120hz v IPS v Waiting a long time for OLED

[sleepysheep]

Well, after having triplescreen for quite a few months, I've decided it's fail. The FPS drop in having three screens is just too much and apparently I'm super sentative to any FPS below 60, hell I can tell the difference between 60 and 90 on a 60hz monitor. Difference in 40 to 60fps in completly night and day difference, anything lower than 30 is just too painful and I can't play.

After playing MWLL, Just cause 2, metro 2033, borderlands, BFBC2, TF2, DOW2, Dirt 3 and finally BF3, I can safley say playing at 40fps sucks balls. Huge hairy balls. I can't stand it at all. I went from triplescreen at 45fps average to BF3 88fps average and it is seriously no joke like playing a completly different game. It was 10 times more easy to actually kill people and playing the game was a real joy. I just can't go back to triplescreen after that.

So after deciding I'd rather stab a pen in my eye than run games on medium (ugly!!!) I will go back to the far simplier life of single screen gaming with a second monitor just for browing etc.

Which leads me to my question, 120hz v IPS v Waiting a long time for OLED?

While 120hz seems to be a good choice, remove artifacts, smoother game play, it's not like I can actually get 120fps in many games without looking at the sky. And without a monitor to test on, I can't really see the difference from 60fps to 80fps on a monitor that supports it will be. But since I can already tell the difference my theory goes I might notice a huge improvment.

But sadly the res is limited to 1920x1200 at the max (HDMI limitation, even display port can't go much higher so they don't bother) means I won't see any other kind of benifits which makes me think it's not gonna be worth the money compaired to my current TN 60hz monitor.

Then we have IPS, which is basically the opposite of 120hz monitors. While it would still be 60hz, I can get far higher res of 2560x1600 and far better colour quality. But then we walk into the same old problem of FPS dropping too much. And yes even with two GTX 580, it would. Not to mention my friend has an IPS and after all the hype about how good it was, when I finally saw it I was bitterly disapointed how normal it looked to a TN monitor. Not to mention the fact it cost about £640....and that was a cheap one!

Then we have OLED monitors which are a bit of both. Extremly good in theory but not being released till next year and will probably cost so much I'd have to sell organs to afford one. On the plus side unless I see a bargin at christmas I don't intend to buy a new monitor just yet.

So what would you buy? And what's peoples opinions on their current 120hz and IPS monitors that they use all the time?

I'm personally leaning towards 120hz (not intrested in 3d for gaming tbh) but the price would have to be damn cheap to make it worth it.

[Mitchpate]

I'm using a 24" Samsung 1920x1080 with a high contrast ratio and love it.  I would recommend sticking with LCD or LEDLCD until a technology actually proves that it's better.  In terms of high response, gaming-capable computer monitors, hype very rarely pans out.

[RickHunter]

Can't you just run it at 2xAA or 4xAA instead of 8xAA? I'd bet your frame rate would jump up considerably.
Or disable all AA and run the FXAA injector instead if you've got cpu power to spare (which you seem to have plenty of with your SB @ 4.5).

Find it here: http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-general/1080779-fxaa-injection-mod.html

[Mitchpate]

When you run a game on multiple monitors the GPU has several times the amount of work to do.  Remember that going from 1 monitor to 2 doubles the resolution and thus doubles the amount of pixels it has to draw on.  I won't say it doubles the work but it's probably not far from it.

Lowing the AA just isn't going to cut it and neither will shifting the work to the CPU as the game is not very well threaded.

[sleepysheep]

When you run a game on multiple monitors the GPU has several times the amount of work to do.  Remember that going from 1 monitor to 2 doubles the resolution and thus doubles the amount of pixels it has to draw on.  I won't say it doubles the work but it's probably not far from it.

Lowing the AA just isn't going to cut it and neither will shifting the work to the CPU as the game is not very well threaded.

8xAA to 0xAA i lose what 2 fps on average? It's something like that. So yeah GTX580 handles AA super duper well, no other Nvidia card handles it this well before it. Now sure 32xAA or more will cripple my FPS a bit but I don't use that on triplescreen And even then it's only 5-10fps lower on average depending on game. Some games it makes even less of a difference. Now ofc if your sitting on 35fps, having it that much lower ruins the game completly, expecially when it dips which happens in all games.

Having three screens is roughly 2/3 more work.

While my CPU is good enough to dump more work to it, most games I play are using alot of CPU power (Expecially MWLL ) and so would be utter FPS sucide.

