ASUS Rolls Out TUF Gaming VG279QM Monitor with 280Hz Refresh-rate and ELMB-sync

[btarunr]

ASUS today rolled out the TUF Gaming VG279QM, a 27-inch monitor with blazing fast refresh-rates. While its Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution is nothing to write home about, the 280 Hz refresh-rate is sure to get noticed by e-Sports gamers. Besides these, you get 1 ms response time (GTG), 178°/178° viewing angles; DisplayHDR 400 certification, and support for ELMB-sync and NVIDIA G-Sync. ELMB-sync allows simultaneous variable refresh-rate and blur reduction. The best part is that the monitor uses an IPS panel rather than TN-film. It takes input from DisplayPort 1.2 and two HDMI ports. The company didn't reveal pricing.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Vayra86]

27 inch 1080p?

You NEARLY nailed it...

 

[bonehead123]

1080p.... pfff.... thats sooooo 2015-ish

 

[cucker tarlson]

yup.heard of it,been waiting for more info.

might be an interesting buy.

@Vayra86 this is for overwatch and stuff

 

[damric]

280Hz? I can forsee many complaints about CPU bottlenecking.

 

[Kapone33]

Wow 280HZ on an IPS panel even if it's 1080P is insane. I bet the price will be pretty insane too.

 

[Chrispy_]

Asus doesn't reveal pricing because they'd be too heavily criticised for it on most forums.

I'm sure it's a good product within its niche, at a 50-100% cost premium over everyone else who will releasing similar models using the same panel.

On the plus side, any increase in the popularity of ULMB and VRR simultaneously is a good thing. I haven't ever actually experienced that myself but I would imagine it's simply all the goodness of ULMB with lower GPU and CPU requirements for fluid, evenly-paced frame delivery that VRR brings to the table.

 

[SamuelL]

Can't find it now but there was another site saying the MSRP was supposed to be just over $500 (converting from Yuan to USD)

 

[birdie]

According to the latest Linus'es test of human reaction, PC gamers do not really benefit from monitors with refresh rates above 144Hz, IOW anything above this refresh rate is an overkill and a waste of money and energy.

 

[Patriot]

280Hz? I can forsee many complaints about CPU bottlenecking.

Yeah, I only get 240fps in a couple of games...
have the 240hz alienware freesync panel

I would like 165-185hz at higher res plz.

 

[mouacyk]

Asus doesn't reveal pricing because they'd be too heavily criticised for it on most forums.

I'm sure it's a good product within its niche, at a 50-100% cost premium over everyone else who will releasing similar models using the same panel.

On the plus side, any increase in the popularity of ULMB and VRR simultaneously is a good thing. I haven't ever actually experienced that myself but I would imagine it's simply all the goodness of ULMB with lower GPU and CPU requirements for fluid, evenly-paced frame delivery that VRR brings to the table.

For ELMB, do wonder how they dealt with brightness variations. Hacks were done with strobing in order to run variable-refresh, but brightness varied too much and caused flickering. This is the feature to watch for, until OLED monitors arrive.

 

[Axaion]

Good luck to anyone buying these with IPS glow and BLB.

 

[INSTG8R]

Good luck to anyone buying these with IPS glow and BLB.

I’ll be perfectly honest I had an ASUS MG279Q 144hz IPS which I replaced with a Samsung CHG70 “Quantum Dot” VA panel. The BLB is utterly horrible and hugely disappointing. I actually miss the old one. It’s “issue” for me was it’s 35-90 FreeSync range, BLB was definitely not an issue with it.

 

[Axaion]

I’ll be perfectly honest I had an ASUS MG279Q 144hz IPS which I replaced with a Samsung CHG70 “Quantum Dot” VA panel. The BLB is utterly horrible and hugely disappointing. I actually miss the old one. It’s “issue” for me was it’s 35-90 FreeSync range, BLB was definitely not an issue with it.

Ive literally just returned two TUF VG259Q monitors cause of awful IPS glow and BLB, Asus is 100% a lottery if you get something that works or not

 

[INSTG8R]

Ive literally just returned two TUF VG259Q monitors cause of awful IPS glow and BLB, Asus is 100% a lottery if you get something that works or not

Slight bleed in the bottom left corner only visible at off viewing angles. My Samsung on the other hand literally has multiple zones of bleed like marquee lights around it’s borders. I really expected better from Samsung being one of it’s top panels.
hard to capture but that's clearly not "Black"

 

[lexluthermiester]

Why 280hz? Why not 288hz? Or perhaps 300hz? I'm curious how they arrived on that number and why...

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Why 280hz? Why not 288hz? Or perhaps 300hz? I'm curious how they arrived on that number and why...

short straw I'd bet. Makes me curios too.

 

[lexluthermiester]

short straw I'd bet. Makes me curios too.

I was thinking that, but also wondered if there might be a technical advantage or a business model advantage at play.

 

[INSTG8R]

I was thinking that, but also wondered if there might be a technical advantage or a business model advantage at play.

Any kind of interpolation numbers factor it’s certainly not a doubling of Hz in traditional refresh rates if those even matter anymore with this odd choice.

 

[Chrispy_]

For ELMB, do wonder how they dealt with brightness variations. Hacks were done with strobing in order to run variable-refresh, but brightness varied too much and caused flickering. This is the feature to watch for, until OLED monitors arrive.

Yeah, I'd like to experience it for myself to see how well they've solved the brightness variations wrt flickering.

Way before strobing backlights and VRR were available together, I was bemoaning how easy it would be to implement using a one-frame lag - all it every needed was a simple lookup table and counter, just time how long since the last frame and have it correspond to the duration of the next frame's backlight pulse. Longer gaps between frames need longer backlight pulses to trick your eye into thinking it's the same brightness.

