4K/G-Sync First Impressions/Review (Acer XB280HK)

[Oshino Shinobu]

 

 

First off, the stand and general build quality of the monitor. 

 

The stand is really nothing special. It's pretty much entirely plastic and feels pretty flimsy and unstable. It does have height adjust, swivel, tilt and rotate, but it wobbles around at the slightest touch. The stand also isn't tall enough to rotate the monitor 90degrees without tilting it back which seems like weird oversight to me. Despite the stand not being very good, the monitor is VESA mountable, so it kind of makes up for it (I'm mounting mine to the wall). Also, the monitor is available for regular 4K monitors, but has G-Sync too, so I guess they had to save money somewhere.

 

As for the monitor itself, there's not too much to say. It's nothing special in terms of build quality, but it doesn't feel like it's going to break. It has pretty thick bezels with some branding stickers and information on them. The Stickers are removable, but the monitor model code and the 4K/UHD writing cannot be removed as far as I can tell. This kind of annoys me as it is slightly distracting because of how large some of the lettering is at the bottom right of the bezels.

 

The buttons on the monitor are nice and low profile, so they're not distracting when looking at the monitor.

 

The monitor itself isn't too thick for the most part, but it does thicken around where the mounting point is.

 

 

The Panel 

 

The monitor uses a TN panel. I would have preferred IPS, but at the time, it's the only G-Sync 4K monitor available. Compared to my other monitors (Acer H236HLbmid IPS) there is a noticeable difference in colour vibrancy and range when in the desktop and applications, but not so much in games. When left at stock the colours are pretty bad, but after some tweaking, the colours aren't too bad. Blacks are the place I notice the difference the most. The night theme on LLT is noticeably lighter than on my IPS monitors. The monitor is also incredibly bright out of the box. It comes at 100% by default, but I've had to turn it down to 15% to make it comfortable to view. 

 

There's a nice matte coating on the panel. so glare isn't really an issue, although the bezels are very reflective. Viewing angles are pretty average for a TN panel, but it's not something you'll notice in everyday use really. 

 

 

So much space. Even having a 1080p video running takes up so little room.

 

 

4K Gaming and G-Sync

 

 

System Specs:

CPU - i7 3770K @ 4.5GHz

Motherboard - Asus Sabertooth Z77

RAM - 4x4GB Corsair Dominator Platinum @1866 MHz 

GPU -  2x EVGA GTX Titan Black

Case - Corsair 750D

Storage  - 2x 250GB Samsung 840 EVO (RAID 0) + single 250GB 840 EVO + 2TB Seagate Barracuda. 

PSU - Corsair AX860 (w/ custom sleeved cables)

Display(s) - 3x Acer H236HLbmid + Acer XB280HK

Cooling - Custom Loop

Keyboard - Corsair K95 (Gaming) + Ducky Shine 3 (MX Browns, typing)

Mouse - Corsair M95

 

Sound - Corsair Vengeance 2000 Headset

 

 

Far Cry 3 (don't have FC4, sorry)

 

This game looks fantastic in 4K. Running with settings maxed, I was averaging above 60, but G-Sync obviously limits you from going above. There were occasional dips to around 50FPS, but they were completely unnoticeable, so clearly G-Sync works. Not really the best game to test it though, seeing as I was averaging high FPS. 

 

Battlefield 4 (MP, 64 players, full server)

 

This was definitely better for testing than FC3 was. I was running at around 55-60FPS most of the time with settings maxed, but there were dips to 40-45FPS when a large explosion or something happened. I found that between 50 and 60FPS, you couldn't tell the drops without looking at the FPS counter. When the game dropped from 60 down to 40FPS, the drop was noticeable, but not jarring like it is with a non G-Sync monitor. Even at 40FPS, the game still feels smooth, although not ideal for a fast paced shooter like BF4. Just changing AA to 2X rather than 4X, I was able to average over 60FPS and only get drops to 50FPS which felt just as smooth as being pinned above 60FPS with VSync enabled, but without the input delay that comes with VSync. 

 

Skyrim (Heavily Modded)

 

Right.... My PC is no slouch, but my Skyrim at 4K is just too much for my PC to handle with the ENB enabled. I was getting a constant 20FPS with everything maxed and enabled, and unfortunately G-Sync doesn't make 20FPS playable. 

 

After disabling the ENB, Skyrim ran at around 40FPS average. Even 40FPS feels pretty smooth with G-Sync, although there is still a noticeable difference between 40FPS and 60FPS. It does, however, make 40FPS more than playable for me.

 

I feel I should point this out for those who don't see the point in GPUs with more vRAM. Even now, games (not just Skyrim) are using over 3GB of vRAM at high resolutions. Judging by how much my Skyrim uses (almost 5GB!), we should be looking at 6GB cards and up soon.

 

Here's a screenshot of the sort of loads Skyrim put on my cards after an hour. (only took a screenshot of the top card, the bottom card is pretty much identical) both cards were running at around 90% most of the time after an hour of playing, but never went to 100% for some reason. 

