Monitor Upgrade?

[aevitas]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if upgrading my monitor is worth it. I right now have a Acer X243W (24 inch) and for some reason it FEELS that the quality is worse than it should be. The response time is 5 ms and Im not really sure if this monitor is at 720p or 1080p..

Im not planning to spent 300 euro on a monitor or so, is there any relatively cheap but much better monitor? Is it even worth it?

Effectively that new monitor will be for gaming. My current will replace my old Philips 170s 17" monitor which is my secondary right now.


Thanks for any advice/tips !


Aevitas


EDIT: This is something I may do as I have no clue what my GF could possible give me for christmas. Another option would (maybe) be a good cooler for my i5-2500k ? Currently I'm using the cooler which came with the package, it's not overclocked at all yet.. Mainly because I have no experience. Is a different cooler adviced ? Or should I not bother, as I have no OC'ing experience?

[Yohassakura]

EDIT: This is something I may do as I have no clue what my GF could possible give me for christmas. Another option would (maybe) be a good cooler for my i5-2500k ?

Currently I'm using the cooler which came with the package, it's not overclocked at all yet.. Mainly because I have no experience.

Is a different cooler adviced ? Or should I not bother, as I have no OC'ing experience?

Yes, very much so if you're overclocking. If you're not overclocking then the default should be fine.

[aevitas]

Alright.. So which one should I get? And how far could I overclock?

Also still looking for a monitor, cant quite figure out what to get and if it's worth it.

[Deleted]

Im not really sure if this monitor is at 720p or 1080p..

well... which resolution are you running it in ? 1920x1080 (= 1080p) or 1280x720 (=720p) ...

if you really want a good monitor for gaming which has a fast reaction time and as less ghosting as possible you won't find anything cheaper than 250 ...
if you plan on getting a "bigger" monitor you might want to take a look at those:

http://geizhals.at/?cat=monlcd19wide...cklight#xf_top

have fun.

PS: i'm going for a new monitor as well and at the moment i'm planning on getting this one:
http://www.amazon.de/Asus-VE278H-Mon...dp_ob_title_ce

---------- Post added 2012-12-16 at 12:16 AM ----------

EDIT: This is something I may do as I have no clue what my GF could possible give me for christmas. Another option would (maybe) be a good cooler for my i5-2500k ? Currently I'm using the cooler which came with the package, it's not overclocked at all yet.. Mainly because I have no experience. Is a different cooler adviced ? Or should I not bother, as I have no OC'ing experience?

do not overclock if you have no clue what you're doing ...
i've made bad experience with overclocking my gpu back in the day and have never done so again ever since ...
if you really still want to overclock, read a hell lot about overclocking and so on. once you've done that and collected enough information you might want to give it a try.
until then the boxed cooler will do perfectly fine.

[aevitas]

well... which resolution are you running it in ? 1920x1080 (= 1080p) or 1280x720 (=720p) ...

if you really want a good monitor for gaming which has a fast reaction time and as less ghosting as possible you won't find anything cheaper than 250 ...
if you plan on getting a "bigger" monitor you might want to take a look at those:

http://geizhals.at/?cat=monlcd19wide...cklight#xf_top

have fun.

PS: i'm going for a new monitor as well and at the moment i'm planning on getting this one:
http://www.amazon.de/Asus-VE278H-Mon...dp_ob_title_ce

---------- Post added 2012-12-16 at 12:16 AM ----------



do not overclock if you have no clue what you're doing ...
i've made bad experience with overclocking my gpu back in the day and have never done so again ever since ...
if you really still want to overclock, read a hell lot about overclocking and so on. once you've done that and collected enough information you might want to give it a try.
until then the boxed cooler will do perfectly fine.

Thanks for the reply ! My current monitor is running at 1920x1200.

I just found this one: http://www.4allshop.nl/shop/detail.a...1ADB9DEDEA7%7D

225 euro for a 27" monitor, LED with 2 ms...

