Alienware vs Asus - PG279Q ROG Swift vs ROG SWIFT PG27VQ

[Rute]

Hello,

 

like most coming here im looking for a little help from others that probably know better. I am going to be upgrading my monitor, ive never had more then a budget one but, NOWS THE TIME!!!!!   ; )

so i been watching youtube videos and reading articles trying to figure out what i shold be looking for 120hz, 144hz, 1ms - 4ms response, TN , VN, IPS.... and it goes on and on. In the end im not sure im much better off then when i have started....sigh....maybe im getting old.... but I believe i have narrowed it down to three and any further advise would be appreciated. 

 

I am running an i7 with a GTX 1080 at the moment and this monitor will be primarily for game use/ watching videos/movies... mainly games. I like to play MMO's like WoW, Atlas, the up coming Ashes of Creation. My kids will toy with me in Fortnite time to time. so i guess i play the occasional shooter. 

 

removing price from the equation here is the three im looking at and im really having a hard time setting on one. Ive never tried a curved monitor but it sounds appealing. More than likely i will not be upgrading any time soon so im really trying to get the best monitor i can.

 

1) Alienware - AW3418DW 34.14" IPS LED UltraWide HD G-SYNC Monitor - 34" , curved, 4k, ---sounds like it would be great for immersion and stunning visuals. but its 120hz, and 4ms GTG, is there really a difference between the 120hz and the 144hz (OC 165hz)? and is the 4ms really a difference compared to the 1ms screens? or is it not really a difference being an IPS panel? --- the large screen sounds great, but i rather have great game play and better graphics on a 27" if there is a difference.  --- and if i upgraded my GPU would it make a difference

 

2)  ROG Swift PG27VQ Curved Gaming Monitor – 27 inch 2K WQHD (2560x1440), overclockable 165Hz, 1ms, G-SYNC, Aura Sync Technology - this lands in the 2k display. is there much difference between the 4k and 2k? this has higher Hz, better ms response, different kind of panel?

 

3) LG 32GK850G Black 31.5" QHD 1440p 5ms 144Hz NVIDIA G-Sync Gaming Monitor, 350nits(typ), HDMI, Display Port, USB3.0, Tilt, Swivel, Pivot, Height Adjustable - not sure if there is quality here? larger size, flat, 144hz, back to 5ms

 

4) Asus - PG279Q ROG Swift 27.0" 2560x1440 165 Hz Monitor - i throw this one in because i read it on this thread.

 

at this point im thinking #1 or #2 and im torn between the two. Does anyone have some experience with these two or with monitors in general that can give me some better information or real world application experience using these to help me settle out which i should choose. I know there is no "perfect" monitor. i hate to spring on #1 and feel put out over the 120hz and 4ms response. I really dont know if there is that much difference. or would my GPU not handle it and for real play id want to go with #2? anyways it will be nice to play with some nice graphics for once.

 

any helpful information passed along is greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you

[Lathlaer]

Weird that no one answered here yet. 

 

First things first:

 

On 12/21/2018 at 2:06 PM, Rute said:

1) Alienware - AW3418DW 34.14" IPS LED UltraWide HD G-SYNC Monitor - 34" , curved, 4k

1440p ultrawide is not 4K. In fact, in terms of pixel count it's closer to 2560x1440p than to 3840x2160. The resolution is 3440x1440 so it's just a wider 1440p with 21:9 aspect ratio. Keep that in mind. 

 

The first two monitors will offer different experience but when people decide to go TN route, it's usually so that they can go crazy with refresh rate. 165MHz vs. 120MHz is too small a difference to justify overall worse gaming experience on a TN panel. IPS has better color reproduction and viewing angles. 

 

The Alienware has also about 30% more pixels so you have to account for that with the rest of your hardware (ie. whether you will be even able to go near that 120Hz - but that's what G-Sync is for).

 

As for the mythic 1ms vs. 5ms, I'll let someone smarter explain this for me:

 

On 12/28/2014 at 12:47 AM, Glenwing said:

Do you need a 5 ms response time or less for gaming?

