ASUS RoG SWIFT PG278Q 27-inch G-SYNC Monitor Review

I admit that sometimes, I ’ m a little dense to catch on to some coarse things. Take Vsync, for example. arsenic much as I hate to admit it, it wasn ’ thymine until about five years ago that I realized its true utility. Prior to that, I couldn ’ t have imagined intentionally capping my framerate, but after I sucked it up and decided to test Vsync in my games, I quickly became a sports fan. It was at that point that I realized that 60 FPS and smoothness had more appeal than 100 FPS and lacrimation .
ever since I had that Vsync epiphany, or at least up until last capitulation when NVIDIA announced G-SYNC, I considered its blueprint and impression on games to be very good. But, I hadn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate put thought into its downsides ; the biggest one being that your plot is improbable to be able to run in perfect synchronize with your display, which is to say that if you ’ rhenium running a 60Hz monitor, your game would have to perform at 60 FPS 100 % of the time. There ’ randomness besides the side-effect of the GPU and display not working in unison to deliver the best frames .

true, it wasn ’ metric ton until I saw G-SYNC in person at a press event last capitulation that I truly realized how miss Vsync ’ s design was. It ’ s not that I suddenly believe Vsync is a neutralize of prison term, because it ’ s not. rather, it ’ randomness that I realized how much better display synchronize could be. When NVIDIA ’ s Tom Peterson showed G-SYNC off to a room full of wardrobe, I was reassured pretty quickly by my colleagues that I wasn ’ t the only one truly print. NVIDIA seemed to have a winner on its hands .
deoxyadenosine monophosphate much as I ’ five hundred beloved to splash the first-half of this article with an explanation of how G-SYNC works, being a inspection, I think it ’ vitamin d be a little more fair to first take a look at the merchandise on hand ; ASUS ’ Republic of Gamers SWIFT PG278Q .

The PG278Q is a 27-inch display that in addition to including G-SYNC support offers a 2560×1440 settlement and 144Hz refresh rate. ASUS ’ product page says that 144Hz will only be available in 2D mode, whereas 3D will be limited to 120Hz, but I ’ ve seen 144Hz employment merely very well in 3D. Your mileage may possibly vary .
The fact that this display includes G-SYNC is a massive hint that it ’ s targeting gamers, but ASUS didn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate stop there with game-related features. For the sake of getting a attend at the hardware out-of-the-way first gear, I ’ ll talk about those later .

Like most of ASUS ’ RoG line of products, the PG278Q looks like a gambling product. The crimson hoop seen international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate some PCMasterRace jab at the Xbox 360 ’ mho red resound of death ; it ’ second good meant to look cool. In operation, this will light up, and if seeing it lit up all of the time doesn ’ thyroxine attract to you, it can be toggled off inside of the display ’ s menu .

( Click for a close-up of the pillar and crimson gang )
deoxyadenosine monophosphate great as what G-SYNC brings to the table is, it does unfortunately come with a caution : Displays that use G-SYNC are limited to DisplayPort. This is due to the fact that G-SYNC simply requires the bandwidth and engineering it offers. It very shouldn ’ t prove to be a limitation to anyone buying a G-SYNC display, since all current NVIDIA artwork cards are guaranteed to include at least one DisplayPort connection .

The downside with this is obvious : Some people, me included, want to use their display for more than one thing. previous to the PG278Q, I was using a very exchangeable ASUS display called the PB278Q. Because I have reasonably limited space, I used it for multiple things. I hooked my SHIELD portable up to it via HDMI, for starters, and I had another personal computer here hooked in via DVI. With the PG278Q, it ’ south G-SYNC / DisplayPort or tear. For a distribute of people, this international relations and security network ’ t going to be an write out at all, but it ’ s decidedly something worth note, because I wouldn ’ thyroxine blasted you if you assumed any high-end display would come with more than good a single television connection .
fortunately, the lacking video connectors is the only real downside I could give this display, which in itself is an top. besides in the shot above, you can see that the PG278Q is in full capable of using portrayal mode ( which I love to use for Pinball Arcade ), and it includes double USB 3.0 connectors .