 

 

 

 

Mirror's Edge

 

This is one of the first games I though to test with G-Sync. It's one of my favourite games ever, but it tears like a bitch when V-Sync is off, and turning it on causes a huge input delay, which for this type of game is just horrible. 

 

I decided to run the first into sequence without G-Sync first to remind myself of how bad the tearing is.... It's really bad. Then ran it again with G-Sync enabled.... Holy crap. 

 

The tearing is COMPLETELY gone, with no increased input delay at all. It finally makes this game look and play how it should do. I was averaging over 60FPS with settings maxed, so it's not a game to test how G-Sync works with lower FPS, but does prove that it will eliminate tearing. 

 

Also, WOW. This game looks fantastic in 4K, despite its age. 

 

 

 

Conclusion 

 

Is G-Sync worth it?

For 4K, yes. To me, it seems to work best for the drops below 60FPS, rather than just running at lower FPS. It does make lower FPS smoother and more playable, but at lower res, the money would be better spent on a better GPU.

 

Is 4K worth it?

Definitely. Even if you're not using it for gaming, the extra space you get is so useful. 

[Archangel1994]

@Oshino Shinobu

 

Could you tell us what it looks like when you set a game to 1080p (Since 4k is a perfect 2x scaling of 1080p) and what it looks like at 1440p? If 1080p or 1440p still look fine it's a very attractive option

[Oshino Shinobu]

@Oshino Shinobu

 

Could you tell us what it looks like when you set a game to 1080p (Since 4k is a perfect 2x scaling of 1080p) and what it looks like at 1440p? If 1080p or 1440p still look fine it's a very attractive option

They still work fine, at least for Mirror's Edge.

[Deadman957]

Because of this review I am going to buy a 4k G-sync hopefully they release an ips one soon though.

 

Also very nice review

[cesrai]

What is the name of the anime ? and is it good ? what genre is it ?

[Oshino Shinobu]

What is the name of the anime ? and is it good ? what genre is it ?

It's Tsukimonogatari. Part of the monogatari series. It's psychological and supernatural I guess. There's a lot of dialogue. It's by far my favourite series (:

Series in order you should watch them:

Bakemonogatari

Nisemonogatari

Nekomonogatari

Monogatari Series: Second Season

Hanamonogatari

Tsukimonogatari

The character in the picture is Oshino Shinobu

[PercySavageEG]

It's Tsukimonogatari. Part of the monogatari series. It's psychological and supernatural I guess. There's a lot of dialogue. It's by far my favourite series (:

Series in order you should watch them:

Bakemonogatari

Nisemonogatari

Nekomonogatari

Monogatari Series: Second Season

Hanamonogatari

Tsukimonogatari

The character in the picture is Oshino Shinobu

Off: Hardcore fan much?

 

On: Thanks for such a detailed and insightful review, it is interesting to see other people's preference on 4k other than just Linus. I wish I can go 4k now but it is way too expensive here, I'll definitely look into upgrading to 4k once 4k IPS monitors are more common and pricing in Viet Nam comes down. This review just reinforce my view on 4k and Gync even more - It's great and worth the price - 

[cesrai]

It's Tsukimonogatari. Part of the monogatari series. It's psychological and supernatural I guess. There's a lot of dialogue. It's by far my favourite series (:

Series in order you should watch them:

Bakemonogatari

Nisemonogatari

Nekomonogatari

Monogatari Series: Second Season

Hanamonogatari

Tsukimonogatari

The character in the picture is Oshino Shinobu

I guess you really like this anime, I will probably watch it later.

[Pomfinator]

What is the name of the anime ? and is it good ? what genre is it ?

 

I guess you really like this anime, I will probably watch it later.

This is how I'd sum up that whole series

 

On Topic: 4K and G-Sync/Freesync will be a match made in heaven for at least the next 2-3 years, as the power of GPUs catch up the requirements of 4K.

[anthonyc813]

Thank you for sharing this!

[Xsinar]

I have this monitor and I can vouch for this monitor being pretty good. There are some more nit picky cons when using 4K. First off, Photoshop is really hard to use as all the buttons are real tiny. Fraps and some program menus appear blurred or broken (Hope they fix this in Windows 10). There is back-light bleed on the Acer XB280HK on black backgrounds but you don't notice it with something running. Lastly, the glorious 1080p videos don't look all that good on a 4K monitor but not too bad (at-least better than 1440p Monitors).

 

Despite all this I am totally happy with this monitor 

[exyia]

surprised your skyrim performance tanked, make sure your ENB has cloud shadows in enbseries.ini off

 

that setting alone practically robs 20+ fps on higher resolution setups for so little difference

 

DoF also scales highly in terms of performance cost once your resolution gets higher - I gave up on ENB DoF and just use Dynavision now

 

also on enblocal.ini, make sure you turn off v-sync and fpslimit. the driver's g-sync will handle it from now on

 

also try turning sizescale and somethingsize(they're next to each other) in SSAO down to ~0.5, and that EnableSuperSampling is set to false in [sSAO] as well (because super sampling anything at 4K is....lol)

 

Those were the tweaks I had to make to every ENB to put performance back up on that monitor/setup

[Master Disaster]

Also got this monitor and agree with everything here. Its great.