I've tried gaming on triple and then going to single and single every time feels better, more responsive, less delay lag and graphical lag.

And while OLED tech is new for PC monitors, it is not new tech and has been around a while. My mates phone has an OLED screen, and it's pretty awsome. I'm not saying I'm gonna go stright out and buy one, they are gonna be insanly expencive, but if they really are the best option I can wait a while, expecially if the other two options are not worth it.

[RickHunter]

True, running multi-monitor does considerably tax the graphics subsystem. I run an Eyefinity setup (3840x1024) on a single 6950 @ 995 MHz on an E8400 @ 4.25 GHz. I prefer running the FXAA injector over MSAA + AAA as I have some CPU power to spare for FXAA at that resolution and get a bit higher frame rates with FXAA vs 4x MSAA + AAA.

You're right, the game isn't that well threaded. Yet, this also means that deferring the AA rendering to the CPU, which only is using 2-3 cores for Crysis, should have a negligible fps hit as the FXAA injector runs on its own thread/process (shot in the dark). This should allow Sleepysheep's SLI setup to breath a bit more easily at that high resolution. Going from 8xAA to 0xAA *should* increase FPS.

The cool thing about the FXAA injector is that it can be toggled on and off with the Pause key.

Only downside with FXAA is that it tends to blur text a tad. One can enable a post sharpen filter if needed - I don't use it though as the text is still perfectly readable.

[RickHunter]

You lose 0-2 fps from 8xAA to 0xAA? Really? You running TRAA as well?

Strange.. My OCed Core2 is pretty much 1/2 as fast as your OCed SB and I still have CPU power to burn in LL for FXAA. <shrug>

Well, it can't hurt to give it (FXAA injector) a shot in your situation. It also can be used on top of native AA to get rid of all possible jaggies.

[sleepysheep]

You lose 0-2 fps from 8xAA to 0xAA? Really? You running TRAA as well?

Strange.. My OCed Core2 is pretty much 1/2 as fast as your OCed SB and I still have CPU power to burn in LL for FXAA. <shrug>

Well, it can't hurt to give it (FXAA injector) a shot in your situation. It also can be used on top of native AA to get rid of all possible jaggies.

8XAA makes little to no difference in FPS in pretty much every single game I play. When you start going over 8xAA then it can start to get a bit rocky on the FPS, but the losses arent that much (But not worth it for triplescreen)

Most people experiance dips when using AA cause it eats more Vram, I don't have that problem, and the card is well made for AA for once.

I might try FXAA, but not in MWLL unless it really does run on a seperate core, otherwise MWLL is gonna turn to a slideshow. Either way it will not give me any noticable FPS increase not enough to matter.

Graphic cards might be holding me back, but nothing is gonna fix that without buying a third one, or lowing the settings greatly. Neither I want to do >.<

I always thought GTX580 in SLI would be enough, but sadly I never knew what good FPS was until I brought them, and I don't want to go back to middle/low FPS ever again

[Bad guy]

Ive been using an OLED for a year now and Im happy as a mofo.
The low resolution (1360x768) is great for my Geforce8800GT.
Its only 15", but when you sit close to the screen its easily enough.
The colors, viewing angles, brightness+contrast, perfect black is delicious.
Its a LG 15EL9500

You may want to keep your eye on this one:
http://www.oled-display.net/auo-32-inch-oxide-tft-oled-tv-technical-details/

[KorJax]

Ive been using an OLED for a year now and Im happy as a mofo.
The low resolution (1360x768) is great for my Geforce8800GT.
Its only 15", but when you sit close to the screen its easily enough.
The colors, viewing angles, brightness+contrast, perfect black is delicious.
Its a LG 15EL9500

You may want to keep your eye on this one:
http://www.oled-display.net/auo-32-inch-oxide-tft-oled-tv-technical-details/

Wow, I am envious! Though honestly I'd never pay almost $2000 for a 15" monitor

I'd rather of upgraded that 8800 to GTX580 running three 24" IPS monitors

[Bad guy]

Quality over quantity
I head over to National Geographic everyday now, just for the pleasure of looking at the Photo of the Day.
It is a different kind of eye candy you dont get from 24"IPS screens and GTX580s.

I will build a new PC sometime, but this one still plays all my games good.

[Bad guy]

@sleepysheep
I'd say: Just use one 26"

Maybe spend your money on a high-class sound system or sth else.