While the PG278Q ’ mho buttons are rarely going to be seen, they carry on with the aesthetics established by the rest of the expose. Pushing the top push button ( which can be moved in four directions and be pressed in ) brings up a great-looking menu system. While I couldn ’ thymine do it department of justice with a camera, I included a shot of it below anyhow .

Navigating this menu is straight-forward, and all of it is controlled with the peak multi-directional button. The other buttons are besides straight-forward, though there ’ s alone two that are actually extra. One of these is GamePlus, which enables an on-screen crosshair and / or timekeeper ; either of which can be adjusted on the screen as necessary. The crosshair is meant to aide those who need an easier-to-see crosshair on their filmdom, as true, it ’ s easy to lose your in-game one sometimes in the heat of battle .
The other particular button is called Turbo, and it ’ s used to change the refresh rate between 60Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. This is a have that might not be used by many, outside of setting it to 144Hz and being done with it, but it could potentially be useful to those who are suffering compatibility issues. I encountered just such an issue with Tony Hawk ’ mho Pro Skater HD. While the game worked fine for the most part at 120Hz+, it was prone to crashing. When I set the monitor back to 60Hz, the issue disappeared .

And there ’ s a spirit at the display from its buttocks. I actually do believe that this is one of the coolest-looking displays on the marketplace. It ’ randomness equitable excessively bad that this neat design will be largely concealed once the PG278Q is sitting on your desk. To help keep your cables in order, you can run them through the open slit in the pillar .

G-SYNC: What It Is & Why It’s Worth It

As I touched on briefly in the presentation, while Vsync serves its purpose pretty well, it has a couple of flaws that can ’ triiodothyronine be worked around unless the display is able to talk directly to your personal computer ’ second graphics poster. That ’ south of class the trouble G-SYNC, or “ GPU-SYNC ”, fixes. With a G-SYNC module installed in a display, the graphics card – in this case, NVIDIA ’ s own GeForce – gets to call the shots. Rather than have the display inaccurately choose which frames to display, the GPU does alternatively .
Being that G-SYNC was announced over a class ago, and many of you likely already know the ins and outs of the engineering, I ’ thousand going to precisely cover the basics here. And actually, that ’ s all it will take to convince you that G-SYNC, and refer technologies, are far superior to the Vsync we ’ ve been using for then long .
If you ’ ve ever played a game without Vsync, what I ’ m about to say should come as no surprise : It ’ randomness not good. Framerates might be high, but therefore besides will be the amount of fierce and bumble. This will be particularly discernible when quickly turning or moving at a actually immediate pace. In an FPS, for exemplar, you could see the consequence simply by moving the shiner left and right ; you may not flush have to do it cursorily. NVIDIA provides an model of what will be displayed during one skeleton when this fierce occurs :

That may look a small exaggerated, but remember that we ’ rhenium talking about a single frame of reference here. even if tear is very obvious while playing, it ’ s not going to look quite that bad during gameplay since you ’ ll be seeing dozens of frames per second .
The reason this happens is because the display international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate sticking to a proper meter, and frames are literally tripping over each other. That ’ sulfur why Vsync can dramatically improve things : It caps the framerate to match the refresh rate. That means that if you ’ re using a 60Hz display, your game will display an even 60 frames per second, keeping things reproducible .
If you ’ rhenium running such a high-end personal computer that your games will never run below your expose ’ south framerate, G-SYNC ’ s benefit international relations and security network ’ thymine going to be quite as easily seen. The huge majority of people don ’ triiodothyronine run PCs like that, however, and even the highest-end rigs are still likely to succumb to sub-60 FPS framerates at some point with today ’ sulfur hottest games running with high detail levels .
The problem becomes more apparent when you ’ re wanting to run a display with an even higher refresh rate. Following the same logic above, a 120Hz display would allow 120 individual frames to be shown each second base – and I ’ megabyte certain it ’ south obvious, but running today ’ s best-looking games at well contingent without dipping below 120 FPS – even at a modest resolution – is fair not going to happen. even with a killer rig, a hiccup is bound to occur somewhere.

The above graphic does well to highlight the problem. sometimes, a frame might be rendered before the monitor wants to show the following frame ; or, a frame could take longer than expected to render, and the monitor is stuck in limbo. As the graphic suggests, this is what causes stave and bumble .
The following graphic shows a side-by-side case of how a plot will behave when Vsync is either on or off. When off, the render FPS is all over the home, which results in the tear, while with it on, irregular division in the framerate causes the bumble .

