The BEST & FASTEST 240Hz Gaming Monitor. Period. - ASUS ROG Swift PG258Q Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,690 words · ~8 min read
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gaming monitors what exactly is it that they bring to the uh figurative table
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here faster processing times so that's
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the speed at which it can take that signal that comes in from your video
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card to draw a new frame and turn that into something that the panel can
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understand and faster pixel response times so that's the time that it takes
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an individual pixel to go hey you're supposed to change to this color and
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then actually flip to a different color so that the image changes but until a
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couple of years ago all gaming monitors
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were still held back by one key factor
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the refresh rate and in fact many gaming
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monitors today including this one are
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still running at 60 refreshes per second
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or 60 HZ meaning that some of the information on the screen can be up to
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16 milliseconds old depending on when
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the video card put it the PG 258 Q kicks
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all of that in the teeth boasting the highest true refresh rate of any gaming
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display on the market
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240 HZ bringing that maximum Delay from
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refresh rate down to about 4
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milliseconds so let's check it out then shall we
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video description now to be clear there have
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been displays in the past that have advertised 240 htz 480 htz or even
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960 htz refresh rates but those have
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been different typically this has been found on televisions where what they're
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actually doing is taking a regular old 60 HZ signal and processing it to
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approximate what the frames in between would be every TV manufacturer has a
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different name for it but that technology is totally unsuitable for
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gaming for a number of reasons the main one being that it adds a ton of
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additional processing time where on a TV it doesn't really matter but in a game
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where the user is actually interacting with what they see on the screen it's a
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totally different ball game so for this to happen on a gaming monitor there are
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a couple of key advancements that had to be made number one we needed faster
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processors for our displays because 240
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HZ you know 40 Mill seconds later with a
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bunch of you know guesses as to what might have been in between is not the
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same as real time you know
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submillisecond processing of frames streaming over from a graphics card and
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number two is that we needed a better
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display interface so DisplayPort 1.2
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saves the day again it's capable of carrying 4K 60 HZ which if you you know
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do some fairly simple math is four times
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the number number of pixels as 1920x
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1080 or 1080p which is what this display does so it stands to reason then that
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you would also be able to do four times the refresh rate at this resolution
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number three is we needed faster panels so it wasn't until now that we would
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even be able to get any benefit out of 240 refreshes per second because if the
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pixel response times weren't good enough
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then sure you might be pushing out 240 images per second but you'd end up with
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a big ugly blurry mess instead of a
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clean crisp image okay so we managed to
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cover the refresh rate and the resolution so far but let's talk about
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the rest of the monitor uh first up is the Bas this is going to be a love it or
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ha it thing it's got kind of this uh black and sort of rust orange kind of
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thing going on and then they include a couple different ones of these little
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Rog illumination logo dads here that you
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can swap out if you want so they include two Rog ones and then they also include
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a few blanks so you can customize it if you want or you can turn the light off
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entirely in the onscreen display next up
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is IO now originally gsync monitors did
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I mention this is g-sync by the way so that's uh that's cool if you're into the
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whole variable refresh rate technology thing only had DisplayPort in now we
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get DisplayPort and HDMI although it
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should be noted this was interesting the HDMI port only operated at 64 Hertz when
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I tried it so I'm not sure what the deal
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with that is cuz that's not even the best that you could normally do on an
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HDMI 1.4 connection also down here is a USB hub
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power in and a headphone pass through as well as a little Dad here for cable
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management and then the whole thing goes through this guy right here you've got
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all the normal adjustments so you can go portrait you can twist you can go up and
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down and you can tilt like that and take
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these ugly stickers off it as well and getting down to the panel itself what
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has become an Rog staple these super thin bezels on the right and left as
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well as the top making it ideal for a surround gaming setup if you're into
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that sort of thing I personally am not and as for the panel itself you can use
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this handy test image that I got over on AVS forum to find out if it is true 8bit
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or if it's 6bit with FRC so that's a technique that approximates Shades that
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6bit panels can't reproduce by reproducing nearby ones and alternating
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them and it looks like it does use f FRC so that right side has kind of a modled
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appearance to it so let's fire up a game then shall we so at
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first Ed wasn't sold um we went straight
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to 240 HZ and tried with g-sync and with
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without g-sync and thought that maybe
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whether it's the computer and the game engine struggling to maintain steady 240
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FPS or just the the limitations of human
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perception it seemed like it was just more numbers more Hertz numbers for the
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sake of more numbers without the obvious benefit that going from 60 to 120 or 144
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Hertz had but obviously based on some of
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the shots being made wasn't hurting matters either then we decided to try out the
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ulmb mode which necessitated a switch to
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144 HZ Max and something wasn't quite
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right he was complaining about not having audio and complaining about this
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and complaining about why shots weren't being made but but those flick shots
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they were happening before so back to
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240 Herz we went they're back it looks
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like just like the SSD upgrade of half a
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decade ago it's one of those things where it might be a little hard to tell
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the difference until you've had it and
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had it yanked away so that leads pretty
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well into the conclusion for this display here um I did run it through my
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usual range of color tests and as I
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would expect from someone who cares about attention to detail like a seus in
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srgb mode it's actually not bad consistently Delta ease of less than
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five across the board is it suitable for Content creation no but were we really
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expecting that out of a TN monitor not really overall pretty good but on to the
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gaming argument it's like a $500 monitor
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for someone like me would I say it's worth it no I'm not going to get the
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most out of a piece of Machinery like this but for someone who actually has
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more skill do I think that 240 HZ
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technology is the way for for Competitive Gaming
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absolutely do you remember the last time you called your cell phone carrier and
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someone just like picked up the line and was like hi can I help you with
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something of course you don't because that would have been like before I even
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had a cell phone but that's not the case with Ting at Ting you don't speak to a
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robot you get put through directly to a person and their pay structure is
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totally different too you pay only for what you use with the average Ting bill
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being only 23 bucks a month per device
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if you're stuck in a contract and you switch to Ting they'll cover 25% of your
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cancellation fee up to $75 and they've
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got new lower mobile data rates across the board just $10 per gig beyond the
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first gig so head over to lin.com and
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try out their savings calculator you enter in your last few bills how much
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you used how much you paid for and it spits out an answer as to whether or not
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you will save by switching to Ting and when you sign up at our link you'll get
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25 bucks in service credit or towards a new
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device so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video hit that button
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consider checking out where to buy the products we featured at our Amazon Link
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in the video description also down there is our t-shirt store and our community
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Forum which you should totally join super cool now that you're done doing
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all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so check out our latest video over on Channel Super Fun
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it'll be worth it I'm not pointing at you Luke I'm pointing at the thing in
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the corner you're all like you're like
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reaction to you it wasn't a reaction to you