as good as 1 MS? Thanks

 

[rolli59]

I do not think the response time will affect it.

 

[nukemaster]

Monitors are so much more than just MS(pixel response).

First thing to look at is panel type.

TN. Fast pixel response with somewhat less accurate color(you can get pretty good TN panels still). The colors are generally darker at the top because of color shift(this is less of an issue on smaller panels like 22inch and under). Blacks are not quite black because they can not block the back light fully[this varies from panel to panel]. This panel type has rather average contrast ratios in the 800:1 to 1000:1

IPS. Slower(but getting MUCH faster, i consider that Acer to be VERY good for IPS because is pixel response is pretty even). Almost no color shift so colors look the same top or bottom. The biggest downfall to IPS aside of slower pixel response is they glow on dark scenes(older ones or units with a true white polarizer do not have this issue, but they rarely use this to cut costs.).
This type of panel has similar contrast to TN, but sometimes a bit better.

VA. The slowest of the slow. These panels have no glow the highest contrast and deepest blacks. Pixel response time is the main issue on VA panels. VS panels are a bit darker when viewed head on(or a bit light when viewed at an angle ).

VA VS IPS. Some users do not mind the glow, but it IS a killer for me.

Now onto the parts that may hurt your head.

Pixel response time is not the same on all color transitions. So a panel that has a 1ms from black to grey it may still be 3.8 from black to white. The panel type determines how fast these transitions are.

Moving on to overdrive
Overdrive applies a higher voltage to the screens subpixels to speed up the pixel response. Sounds great no? and it can be if done properly. The downside is that if you push it too hard it will overshoot the color before settling on the color it is supposed to be. This causes what is called inverse ghosting and was nearly unheard of hears ago.

The extreme setting is what happens with too much overdrive.

Image from TFT Central

What does all this have to do with MS? All monitor makers use overdrive to get these lower pixel response times.

It will ALWAYS be best to check a review site like TFT Central for monitor information because they go into great detail testing screens allowing you to see what to expect from various pixel transitions. They also include images of screens to show glow and viewing angles.

One such thing is this image of the Asus pg278q

and this is the Acer XB270HU

You will also want to look at input delay, but most of these monitors are very fast in that respect.

 

[GillyH]

Awesome. Thank you so much for your reply! I am quite not sure how pixel response times differ to MS, but the post was informative. I checked out the TFT central website as well, and it was a great resource for reading about the monitors. Very intuitive too. I will remember that site for years to come now.

 

[nukemaster]

pixel response is the time for a pixel to go from one color to another. Each pixel on the screen has 3 sub pixels red/blue/green. By blocking some of the light they can adjust each color channel(0 is block all you can while 255 is let as much as you can). The speed that you can adjust from one level to another is measured in MS.

This is a rather extreme example of a screen rated at 6ms clearly not delivering 6ms very often.

Image from TFT Central

A single frame at 60hz in on screen for a bit over 16ms so taking 40 means the next frames are already being drawn out so that color was never reached if the colors are always changing. it IS noticeable(it looks similar to the OFF image above), but many users are not bothered. I found of all games it was worse on skyrim. That does not include the use of overdrive that shows up on other transitions. I do not think of that as a bad monitor(higher contrast and deep blacks look great) and many users DO game on it, but for me it was just too slow(strange since I was coming from a 8ms rated screen with some pretty slow transitions too).

It all comes down to preference.

For me the things I do not want to see is
-Glow so this ruled out most IPS screens(but again MANY users game of them without issues).
-Excessive overshoot. Shame since even faster TN screen have some, this makes the Acer pretty impressive for the speed as long as glow is not an issue.
I would like better black levels, but it is not in the cards with most of the current VA panels.

g-sync will also be pretty cool since it should eliminate almost all page tearing over a very wide range of frame rates. Many of the screens will also have a features called ULMB(ultra low motion blur). This can not be used with g-sync, but for games with stable frame rates(lets say you can hold 120 all the time) it can greatly reduce motion blur.

 

[GillyH]

Awesome! That is very helpful when looking at your monitors knowing that MS necessarily doesn't mean anything until a full test. I decided to go with the the Acer after reading the TFT Central review. I found the display for $449.99 without tax on their website for a recertified model. That is a really good price to beat so I went with it. I wouldn't buy used computer components but for the monitor, I don't care. I understand the glow and it can happen, but times where the screen is completely dark are not too common. Thank you so much for your help. I learned a lot of things and have a better understanding when shopping for monitors. One last question if you know the answer, does MS affect performance in shooting games? Or is that hardcore gamers being too elite about it.

 

[nukemaster]

I think input lag would be more of an issue, but again most screens are pretty good with that now.

You have noticed that sometimes TV's actually look nicer than monitors with certain video sources, this is because the TV's image scaler does some magic to make things nicer, but it can also add all kinds of input lag(something that is not an issue for watching TV).

I noticed a bigger improvement going from 60-120 than getting a faster pixel response screen personally. Just remember you are about to get spoiled. If your mouse can do 500 or 1000hz make sure it is set to do so because you may notice that 125hz is not as optimal for higher refresh screens(this I noticed right away) and sometimes 60 will look blurry because you are used to frames only staying for about 8ms or less.

Like anything else some users are simply more susceptible to certain issues on screens. Some user do not even notice the difference from 30-60fps while others do for sure. I do not think users who want lower MS are in the wrong or anything, but as you can see even a 1ms screen will not transition colors in 1ms under all circumstances.

I happen to have a BenQ 144hz screen that does have overshoot(even on it's high[default] mode), but it is rarely an issue in games, still see it when scrolling websites however. It is all a compromise because the perfect screen may not exist.