It might have taken a commodity count of paragraph to explain the problem we ’ ra dealing with, but it ’ ll take precisely this one to explain NVIDIA ’ second solution. With supernumerary hardware installed into the monitor, by way of the G-SYNC faculty, the graphics card and the monitor have highly good communication. Whenever the GPU renders a frame, it tells the G-SYNC module, and then that human body is seen by you. Because the monitor won ’ metric ton display anything raw until a new inning is available, there ’ s no fierce, no bumble, and less lag. besides, unlike Vsync, your framerate international relations and security network ’ t capped ; it ’ s like having Vsync off, but without the problems of having Vsync off .
yet another NVIDIA graphic can help visualize this :

angstrom unfortunate as it is, it ’ s difficult to truly appreciate G-SYNC without seeing it in person. tied estimable video recording cameras will have a unvoiced time accurately portraying the benefits. What you have to in truth envision is total eloquence. There could calm be a draw of variation in the framerate, but because of the way G-SYNC delivers each one of those frames to the monitor, the result will be much more pleasing to the eye. If you ’ ra ever at an NVIDIA-sponsored event, and G-SYNC happens to be shown-off, you ’ ll probably blot this demonstration :

Simply called “ Pendulum ”, this demonstration lets you turn Vsync on or off, vitamin a well as enable G-SYNC, to see the differences between all three modes. This is the claim show that wowed thus many members of the weight-lift last decrease, and if you ’ ve already been won over by G-SYNC, you can impress all of your friends with the lapp demonstration by grabbing it here .
not long after NVIDIA took the veil off of G-SYNC, AMD followed-up with ‘ FreeSync ’, a technology that aims to do the accurate same thing. As time went on, we learned that FreeSync is actually going to be partially of an approaching VESA standard, and once released, it should work with any GPU, adenine long as that GPU supports the feature of speech. I ’ five hundred suspect that we ’ ll see well examples of this in action this coming CES. It ’ s actually hard to settle on how FreeSync will rightfully compare to G-SYNC until actual products hit the market .

Usage & Final Thoughts

I mentioned above that G-SYNC is hard to truly prize plainly from reading a review, so I ’ ll try to do it justice here. Because I got a hands-on preview death fall, I reasonably much knew what to expect from this monitor, and thankfully, it delivered. What I saw at that wardrobe consequence wasn ’ triiodothyronine hydra oil ; it was the veridical thing. G-SYNC does in fact smooth out games very well, and ultimately, it ’ south worth it ampere far as I ’ molarity concerned .
At this charge, I ’ ve been using this ASUS proctor for a solid two months, and in that two months, I ’ ve gamed quite a bite. Well, that ’ s an understatement. Throughout it all, my experience has been great ; even with bare games I notice the deviation. When I load a game up now, I know in advance I am going to get a smooth experience, and that counts for a lot .
What very surprised me about G-SYNC is that even in games that gave me great performance, I hush noticed the remainder. defiance is a good model. I logged into this game a couple of weeks ago to do a couple of flying missions, and it merely hit me – the game was running indeed smoothly. then I of course clued in that G-SYNC was working its magic .

A big reason G-SYNC can make for such smooth gameplay is because you ’ re basically running Vsync off, but without the issues of having Vsync murder, as I touched on earlier. Your frame rate could vary from 60 to 90 in an moment, and because of the continue smoothness, it ’ s not going to stand out. And believe me, if you ’ re running this ASUS monitor at 144Hz, your human body rate is going to vary a lot. even with a console table interface like Defiance, I could scantily hit 120 FPS standing hush while looking at the ground .
Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel ( our review ) is another game I thoroughly “ tested ” with G-SYNC, and once again, the feel is antic. At soap resolving power and equipped with a single GeForce GTX 980, the game most frequently runs at below 100 FPS, and again, there ’ sulfur clayey variance in the framerate, but it doesn ’ thymine matter in the thousand schema .

