4K Monitor Upgrade

[Bill Miller]

Hi,

I am considering buying an Asus MG28UQ 4K (3840 x 2160) 28" monitor for P3D V4 and the A320X.

My computer is an i7 6700 4.00 GHZ overclocked to 4.6) with an Nvidea GTX 970 graphics card.

I have two questions:

1. Will I experience a big reduction in performance with a 4K monitor?

2. Will I experience a significant improvement in picture quality with a 4K monitor.

Thanks for any advice offered.

Bill

 

 

[Mike Ionas]

Bill,

Most probably the 970 will not be able to handle dynamic lighting at such a high resolution. So if you go for 3840x2160 you should be prepared to make some compromises in order to have acceptable performance..

[Bill Miller]

Thanks. I already don't seem to be able to handle dynamic lighting! Noted.

Bill

 

[Mike Ionas]

If you are willing to live without dynamic lighting, consider that although you might be able to get away with AA off (as it will not be needed at 3840x2160 in 28") you still put an extra burden on your GPU because of the higher resolution. So you should consider the performance you are getting now with the settings you use and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable having to lower your settings even more.

[Bill Miller]

If you are willing to live without dynamic lighting, consider that although you might be able to get away with AA off (as it will not be needed at 3840x2160 in 28") you still put an extra burden on your GPU because of the higher resolution. So you should consider the performance you are getting now with the settings you use and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable having to lower your settings even more.

I don't really want to lose too much performance as I don't have much in reserve, but I was inquisitive to know what 4k resolution would look like. Thanks for your input.

Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

[Jeff baird]

Hi Bill 

I'm currently running a 50in 4K with a 1080ti with no issues. You can't go wrong with a 4K display. I think your 970 will struggle a bit. I would advise going with a stronger card like a 1080 or a 1080ti. Once you get there it'll blow your mind for sure. 

[Johan Durand]

Hello everyone . I'm in a big deal too and would appreciate any advice . I run p3dv4 on i7 7770k with gtx 1080 . my monitor is a 27" at 1080p. I would like to keep 27 or 28" but hesitate betxeen 1440p or 2160p. So what I would like to know is what are you experiencing? I would like to go for 2160p 4k to have all the information sharp in the cockpit on the nd fmgc pfd etc but I'm scared to  spent a lot of money with bad performance by night . What I asking myself is so there will be a real improvement with 1440p or it don't justify the upgrade ? 

Any suggest is welcoming as I don't know what to do ?

Regards

[J0hannes Butz]

Hi, I'm currently in the process in getting a good PG279Q from Asus (27" 1440p 165Hz IPS).

Previously I had a GTX 970 in my system and I would advise you to stay on 1080p with that card. For me having good visuals is finding the balance between settings, resolution and the amount of add-ons without running my CPU or GPU at constant 100% utilization. With my system as it is I'm able to run P3Dv4 at pretty realistic looking settings with dynamic lighting and 2xSSAA on 1080p without loosing frames compared to 8xMSAA. On 1440p I had to turn it down to 8xMSAA (still better visuals than 1080p 2xSSAA) and adjust some minor settings to ease GPU load a little bit. I can't tell you what performance I'd achieve in 4k, if I had to guess my system would need even lower GPU bound settings which honestly would not be satisfying to me.

The 165Hz thing comes from the "Real Performance is not high framerates" thread. As the monitor I'm getting is GSync enabled I'm having my P3Dv4 Gsync'd to it and to be honest - I've never had a more fluid experience in a MS based Sim before, even in really dense areas with a lot of add-ons.

At this time I think that 4k is nice for TV's but not quite there for monitors - I'll prefer a more fluid experience over having better looking screenshots. My recommendation would be to test a 1440p monitor (maybe one with a high refreshrate and GSync/FreeSync) in 27", especially if you're planning on playing games or using your PC for other tasks than just simming. Also I've heard (source: LTT) that Win10 doesn't have the greatest 4k implementation/scaling)

 

On 13.12.2017 at 9:24 AM, Johan Durand said:

will be a real improvement with 1440p or it don't justify the upgrade

it is a great improvement over 1080p, even when using lower AA settings.