Given that strobing backlights raise the VRR minimum operation to 90Hz or so, the slight delay between a frame gap and corresponding longer pulse on the next frame wouldn't be too serious unless your frame-time graph was a hugely-variable spiky mess - at which point you probably either need to sort out more serious game/driver/performance/settings issues first, or if the game engine and GPU combination are garbage, just enable triple-buffering and lock it to 60Hz fixed v-sync instead.

 

[Vayra86]

Wow 280HZ on an IPS panel even if it's 1080P is insane. I bet the price will be pretty insane too.

It just means more overdrive, don't wet your pants now.

Its still IPS and pixel G2G still is what it is. Ghosting too.

Don't let marketing fool you...

Why 280hz? Why not 288hz? Or perhaps 300hz? I'm curious how they arrived on that number and why...

Why 144, 160, or 120? Its just a number and we perceive higher as better, so we had 240, now we get 280 and think we need it. And they can still sell you 288 in the future

This is already way beyond ridiculous anyway. How many games do you drive at >140 FPS even?

Meanwhile, we're still talking about features on basically inferior display technologies. IPS for fast response and gaming really isn't a match made in heaven... It also has glow and backlight problems that don't serve the typical dim lit gamer cave... None of this ever got fixed. These high refresh rates are supposed to distract us from all that.

Its the exact same as the megapixel race, the need to have 4K at smaller diagonals, etc etc etc. Marketing > practical use.


In case anyone is still in doubt... here is the fastest IPS you can buy today.

LG 27GL850 review - TFTCentral

27" 1440p high refresh rate IPS gaming display from LG. With a DCI-P3 gamut, 1ms G2G response time spec and 144Hz refresh rate

www.tftcentral.co.uk

Specifically:

IPS simply has 4ms G2G. Its a technical limitation
Go lower, poof overshoot:

Try to go MUCH lower, and it becomes a hot mess

 

[Chrispy_]

Good luck to anyone buying these with IPS glow and BLB.

I'm just not keen on IPS, period. BLB has plagued mainstream IPS for the best part of a decade, and that's ignoring its mediocre black levels and corner-glow issues.
I guess if I were forced to choose between TN or IPS, I would probably gamble on IPS and just hope I don't get a bad one, since 100% of TN have that vertical gamma shift problem that I can't stand, whilst only 50% of IPS are garbage.

Don't let marketing fool you...

Indeed. Bonus points for using TFTCentral.co.uk.

Basically, all monitor reviews are useless unless they are from TFTC or Prad.de who actually measure lag and the full range of pixel response properly.

 

[Vayra86]

I'm just not keen on IPS, period. BLB has plagued mainstream IPS for the best part of a decade, and that's ignoring its mediocre black levels and corner-glow issues.
I guess if I were forced to choose between TN or IPS, I would probably gamble on IPS and just hope I don't get a bad one, since 100% of TN have that vertical gamma shift problem that I can't stand, whilst only 50% of IPS are garbage.

I must say I saw the new LG 31,5 inch VA 144hz a few days ago and I was pleasantly surprised at how they managed to eliminate the tone shift (losing color saturation). You really need a pretty extreme angle now to see it, its a step up from my Eizo FG2421. Maybe its time for VA? No bleed, no glow, better contrast, a bit less accurate.

 

[Chrispy_]

I must say I saw the new LG 31,5 inch VA 144hz a few days ago and I was pleasantly surprised at how they managed to eliminate the tone shift (losing color saturation). You really need a pretty extreme angle now to see it, its a step up from my Eizo FG2421. Maybe its time for VA? No bleed, no glow, better contrast, a bit less accurate.

I've been a VA convert for a while, when it comes to home/gaming monitors.
Who sits off-angle when gaming? I sure as hell don't! Meanwhile, the contrast levels and uniformity are unmatched by VA and TN at any price point.

As for response times, black to dark transitions are the slowest with VA, but although they show up as big red numbers in the response time tests, they're probably the least important transitions for gaming since your visual cortex will focus on movement first, then high-contrast, with darker parts of the image being less sensitive. There are easy tests/simulations you can do to prove to anyone that their brain processes dark, low-contrast images slower. It's a thing that has been successfully and commercially used for broacasting 3D shows via 2D televisions for over two decades (look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich_effect)

Here's a typical gaming VA:

• Pure-black to bright transitions on VA are absolutely fine (0-50%)
• Dark transitions that don't start at pure black are also absolutely fine (From personal testing, 8-32 is actually fast enough at that I stop being able to see any ghosting/smearing - you can test this yourself by setting custom colours in both drivers and/or at TestUFO.com

So whilst VA does look really bad for 0-50 as tested, it's quite a synthetic test that doesn't have a huge amount of real-content relevance, and even when it *is* relevant, human vision is less sensitive to it than it would be to a slow transition in the middle of the range like you sometimes get with slower IPS transitions. Also, if that table above were hypothetically expanded so that it covered all 65k combinations rather than start/end intervals, you'd likely see that the entire table was a vast field of green/yellow values and the only red would be an almost insignificant strip at the top covering the first few rows of starting point 0-5 or so.

 

[Berfs1]

Asus doesn't reveal pricing because they'd be too heavily criticised for it on most forums.

I'm sure it's a good product within its niche, at a 50-100% cost premium over everyone else who will releasing similar models using the same panel.

On the plus side, any increase in the popularity of ULMB and VRR simultaneously is a good thing. I haven't ever actually experienced that myself but I would imagine it's simply all the goodness of ULMB with lower GPU and CPU requirements for fluid, evenly-paced frame delivery that VRR brings to the table.

Since it’s a TUF monitor, I expect 500$ price point for this feature rich 280Hz monitor