[sleepysheep]

Ive been using an OLED for a year now and Im happy as a mofo.
The low resolution (1360x768) is great for my Geforce8800GT.
Its only 15", but when you sit close to the screen its easily enough.
The colors, viewing angles, brightness+contrast, perfect black is delicious.
Its a LG 15EL9500

You may want to keep your eye on this one:
http://www.oled-display.net/auo-32-inch-oxide-tft-oled-tv-technical-details/

That res is pathetically bad, oled or not. My pad has near enough the same res admittly not oled but id never want to game on my pad lol!

The 32" is nice though. But the problem is this.

Only an oled can do 120hz and a higher than 1920*1200. But to use one id have to buy two new graphic cards with the updated hdmi or display port to have enough bandwidth to show at that res at that frequency. Which is going to get a bit pricy.

So its not really worth spending 2000£ on an oled monitor and graphic card and that's assuming prices drop.

I played a few games on my friends ips and really there was only a few minor niggles I had. The colour just felt identical to the tn next to it. Black was alot more black on the ips though. Ghosting was negible. Yes it does happen but its very minor and nothing compared to all the flickering and artifacting that comes with 60hz even with vsync on.

You really don't have to worry about jagged lines as much with that high res and that's the main reason I wanted a higher res in the first place.

However there is no reason whatsoever that I shouldn't buy 120hz monitor instead of an ips since I just can't accept the cost of an ips just for slightly smoother st right lines in games.

So maybe christmas sales

My friend will vouch for me that a high end sound system would be completely pointless and waste of money for me, I just don't give a damn about sound quality. My hifi is good enough for my needs. I might however one day buy a real decent pair of headphones when I got some spare cash but my turtlebeech is good enough for the moment.

Oh and I promise you, pictures look twice as good if not three times as good on his ips monitor compared to your 15" oled. He gets the full spectrum of colours with a higher res and better contrast and colour output, there is no contest.

*edit* just because I was unable to tell any colour difference between the tn and ips does not mean its not there, my mate can show colour gradiants and other things that clearly show a difference, just in real life usage I, myself could not see any difference.

[KorJax]

Err well the reason why OLED is so coveted is because nothing can beat it. OLED is better than IPS for picture quality, there is no contest.

Because whats an IPS screen? its still basically the same exact tech as standard TN models today: you have a crystal matrix that is the color, and a backlight behind the matrix to make it so you can actually see the color shifts as the backlight passes through the matrix. What makes IPS good is that the way the matrix is built and layered is fundementally different enough to make it produce a much wider array of colors and much higher viewing angles (and its much more expensive to produce). You still involve a backlight though, which means you can never get 100% blacks and never get 100% perfect color accuracy. Though you can come close - but the more accurate colors you have for IPS the higher the cost and higher the response times. If you get an IPS monitor that does 100% of the adobe RGB colorspace so what you print looks almost exactly like what you see on the screen, then that monitor will easily cost $1000 and have response times slow enough to make it unusable for video and games.

OLED on the otherhand is the perfect "flat" display - there is no backlight, matrix filters, or anything like that - just thousands of tiny tiny LED lights capable of producing pretty much any color in the visible light spectrum (and likely some outside of it too if it were built for that). That means blacks will be 100% true black - there's no backlight. And colors will be anything you can see IRL. And because they are individual pixles, there is no viewing angle weirdness, and your response time will be so fast that it might as well be instant. It's the perfect display.

Problem is of course is that OLED's degrade over time+usage, and it becomes exponentually more expensive to produce the higher resolution you go (which is why you only see it being used commercially these days in small phones and media devices). Since the monitor is made up with invidual pixles, if you have a 24" OLED monitor it will likely be able to support much higher resolutions than 1080p, and therefore be much sharper. Most 24" monitors these days "stretch" out the pixel density to run 1080p on them which reduces clairty per inch, but this isn't too possible with OLED as you can't really stretch out more physical pixels (if you run 1080p on a 20" monitor it will look signifigantly sharper than a 1080p 24" monitor). The good news is that if you do run 1080p on a hypothetical 24" OLED monitor, it will look about as good as current 1080p 24" monitors as far as clarity and pixel density goes.

On the note of lifespan though, a monitor running the latest OLED tech and running 8+ hours a day will likely become "kaput" in about 2 (maybe three) years time, while a smartphone that is only active for a fraction of the time will last much longer.