Its got some good reviews, so unless anyone is able to hammer this monitor down I may just get it.

EDIT again:

I just read in a thread somewhere on this forum (about WoW flickering issues) that acer quality isn't very high (link: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post19465635).

Maybe I should just go for the Asus VE278H and pay 25 euro or so more, to be on the safe side....

[Deleted]

i have no experience with Acer Displays ...
i would recommend speaking to the retailer you're going to buy from and see if returning the item is possible should something bother you about it.
amazon is a great shop for giving stuff back ^^ it's quite simple.

my room mate ordered 3 displays from amazon couple of months ago, tested every one and send 2 of them back. no downside.

also, if your current display runs at 1920x1200 it means that it has a screen ratio of 16:10 (not 16:9 like the most TVs and new displays do).
i too have a 16:10 at the moment, but that's exactly why i want to upgrade ... i also connected my TV to my pc and since both displays have another screen ration i cannot copy the same image to the other screen, i have to use extended desktop which just annoys me ^^

[Speedlance]

BenQ 23,6" LED XL2420T is the only option if you're playing any type of FPS games, if you're only playing d3, mmorpgs etc you should be find with up to date 24 incher.

[aevitas]

BenQ 23,6" LED XL2420T is the only option if you're playing any type of FPS games, if you're only playing d3, mmorpgs etc you should be find with up to date 24 incher.

Yeah, I play D3/MMO's but also FPS such as BF3 and sometimes COD: BOPS2.

What is the reason that this BenQ is the only option? Ill look into it.

I see it... 120Hz..

As much as I would like it, 375 for a monitor is just way over the top for me. 250 would really be the limit.

@ TheCrusader: Luckely I've been customer for over 9 years at this shop, so returning it is very much possible. I guess ill go for the Asus, good reviews on that.

[Fascinate]

You are lucky i saw this thread, this monitor is on sale for 299.00 bucks its usually 550 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824001473

True 120hz with amazing build quality, makes the benq look like trash compared side by side.

[aevitas]

Ugh at first it looked really great, but the reviews on newegg arent good at all.. It seems to have a lot of ghosting and the 3d quality is bad. :/

[Gouca]

Overclocking is useless, but with aftermarket cooler there's less noise.

Go for Asus VE247H, great gaming monitor for its price. Cheap IPSs are not worth going for.

[Demoness]

Overclocking is useless, but with aftermarket cooler there's less noise.

Stop it. I can post screens from my personal rig proving you wrong. It is a myth spread by people that choose not to overclock as some sort of self-justification to make them feel better. It is not a marketing gimmick, and it really helps. Silver lining: Yes an aftermarket cooler will most likely be quieter.

[Gouca]

Stop it. I can post screens from my personal rig proving you wrong. It is a myth spread by people that choose not to overclock as some sort of self-justification to make them feel better. It is not a marketing gimmick, and it really helps. Silver lining: Yes an aftermarket cooler will most likely be quieter.

The OP has Intel i5 2500k, and he's going to buy a 60 Hz screen. Screens tend to start tearing +60 FPS (that's why there is Vsync.), and Intel i5 2500k runs the game at 60 FPS regardless of the GPU, if the GPU is able to do so. Sure, go ahead and overclock the CPU from 3.8 Turbo to 4.9 and burn it out, you will end up getting 5 more FPS, burn the CPU and its warranty.

ps. I replied to another thread, still waiting for "the screens."