 

EDIT: I thought maybe some screenshots would help, here's as close as I could reproduce it:

QNH 0986 is 1440p, QNH 1014 is 1080p; 1440p with 8xMSAA, VSync off (GSync on), 1080p with 2xSSAA, VSync on, for everything else there were no changes

Please compare them on your specific monitor in full screen, also note that 1440p with GSync is way snappier and produces a more fluid experience.

[Johan Durand]

Hi Johannes ,

 

Thank's for your reply I appreciate a lot. So I have look at all the monitor and with gsync etc it's very expensive.

So I'm gonna wait after the asus .

But at this moment I stay very happy as yes my simulator isn't beautiful but pretty smooth and I keep in mind that we have a fully simulated A320 what is a real gift.

So like I say I'm gonna follow your advices to deal with the asus but I have to wait as monitor with all the options needed are expensive.

At the beginning I believed that simply buy the first price monitor would be enough but when you begin to look at monitor with gsync etc price are crazy...

Thank's for all your help

Regards and I was wondering wich airport on the screen are you for the final ?

[J0hannes Butz]

The airport is T2G EDDM (hence the poor night lighting at distance...) this was the only 1440p screenshot I had

First off - I'm not specifically recommending you to go for the Asus one, actually it has a lot of problems with backlight bleeding and IPS glow, mine also flickered when certain OSD settings were made which is not what you'd expect from an expensive monitor. I've returned mine yesterday and now I'm waiting for a new one to show up. Build quality, OSD and features - compared to the competitors - are rock solid which is why I'm staying with this model.

I had pretty high demands for my monitor: it had to be IPS with sRGB coverage (RAW photo editing), 1440p or above resolution (P3D & music production), a refreshrate of 100hz+ (P3D) as well as GSync (casual gaming & P3D).

If you don't need sRGB colors you can go for a TN panel, if you don't need GSync you can get almost the same monitor for about 100€ less without the module, if you want 4k resolution you'll have to live with 60hz - as far as I'm aware there are no monitors with 4k resolution and more than 60hz refreshrates; and the list goes on. There's always tradeoffs and you'll need to determine where your sweetspot lies.

There are a lot of things to be considered, so think about what features YOU really want, what applications you want to use on it, how long you want to use the monitor, how much money you're willing to spend etc. If you have the option to test monitors in 4k or 1440p resolutions at the distance that you're sitting at go for it and determine that way what's right for you. If you can live with a little less smoothness and the usual VSync input lag then by all means go for 4k.

 

For me specifically - having experienced GSync in the scenario the Asus monitor is able to produce I'm not seeing myself going back to anything below 165Hz with GSync, even if I'm limited to the 1440p resolution.

What I wanted to share is my experiences with 1440p, that I've got a wide variety of applications the monitor has to handle in my usage. Everything else but P3D would not benefit from more pixels, the performance would probably be pretty bad. So for me the sweetspot is that exact monitor I've bought and I'd recommend you to consider all those factors for your specific usage. If you're anything like me; in your usage or quality appreciation, you're willing to save up a little longer and you'll maybe have to return a couple of monitors until you get one you're satisfied with, then the PG279Q is definitely worth looking at.

I can also report that this monitor overclocks in 5hz steps from 144>150>155>160>165hz and you can GSync any manually overclocked refreshrate - none of the competitors feature that. This is great because GSync acts similarly to VSync below 40FPS, so you can manually determine what minimum framerate your PC can maintain and set your monitor accordingly: as an example if you can maintain 21FPS in worst conditions you'd select 160hz, which goes down to 20hz synced to the monitor in that specific scenario resulting in a very smooth, controllable and almost input-lag free experience. There are still some stutters every now and then but it's way better than anything I've ever experienced in FSX/P3D.