[sleepysheep]

Err well the reason why OLED is so coveted is because nothing can beat it. OLED is better than IPS for picture quality, there is no contest.

Because whats an IPS screen? its still basically the same exact tech as standard TN models today: you have a crystal matrix that is the color, and a backlight behind the matrix to make it so you can actually see the color shifts as the backlight passes through the matrix. What makes IPS good is that the way the matrix is built and layered is fundementally different enough to make it produce a much wider array of colors and much higher viewing angles (and its much more expensive to produce). You still involve a backlight though, which means you can never get 100% blacks and never get 100% perfect color accuracy. Though you can come close - but the more accurate colors you have for IPS the higher the cost and higher the response times. If you get an IPS monitor that does 100% of the adobe RGB colorspace so what you print looks almost exactly like what you see on the screen, then that monitor will easily cost $1000 and have response times slow enough to make it unusable for video and games.

OLED on the otherhand is the perfect "flat" display - there is no backlight, matrix filters, or anything like that - just thousands of tiny tiny LED lights capable of producing pretty much any color in the visible light spectrum (and likely some outside of it too if it were built for that). That means blacks will be 100% true black - there's no backlight. And colors will be anything you can see IRL. And because they are individual pixles, there is no viewing angle weirdness, and your response time will be so fast that it might as well be instant. It's the perfect display.

Problem is of course is that OLED's degrade over time+usage, and it becomes exponentually more expensive to produce the higher resolution you go (which is why you only see it being used commercially these days in small phones and media devices). Since the monitor is made up with invidual pixles, if you have a 24" OLED monitor it will likely be able to support much higher resolutions than 1080p, and therefore be much sharper. Most 24" monitors these days "stretch" out the pixel density to run 1080p on them which reduces clairty per inch, but this isn't too possible with OLED as you can't really stretch out more physical pixels (if you run 1080p on a 20" monitor it will look signifigantly sharper than a 1080p 24" monitor). The good news is that if you do run 1080p on a hypothetical 24" OLED monitor, it will look about as good as current 1080p 24" monitors as far as clarity and pixel density goes.

On the note of lifespan though, a monitor running the latest OLED tech and running 8+ hours a day will likely become "kaput" in about 2 (maybe three) years time, while a smartphone that is only active for a fraction of the time will last much longer.

Not saying OLED is crap. I'm saying 15" OLED at 1360x768 is not going to compare to an IPS at 2560x1440 of high quality. And it doesn't. While the colours on the OLED will be nice, the res is still shocking, and in games the res makes a huge difference, even at 2560x1440 compaired to 1920x1080, so against 1360x768 is going to be way better. Not to mention when you are taking pictures of over 10mp, you start to care, which is almost 10times that of 1360x768.

After playing games on my friends IPS, everyone who says refreash rate matters are talking utter bollocks. Sorry but it's bullshit. I had to stare at a cliff driving (So i was moving quickly) repeatly up and down a road before I was able to see any ghosting of any kind and even then i was so utterly minor compaired to artifacts and flicking (Which had nothing to do with the monitor!) at the time you would not ever care. Period. And I'm sentative to this kind of thing, and I STILL struggled to see any when purposly playing the game to make it happen and looking out for it. And that was a refreash rate of about 20ms?


When 24"+ OLED come out, they WILL blow away the competition, except for the fact they will cost 5 times more to buy and last 5 times less than an average IPS or TN. Obviously tech will advance to fix this!

Spending money on OLED at the moment is HUGE waste of money when IPS or 120hz monitors are still far superiur for the cost and even without cost, they are still lacking in many areas since it's newish tech.

While I can tell the difference from Black on TN monitor to black on IPS monitor, there is no way in hell I will be able to tell the difference from IPS to OLED. From the full spectrum of colours it's hard enough even for someone who cares to notice the difference in colour from TN and IPS, it is after all only a slight change. Going from IPS to OLED is going to be a FAR FAR smaller change than TN to IPS was, making it almost impossible to notice and thus no big deal at all. The main advantage of OLED is it can do everything, something nothing else will ever be able to do. But it is certainly not better at anything by enough of a margin for people to actually care in real life situation, unless all you care about are numbers on a page.

OLED monitors are currently a bit like TN monitors when they first came out. Just not worth it if you care. In 2-3+ years everyone will be buying OLED and it will bring in a new age of monitors and TV. But not for now.