Asus ROG Swift PG258Q Monitor Review

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By Christian Eberle
published

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Gaming With G-Sync

Looking over our benchmark results, it’s obvious that in the area of video processing, the PG258Q does everything well. It has a truly usable blur-reduction feature, a 240Hz refresh rate without overclock, and G-Sync. Plus, its FHD resolution means some truly high framerates can be achieved. In addition to our usual gaming tests, we’re going to see just how high we can go by reducing detail levels. But first the basics.

We started with Far Cry 4 at Ultra detail and had no problem maintaining 110-120 FPS regardless of content or intensity level. If you’re wondering whether or not 100 FPS looks better than 60, we can tell you it does, quite a bit in fact. I’m sure those who have already invested in an expensive video card will agree. Once you’ve experienced this kind of response and realism, it’s hard to look at a lesser system or monitor in the same way.

As expected, the overdrive is best left on its Normal setting. Extreme produces both black and white object trails that really spoil moving detail. The PG258Q’s overshoot is just too high. At these framerates, OD is barely a factor anyway.

Reducing detail to Low increased the framerate range to 110-170fps. Honestly though, control response felt the same, but graphics quality definitely took a hit. Jagged lines and murky textures reduced the fun factor significantly. There was nothing to be gained by this exercise.

Moving on to ULMB testing, we disabled G-Sync and set the refresh to 144Hz. Engaging V-Sync made sure the framerate didn’t exceed 144 FPS. We consistently maintained that rate even at max detail and could not tell that G-Sync wasn’t in play. All we saw was perfect smoothness and instant response to control inputs. There was no limit to how fast we could move the mouse. Detail remained rock-solid with no jitter, no tearing, and no blur.

Obviously, G-Sync is the preferred method here. There’s no need to tweak settings, and you can always play on max detail if your video card is stout enough. In terms of gameplay, the PG258Q is the finest display we’ve seen to date.


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Christian Eberle
Christian Eberle
Contributing Editor

Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.

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32 Comments Comment from the forums
  • apertotes
    I just don't get it. How can you leave the contrast (arguably the most importante feature on a screen after the resolution) out of the first page of the article? I couldn't care less about the bezel width, but please, state the contrast!
    Reply
  • cknobman
    G-Sync, no thanks.

    No wonder this thing is $600.

    Have fun paying the Nvidia tax.
    Reply
  • ahnilated
    1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    19637653 said:
    1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.

    Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment. GPUs can get you a solid 4K/60 or a solid 1080p/144. You're not going to get 4K/144 in any modern games on any PC at the moment (unless you're only playing 20-year-old games). So there's not a lot of sense in wanting to invest in a 4K/144 monitor now, only in anticipation of when GPUs can finally push that many pixels, because you'll be wasting the monitor while you wait, and when such GPUs finally do arrive, the monitors will be better and cheaper.
    Reply
  • Rosanjin
    Do we know if this monitor is 3dVision capable?

    I would assume so, but I've learned some very expensive lessons by making purchases based on assumptions. : /
    Reply
  • __Isomorph__
    @apertotes: LOL damn right! who cares about the bezel??!
    Reply
  • ahnilated
    19637717 said:
    19637653 said:
    1080P, *sigh* who wants this anymore! Get me a 4K monitor at 30-32" with good specs and G-Sync that isn't $4000.

    Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment. GPUs can get you a solid 4K/60 or a solid 1080p/144. You're not going to get 4K/144 in any modern games on any PC at the moment (unless you're only playing 20-year-old games). So there's not a lot of sense in wanting to invest in a 4K/144 monitor now, only in anticipation of when GPUs can finally push that many pixels, because you'll be wasting the monitor while you wait, and when such GPUs finally do arrive, the monitors will be better and cheaper.

    The reason you won't get it is because the GPU's won't do it, not because the games won't. Game developers want to make more realistic games but the GPU's are lagging way behind. Nvidia hasn't had any real competition for many years so there was no need for them to push to 4K gaming at 144Hz or higher. I am hoping AMD's cards will force Nvidia to get off their buts as it seems the consumers aren't going to pull their money from Nvidia until Nvidia gets back on the ball.
    Reply
  • Geo Matrix
    I agree with AHNILATED! DSTARR3 says, "Because that's the reality of GPUs at the moment". I say let's have some serious change! Asus and Nvidia are "milking the cow" with these old relics. Everything is now going 4K, 6K and 8K. It's time to stop milking the cow and people's wallets and put out the new technology. It's 2017, not 1980. We all know the new tech is already here.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    Based on the performance bump we saw from the 1080 Ti, I don't think it's fair to say that nVidia's slouching when it comes to GPU performance. Pricing, sure, they could use more competition. But something like 4K/144 is a seriously enormous amount of processing to do. The DisplayPort and HDMI interfaces themselves had to be updated to transfer that much data. I'm amazed we got 4K/60 out of GPUs as quickly as we did. Give it another generation and we should be hovering around 4K/144. But you ask why there's no 4K/144 gaming monitors coming out yet, and this is why. There aren't any 4K/144 GPUs out yet, either. And it's not because any particular company is stagnating. It's because pushing that many pixels to a monitor is a huge, huge task.
    Reply
  • Deadshot-89
    I use an Eizo EV 2336W. It has incredibly accurate and incredibly deep and vidid colors right out of the box. It also has a very deep picture and for an IPS screen very deep blacks. And to top it all off, it has extremely nice viewing angles, no color-shifts and it retains a ton of brightness at very steep angles. Motion performance is very OK for a 60 Hz screen.

    My current hardware isn't really capable of producing more than a reliable 1080p60. (GTX 970, i5-4590). So I see no reason to switch to a higher res screen or higher refresh rate screen.
    Reply