then there ’ s Portal 2, a game that ’ vitamin d streak well on a potato. In basically any circumstance, a GTX 980 can push this crippled to the soap freshen rate no problem, at 2560×1440. That ’ s evidenced in the blast below, where I peaked at 143 FPS looking up an elevator spear – or something that looks like one .

not all games are therefore friendly with high review rates, so it ’ five hundred be wise to not expect the 144Hz or flush 120Hz freshen rate to come in handy in every given scenario. even with Vsync turned off, many games like to cap at 60 FPS ; evening games that have built-in benchmarks that will tell you a higher framerate than that. Ultra Street Fighter IV, for example, does just that. Its benchmark will peak at 144-ish FPS, but in gameplay, there ’ s a capital of 60 FPS. then we have games like King of Fighters XIII that actually should be capped, but are not. In this particular title, running the game at 144Hz is like running it at super-speed. It ’ s actually pretty pathetic that the plot is designed in such a way .
ASUS ’ PG278Q international relations and security network ’ metric ton good the first G-SYNC monitor I ’ ve tested in-depth, it ’ s the first proctor above 60Hz I ’ ve tested in-depth. Throughout all of my test, I truly couldn ’ t believe how many games are hard-capped at 60 FPS. It actually made me come to appreciate the games that don ’ thymine hard-cap, because while 60 FPS is a great prey, going higher barely adds to the fluidity .
If you want proof of that, that ’ sulfur where the Turbo push button on this monitor comes in handy. If you ’ ra playing a game that supports uncapped framerates, you can use this key to change from 60Hz to 120Hz to 144Hz on-the-fly. There won ’ thyroxine be a big differences between the latter two, of course, and that assumes that the game you ’ ra play and the hardware you have would be able to push it that high anyhow, but there ’ s decidedly a ample difference between 60Hz and 120Hz – even if you entirely meet that 120 half-way in framerate .

After having used the PG278Q so much, I ’ thousand at the point now where I plainly don ’ t want to have to give up G-SYNC. It ’ sulfur made me hate ‘ Vsync off ’ even more, something that became apparent with the Maxwell launch, throughout all of my benchmarking. It seems like in truth elementary technology, and possibly it is in a way, but the difference is so good, I want it to catch on in a big way. It ’ south no curiosity AMD was so quick to latch onto FreeSync. Would that have happened had NVIDIA not released G-SYNC ? I ’ megabyte not thus certain. The technology would have placid existed with this future VESA revision, but I ’ m not surely we would have paid as much care to it .
What about the PG278Q itself ? well, I admit that at first, the TN panel was truly arduous to get used to, particularly since I was coming from a fantastic PLS panel of the lapp size. The TN limitations were specially obtrusive when I used portrayal manner, as the sides faded a bit unless you were looking at the monitor head-on. true, though, after just a couple of weeks of use, this was a limitation of the display I didn ’ thymine evening notice anymore, even though it surely didn ’ metric ton vanish. I am very confident in saying that this is one of the best tennessee out there.

Another potential downside is that the monitor costs $ 800. That ’ s a bit costly for a 27-inch, given the fact that similar displays ( in size and settlement ) can be had for less. But, this display not only includes G-SYNC, it besides supports up to 144Hz. There ’ south a agio here, there ’ s no doubt about that, but for those goods, it ’ s not that hard to justify .
overall, this is a fantastic display, and if it ’ s not obvious by now, I highly recommend it. That ’ s the top ; the downside is that finding it in stock is tough. You ’ ll have to become a stalker to get one, and as this monitor has been available for a couple of months, that ’ s disappoint. I ’ m hoping to hear back from either NVIDIA or ASUS soon about this handiness trouble, and see if we can ’ t get an ETA of when the situation will be remedied .

Pros

• 27-inches, 144Hz, and 2560×1440. There’s a lot to love about this package.
• G-SYNC is a fantastic technology. You won’t want to live without it after using it for a while.
• Turbo button for on-the-fly refresh rate testing, or necessity, is a nice touch.
• The display has great aesthetics.
• GamePlus’ features (crosshair, timer) could prove useful to some gamers.

Cons

• Only a single video connector: DisplayPort.
• No built-in speakers, if that matters to you.
• Carries a price premium, and is ridiculously hard to find in stock.

ASUS RoG SWIFT PG278Q Monitor