Just an FYI OP, the GSync range for this monitor is 30FPS - 60FPS. Below 30 and Gsync doesn't work at all but tbh anything over 40FPS feels like butter with GSync enabled and playing at 4K makes games look great even if you have to sacrifice settings to achieve it.

What's really crazy is my 970 can push pCars at 4K with almost every on Ultra, grass is down to low and AA is off entirely but everything else is maxxed out, 45 - 60FPS constant until it rains, I have to play at 1440p in rain & fog. GTA V is a beast though, mix of low and mids to play at 4K.

I can confirm that 1440p is also great for gaming on this monitor, I run most games at 1440p most of the time.

GeForce Experience has surprised me though, so far its had 100% accuracy for me, just pick 1440p or 4K from the drop down and click optimise and boom, game works. Did you know you can do 8K DSR with a 4K display?

[exyia]

Also got this monitor and agree with everything here. Its great.

Just an FYI OP, the GSync range for this monitor is 30FPS - 60FPS. Below 30 and Gsync doesn't work at all but tbh anything over 40FPS feels like butter with GSync enabled and playing at 4K makes games look great even if you have to sacrifice settings to achieve it.

What's really crazy is my 970 can push pCars at 4K with almost every on Ultra, grass is down to low and AA is off entirely but everything else is maxxed out, 45 - 60FPS constant until it rains, I have to play at 1440p in rain & fog. GTA V is a beast though, mix of low and mids to play at 4K.

I can confirm that 1440p is also great for gaming on this monitor, I run most games at 1440p most of the time.

GeForce Experience has surprised me though, so far its had 100% accuracy for me, just pick 1440p or 4K from the drop down and click optimise and boom, game works. Did you know you can do 8K DSR with a 4K display?

 

g-sync works at any fps. it has no "range"

 

pcper has more videos if you're unfamiliar with g-sync's technical aspects

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just an FYI OP, the GSync range for this monitor is 30FPS - 60FPS. Below 30 and Gsync doesn't work at all but tbh anything over 40FPS feels like butter with GSync enabled and playing at 4K makes games look great even if you have to sacrifice settings to achieve it.

 

Do you have a source for this? As far as I know, GSync doesn't have a minimum operating FPS, which is one of the things they say makes it superior to FreeSync I believe. Even though GSync won't make much of a difference below 30FPS (it will still look bad), it should still work. 

 

 

g-sync works at any fps. it has no "range"

 

pcper has more videos if you're unfamiliar with g-sync's technical aspects

As far as I know, this is correct. 

[Master Disaster]

The reason for that upper bound of 33.3ms (30Hz) is G-Sync can currently only hold a frame for that long. On 60Hz panels this makes the range of variance for G-Sync between the quickest panel refresh and the slowest, 16.7ms to 33.3ms or between 60Hz and 30Hz.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2013/12/23/nvidia-g-sync-review/2

[LinusTech]

Welcome to the G-SYNC club. It's really better to be a member.

[Swndlr]

Welcome to the G-SYNC club. It's really better to be a member.

na man i think youre underestimating the TN panel 1080p club tbh

[Oshino Shinobu]

Welcome to the G-SYNC club. It's really better to be a member.

Been a member for awhile now, the thread was started in January, but it's suddenly become active again

 

I don't think I can go back to 1080p or non GSync now. Much in the same way the I can't deal with having one monitor any more, it slows down my workflow so much. 

[Xsinar]

Been a member for awhile now, the thread was started in January, but it's suddenly become active again

 

I don't think I can go back to 1080p or non GSync now. Much in the same way the I can't deal with having one monitor any more, it slows down my workflow so much. 

 

Wow didn't see the post date... Thought this was something that you reviewed recently 

[EpIcPoNaGe]

I've always heard about terrible scaling for 4K. How was it for you? I'm considering upgrading my dual 1080p monitors to either a 1440p ultrawide or a 4K. 

[DildorTheDecent]

What does Mirrors Edge look like with DSR at 8k effective?

[Oshino Shinobu]

I've always heard about terrible scaling for 4K. How was it for you? I'm considering upgrading my dual 1080p monitors to either a 1440p ultrawide or a 4K. 

Text can be difficult to read, but I have two 1080p monitors that I use for that. If it's your only monitor, you'll want to scale text to be bigger.

 

 

What does Mirrors Edge look like with DSR at 8k effective?

I have no idea. Not much different than 4K with AA maxed (like in the screenshot) 

[EpIcPoNaGe]

Text can be difficult to read, but I have two 1080p monitors that I use for that. If it's your only monitor, you'll want to scale text to be bigger.

 

Ah ok. I was hoping to free up some desk space by changing to only one monitor    G-sync seems so nice though! Whats your take on a single 780ti driving 4k? 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Ah ok. I was hoping to free up some desk space by changing to only one monitor    G-sync seems so nice though! Whats your take on a single 780ti driving 4k? 

Not great. 3GB is going to be limiting at 4K, as well as the power needed to drive it. No single GPU solution (other than the Titan X Maybe) is enough for 4K at any decent settings.