  Hide contents

There are two groups of people that say this.

The first are the people that think response time refers to input lag/latency, which is not true as I explained in the previous section. Don't confuse response time with latency. If you switch from a 5 ms monitor to a new 1 ms monitor and the new one "feels faster", what you're feeling is not due to the faster response time. You are feeling a decrease in latency, which is completely unrelated to those 5 ms / 1 ms figures on the box, and is probably more along the lines of a 20–50 ms decrease or even up to 200–400 ms if you're coming from a TV. Even if you can feel decreased latency on your new monitor, the fact that the response time also happens to be lower than your old monitor is basically a coincidence and is not what is causing any feelings of decreased latency. Feeling a difference between 1 ms and 5 ms is totally impossible, and if you think you can, have a go at this so you get an idea of how short a millisecond is: http://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime.

The second group are the people that understand response time isn't latency, but say you'll get bad ghosting and terribly blurry images without 5 ms or less. As I explained in the previous section, the response time numbers printed on boxes are extremely, extremely imprecise. This means any statement like "5 ms and under is ok for gaming, anything more and you will start seeing ghosting" is completely untenable. Any kind of blanket statement like that relies on the assumption that a 5 ms response time translates to a defined amount of ghosting, and likewise for any other numbers, but in reality that just isn't true. You cannot tell how much blur or ghosting a monitor will have from the listed response time number. You can find 2 ms, 5 ms, 8 ms, even 12 ms monitors with minimal ghosting. You can also find 2 ms, 5 ms, 8 ms, or 12 ms monitors with much more pronounced ghosting. Saying 5 ms will have acceptable ghosting for gaming while 8 ms or 12 ms will have too much is simply wrong, even if you put the word "generally" in front. Response time numbers listed on the box are meaningless, and this is easily proven by real-world ghosting tests with high-speed cameras.

For example, there is this collection of ghosting tests, which clearly shows a 12 ms monitor with more or less equal ghosting to a 5 ms monitor from another vendor, both of them with less ghosting than a supposedly faster 4 ms monitor from a third vendor. On top of that, the pair of 2 ms "gaming" monitors at the bottom have completely different levels of ghosting despite having the "same" response time. In fact one of the 2 ms monitors actually appears to be slightly faster than the 1 ms monitor at the top, while the other 2 ms monitor is even slower than the 12 ms IPS model mentioned above. The 8 ms monitor seems to have the heaviest ghosting in the bunch. So basically, monitors should never have their response times compared. Your intuition will tell you that 1 ms is less than 2 ms is less than 3, but in reality any number could mean any amount of ghosting, so the numbers in fact are meaningless, quite literally; they have no actual meaning. Response time is, in a nutshell, the second most useless spec on a monitor spec sheet (behind only "dynamic contrast ratio). It's all a moot point anyway, since ghosting hasn't been a big issue for a long time.

It's pretty much all a big myth at this point, perpetuated by bunches of people parroting 1 ms is good and 8 ms is too slow to everyone because they heard someone else say it, without having any actual experience, or else are just suffering from a placebo or confirmation bias. If you ask anyone who has actually used a decent modern IPS panel, I've never met a single one who has had ghosting and blurring issues in gaming. From everything I've seen it seems the "IPS displays are bad for gaming" community is composed entirely of people who have never used IPS displays before.

 

You can read more about display myths and facts in his thread: 

 

 

The simple truth is that the Alienware is simply a better panel out of those two. More expensive as well but if you have the money to spend, I'd recommend it over the Asus. 

 

TN panels are usually the choice of people who are 

 

a) on a budget (they are usually cheaper than IPS/VA panels with similar specs)

b) pro FPS players who absolutely need the refresh rates in which case they go with something like 240MHz (again, 165 vs. 120 is too small a difference to notice)

 

As for the LG one, looks good on paper and the only flaw I can see is that it's fairly large for the resolution (ie. the pixel density is lower than a 27inch one). You'd have to see it in person to see if it bothers you.  The Asus PG279Q is safer in that regard.