Replacing monitor, anything good to look forward to in 2017?

[Felidire]

I'm selling my 27" (Cintiq QHD, which I'm currently using as the primary monitor for digital art and gaming). Budget is $2700US, I'll be looking to upgrade my GTX680 to the second-latest card, and purchase a good quality monitor that falls within the remaining budget.

Specs for my current monitor are:
- 2560x1440 @ 60hz
- AHVA LCD (proprietary IPS)
- Displayable Colors: 1.07 billion
- Contrast Ratio: 970:1
- Brightness: 330 cd/m2
- ppi: 108

I love the rich colours, but anything low value (15% or less) is indistinguishable from 0% (black).

I'm trying to find a good 1440p (or above) monitor, with at least 100hz, and (preferably) 100-110ppi; without sacrificing too heavily on the other specs. I've been looking at a few 21:9 monitors, which may be the most ideal, but every single one that I find always has at least 1 massive drawback...

I'd love to hear opinions. Do we have any really nice monitors available at the moment, or in the near future?

 

[Eximo]

3440x1440@100hz requires a little more than a GTX1070 can handle comfortably. 1070 is just right for the monitor you have now. Can run almost anything at max settings at just above 60FPS. GTX1080 will get you into the low 90s, so 144hz monitors start to make sense.

Pretty much all the 'gaming' monitors you are looking at are AHVA as well. Only a few TN panels in that class, and those are older.

Not anytime soon, but OLED monitors are likely on the way at reasonable prices. Way too expensive now, and 4K, so not exactly cost effective to run with today's GPUs.

 

[Eximo]

I should add I picked up the PG279Q fairly early and it is an acceptable gaming monitor. It would be nice of the overall color uniformity would be better, but that seems to be the price you pay for 144hz right now.

I'll probably hold out for an OLED 120hz monitor 4K or 5K monitor and a new GTX1300 or something in next several years. (Though I will probably convince myself to pick up a new GPU somewhere in there.)

 

[Felidire]

3440x1440@100hz requires a little more than a GTX1070 can handle comfortably. 1070 is just right for the monitor you have now. Can run almost anything at max settings at just above 60FPS. GTX1080 will get you into the low 90s, so 144hz monitors start to make sense.

Pretty much all the 'gaming' monitors you are looking at are AHVA as well. Only a few TN panels in that class, and those are older.

Not anytime soon, but OLED monitors are likely on the way at reasonable prices. Way too expensive now, and 4K, so not exactly cost effective to run with today's GPUs.

That's a shame, I guess GPUs have progressed much as I'd hoped in the last 5 years? The gtx680 I'm currently using is running a 27" 1920x1080 @ 60hz, and this 27" 2560x1440 @ 60hz. I stream/record 1440p and the gtx680 usually sits around 70-80% load, with (non-overly demanding) games at max settings, displaying 55-100fps. How much more demanding would a single 34" 3440x1440 @ 100hz be compared to these current two?

I was considering flipping this 1920x1080 horizontally, and using it alongside a replacement monitor. I'm glad I'm only looking for 100hz; considering the rate at which GPUs depreciate in value, and how demanding a 144hz monitor must be, seems really damn difficult to justify going that route. It's a shame TVs kinda skipped 1440p.

Guess I picked a really lousy time to upgrade, biding my time might be the better option. A 1440p 100hz OLED seems like it would be very good from both a gamer and artist's perspective... except they seem to have significant colour cast issues (at least according to these articles) that arise in as little as 3-6 months...

PG279Q seems quite solid, but I'm hoping to find something 30-38". I might look into it more if I can't find anything that looks better, which so far I haven't.

 

[Eximo]

I'm not saying you couldn't reduce settings to achieve the desired frame rates. Just not really anything out there quite enough for the high end monitor choices. Multi-GPU is pretty much the option left, but that gets expensive.

34" monitors are probably ideal in terms of your pixel density requirements. Anything more and then you would need to look at something like 5K, which you probably won't want to pay for. (Not a typo 5K)

PG348Q is a solid choice, though it looks silly, alternative would be the Acer Predator X34. ASUS and Acer seemed to have swapped aesthetics this time.

There are some 35" monitors out there, but their pixel density is quite low 2560x1080.

After that a 4K TV starts to look pretty good in terms of cost. 8K TVs were all over CES, but I imagine that will be limited to very large screens, and there really isn't anything that can run them. (Though I do recall someone hooking up four 4K screens with a pair of Titan XP and getting 'acceptable' frame rates)

I think there is supposed to be a 4K 120hz monitor soon, but seems kind of pointless at the moment.

Pixel rate is a simple value of # of pixels needed to be calculated per second. It isn't quite linear as it looks as bandwidth requirements also scale up with resolution. So, despite the QHD 144hz having the highest number, it requires less video memory than 3440 or 4K.

Pixel rate of QHD 60hz ~221mil
Pixel rate of QHD 144hz ~530mil
Pixel rate of WQHD 100hz ~ 495mil
Pixel rate of UHD 60hz ~497mil