Benefit ring puts six screens face to
face in the PCPP gaming monitor roundup
The screens through which our games are
displayed are some of the most critical pieces of equipment in the PC hardware
ecosystem; a bad display can utterly ruin the image being pumped out by your
fusion-powered triple-GPU PC. Unfortunately, while displays are fed identical
information from out GPUs, the way they choose to display this information
varies wildly between different monitor models and makes. One might be
fantastic at accurately reproducing colors but such at high-speed games, while
another of the scene yet struggle with bright imagines. We’re here to explain
what the key areas of measurement are for a display, and then check out six
displays that PC gamers should consider.
We used tests most relevant to gamers, the
first two of which are called White Saturation and Black Level. The former
detects how well the display can handle detail in bright areas, while the
latter checks performance during dark scenes. Next up is the Contrast test,
which shows how well the display shows the scales of linearly increasing RGB
values. In layman’s terms, it shows a series of colored boxes, and the aim is
to see each individual box. Poor displays will show certain boxes all merging
together, with no distinction between the, we use this to indicate how much
detail will be shown across various shades of color – if they all merge into
one you’ll lose detail when similar shades of colors are placed next to each
other in-game. The Gradient test is the final synthetic test we used, and
checks if the display suffers from banding. Thankfully most displays handle
this fine; all of the monitors we tested for banding passed with flying covers,
so we didn’t point it out in the reviews.
A metric of performance that is especially
important to gamers is input latency, which is how long it takes the display to
draw the screen after the computer has sent the signal. Rather than test it
synthetically, we used Quake Live to check for any noticeable issues. As
seasoned twitch gamers, it was rather obvious when a display had a high input latency.
They final test used is response time, and once again we used a collection of
games to test this. Response time refers to the time it takes for a pixel to
switch, and this show up as ghosting or motion blur in games. Again, most of
today’s displays have very low pixel response time, so it’s rare to see much
ghosting.
Now that you know how we tested, it’s time
to put these monitors through their paces.
Sung Out
Samsung screen are rather popular with PC
gamers, which made it so disappointing when the company declined to provide any
review samples for this roundup. Ditto for Viewsonic. Make of that what you
will.
Acer T232HL
A touchy feely display
Price: $699
Acer
T232HL: a touchy feely display
Admit it. You ignored PCPP’s advice and
installed Windows 8. That’s OK, because I did too… but only on my work machine
(it’s not going anywhere near my gaming shrine). While it is possible to use
Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard, it’s a much better experience when using a
touch screen. Which led to the obvious question is a touchscreen any good for
gaming? This 23-inch touchscreen from Acer costs more than BenQ’s gaming beast,
so it should have the chops for the job.
The designers of shiny screens should all
be shot, and that includes the guy who slapped a mirror on the front of this
display. Non-gamers will probably be impressed by the slick, glossy look, until
they realize the stand is about as adjustable as a crowbar and it’s hard to see
past the reflections if you’re in a bright room.
Black level tests indicate rather poor
reproduction of very dark images, with many of the darker boxes melding into
the background. White saturation fared much better, with a perfect result. The
IPS panel showed no input lag in Quake Live, and the colors were vivid and
punchy. Finally, War Thunder and World of Tanks rounded out the real-world
testing, and once again the image quality was excellent.
Unfortunately,
the price is excessive for a 23-inch 1080p screen, regardless of its touch
capability/ hopefully
To my surprise, this is actually a rather
decent gaming display, at least if you can get around the reflection issues.
Unfortunately, the price is excessive for a 23-inch 1080p screen, regardless of
its touch capability/ hopefully it’ll come down over the next few months as
more stock lands in Australia.
·
Excellent image quality
·
Slick bezel
·
No latency issues
·
Expensive
·
Reflective finish
·
Grapy stand
Verdict: 7/10
Whodathunkit? A touch screen that is
actually half decent as a gaming display! Pity about that price tough…
Asus VG248QE
I feel the need for speed
Price: $575
144Hz. That’s the maximum officially
supported refresh rate of this monitor. With the screen updating 144 times per
second, games look much smoother, and input latency is drastically reduced.
Sure, you need a monster GPU setup to run today’s sexiest games at 144 frames
per second to match it, but for those in the pursuit for the ultimate in
monitor speed, it’s a small price to pay.
It’s just a pity that it came at the cost
of image quality. Even after bringing some sense of normalcy to the default
contrast settings, colors still looked washed out no matter what I tried.
Firing up the Lagom tests saw whites totally blown out, darks merging into one
and the contrast performance truly lacking.
Battlefield
3 struggled to hit anywhere near 144fps on my test bench’s Radeon HD 7970;
lowering most of the settings brought it to the same level of perfectly flowing
frames
Thankfully these issues aren’t so
noticeable once you see 144Hz in action. Quake Live purred through the display,
with a smoothness of motion that makes 60Hz look like a stuttering mess.
Battlefield 3 struggled to hit anywhere near 144fps on my test bench’s Radeon
HD 7970; lowering most of the settings brought it to the same level of
perfectly flowing frames. Whether or not the drop in image quality is worth
these extra frames is debatable.
ASUS has made many compromises with this
monitor – overall image quality seems washed out and overly bright, but in
return you get a fluidity of motion that is unrivalled. Alas, its bigger
brother has the same feature set for a lower price, making it hard to justify
buying this smaller, more expensive model.
·
144Hz refresh rate
·
Great 3D
·
Very bright
·
Too bright washed out image
·
Very expensive for this size
Verdict: 7/10
Perfect for speed freaks, the compromises
made to reach 144HZ will probably deter regular gamers.
