120Hz PC Gaming - On a TV!!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,469 words · ~7 min read
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TV gaming most people think of it as just for console players or at least
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they did NVIDIA at CES 2018 got the PC
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gaming world super excited about big
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screen gaming when they showed off their 65 inch big format gaming displays or
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BFG DS and then promptly gave the entire
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community a serious case of the blue balls when they announced that they
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wouldn't be coming until sometime later this year well what if you don't want to
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wait until later this year good news because mostly under the radar there has
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been a way to get high refresh rate gaming in your living room on the
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big-screen TV for months the Vizio P
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series runs at 120 Hertz and you can buy
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one today but there are some compromises
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so are they worth it or should you keep
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waiting world of warships is a free-to-play historical online combat
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game from wargaming featuring an exciting blend of action and strategic
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gameplay stay tuned later in the video for an exclusive offer
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so the 65-inch variant of is iou's
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flagship piece series behind me here uses a VA panel that means that you can
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expect good if not industry-leading viewing angles color gamut and overall
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image quality but and this is important
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for gamers it also means better pixel response times than a typical IPS and at
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normal viewing positions those other disadvantages melt away somewhat in
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light of its 120 Hertz capability so
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it's pretty compelling at least on the
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surface but it still requires some further investigation high advertised TV
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refresh rates are typically just motion interpolation an effect that
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subjectively looks terrible and objectively introduces additional input
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leg so it's really bad for gaming but I
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mean the panel itself like many TVs
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today runs at a hundred and twenty Hertz natively so what that means is that if a
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manufacturer chooses to expose it separate from any motion compensation
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nonsense which by the way the P series doesn't have any way the TV can and will
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accept and display a true
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120 Hertz input with a catch
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HDMI 1.4 doesn't provide enough
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bandwidth to run 120 Hertz at our panels
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native 4k resolution so we're stuck at 1080p but I mean if you've ever played
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around with a retina resolution calculator you probably know that unless
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you've got eagle eyes the difference between 1080p and 4k on a 65 inch TV can
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be difficult to discern from further than about ten feet away so this might
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still be viable but we need to answer some questions first will 1080p to 4k
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scaling cause blur and quality degradation how is the input latency of
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this display in its various modes and what about the rest of its features so
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to answer we've grabbed our test bench and our 8k high frame rate red camera
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and a seat on the couch we started with
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our biggest problem with other TVs input
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latency and we're happy to report that at a hundred and twenty Hertz in game
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mode it was basically imperceptible subjectively speaking it was actually
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pretty close to other 120 Hertz displays that we've tested and using our makey
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makey we measured an average end-to-end delay of roughly 40 milliseconds
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regardless of game mode so it could be
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better but it is definitely acceptable bumping up our resolution though we see
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a jump to 78 milliseconds though it should be noted as well that this was
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with game mode on and at 4k game mode
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did end up making a difference so this is still not too shabby for a TV and
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it's fine for casual games but to say we
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could tell the difference between high refresh rate mode and 4k would be an
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understatement as for image quality again it's pretty good it's not OLED but
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it's blacks are deep and thanks to the hundred and twenty eight zones of local
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dimming contrast stays high even when it's dealing with small bright objects
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on a dark background the app experience
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is really cool it's got a built-in chromecast that Vizio is calling Smart
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cast and it pairs quickly with Bluetooth 4.0 and uses Wi-Fi to actually do
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everything from powering the TV on and off to accessing all of its settings so
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fire up that app turn the sharpness setting to zero and for the most part
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enjoy your TV for the most part the
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scaler well it's not horrible but it's
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not gonna blow anybody away either it is certainly no M cable though with that
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said if you're using your TV with a PC as we're kind of proposing here you may
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actually prefer it that way since it does prevent the text anomalies that the
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M cable can produce in its current form now with five HDMI 's and a component
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input though we aren't stuck with PC gaming all the time modern consoles will
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run about like you'd expect so actually better than a typical 60 Hertz TV with
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high input lag but not as good as switching to 120 Hertz on a piece and as
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for retro content well at lower
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resolutions you'll see a big drop in quality as expected blurry text and
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characters with no obvious way to improve it and unfortunately that
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sharpness function doesn't help it just puts a sharpest filter over top of it
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and as for 720 and 1080 P modes on a
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super NT we actually got pretty clean
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results TLDR if you can pre scale your
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retro games you will actually get some pretty darn good results here and in
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fast 2d games it gets especially good if
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you enable the clear action back light strobing function this reduces visible
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motion blur at the cost of some brightness so bottom line then
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high-performance big-screen gaming what do you do well LG actually has a couple
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of OLED models the c7 and b7 that have
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this same 1080 120 Hertz functionality but I would recommend against gaming on
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oh let's not just those ones but in general because bright static on-screen
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elements like HUDs or speedometers are very very likely to cause permanent
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burnin bring your options then back to the P series here are waiting for
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invidious partners like a soos with their BFG DS
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so with a BF GD you get variable refresh
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rate with G sync which is kind of a big deal you get 120 Hertz at full 4k
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resolution assuming you have the hardware to run it and you get even
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lower input leg with an NVIDIA shield console built in however with the Vizio
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you get instant gratification because it's available now a well above average
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big-screen gaming experience and a pretty darn good TV overall also if my
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speculation is anywhere near correct and I think it is you also get a price that
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is anywhere from one half to a third of
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what NVIDIA solution will costs so the P series is actually looking pretty
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darn good let us know in the comments which one you'd prefer thanks to
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wargaming for sponsoring this video world of warships is their free-to-play
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historical online combat game that fuses strategy tactical gameplay and engaging
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combat altogether you command a massive naval fleet including some of history's
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most iconic war vessels level up your important tech modules and prepare to
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dominate the oceans they've got four classes of ships a bunch of upgrades and
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strategically designed environments so the action never ends and every single
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match you play is different since launch they've actually added over
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200 ships across eight nations and they
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feature some of the most iconic warships in naval history such as the HMS monarch
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and HMS Iron Duke the first 300 viewers
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who use code play warships 2018 we're gonna have that down below are gonna get
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252 balloons a million credits the HMS
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Campbeltown premium ship one port slot and three days of premium time through
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the link below although the offer applies to new users only so move fast
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucks you know what to do but if
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you liked it hit like get subscribed me be considered checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below
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