[Cyanotical]

The OP has Intel i5 2500k, and he's going to buy a 60 Hz screen. Screens tend to start tearing +60 FPS (that's why there is Vsync.), and Intel i5 2500k runs the game at 60 FPS regardless of the GPU, if the GPU is able to do so. Sure, go ahead and overclock the CPU from 3.8 Turbo to 4.9 and burn it out, you will end up getting 5 more FPS, burn the CPU and its warranty.

ps. I replied to another thread, still waiting for "the screens."

um, no

screen tearing is caused by having the framerate output vastly differ from the response rate of the monitor, it has nothing to do with a magical number of 60


also, the overclocks are generally linear, especially with wow, if you go from 3.0 to 4.5 on a bridge cpu, you will gain a near 50% improvement, CPU overclocking gains are huge, in my case, almost a 1000 point difference in heaven 3.0, thats a 1000 points, which is close to what most peoples computers can run in total

[Deleted]

It's times like these I wish MMO-Champion had a like button.

[Gouca]

- Overclocking from 3.8 to 4.9 isn't guaranteed to burn out the CPU as it depends entirely on the chip itself. Fact.
- Saying the CPU will run the game at 60 FPS regardless of the GPU, and following it up with "if the GPU is able to do so" is a contradiction in terms. Fact.
- The benefits of overclocking vary from application to application. Fact.

Overclocking can bring similar benefit to individual threads often to a similar point of if you'd split it into 2 or more separate threads.

(Ghz)
Stock: 3.3 x 4 = 13.2.
Turbo: 3.7 x 4 = 14.8.
Overclock: 4.9 x 4 = 19.6.

There's a 32% difference between turbo and overclock. We no longer live in a single-threaded world. We haven't done for several years. Modern frameworks automatically compile in such a way that even having a GUI will spawn multiple threads for rendering alone. What's really important are the pure logic threads. Threads with heavy calculations. By overclocking to 4.9Ghz, you're essentially adding the power of another overclocked core (19.6 - 14.8 = 4.8), or almost the power of 2 stock-clock cores (19.6 - 13.2 = 6.4 / 2 = 3.2).

Typically, you'd spawn a thread when you can guarantee the output is predictable, but you don't want to cause the GUI to freeze (even with dedicated render threads, there's still one main thread to feed data to them, but it also handles feeding data to and from other threads too). You'd write a function that calculates the input as you want and then spits out the relevant data. If you need to do this many times a second and it's heavy, you'd put it into a thread. Without the thread, performance is extremely poor as the time of the main thread is split between processing all this data you're throwing at it, and handling everything else going on.

The data from threads needs to be synchronized though. Without sync, it's just a stream of data that runs off on it's own accord. It takes full advantage of the power it's got available, but it isn't regulated and thus the application starts to display all sorts of bugs. When it comes to networking, if the thread isn't in sync with the rest of the application, then you start getting rubberbanding and 'lag'. The sync of threads takes up some CPU time, but the benefit by threading is almost universally accepted as a good thing, and the offset of sync is negated.

By providing the application with more performance it can exploit, the thread logic is calculated faster and thus the main thread spends less time synchronizing the data and more time on other threads. The data will be sent to the GPU (in the case of games) at the same rate, but since the threaded calculations completed quicker in the first place, the CPU can send this data to the GPU more often and the result is higher framerate. It's NOT to do with how fast the GPU can process it. GPU's are perfectly capable of keeping up with CPU's. The rendering of a scene is amongst the fastest part. What slows it down and lowers frames is how long it's waiting for the CPU to send more data.

Great bedtime story..

or wait, weren't we talking about gaming performance in World of Warcraft? Sure, it's a fact you get more points in benchmarks, but there is no use to overclock i5 2500k since at factory clocks, combined with any modern GPU it runs WoW at 60 FPS. Sorry, I made myself unclear at first.

ps. still waiting for real review / data about WoW performance in an overclocked 2500k-environment.

[aevitas]

Uh wow. Did not expect this to happen haha...

I'm not really interested in clocking my CPU for WoW, I run it flawless with everything on highest settings anyway.

I'd moreless clock it if it wouldn't harm in any way. And a better cooler probably always is good I guess.

[Cyanotical]

Great bedtime story..

or wait, weren't we talking about gaming performance in World of Warcraft? Sure, it's a fact you get more points in benchmarks, but there is no use to overclock i5 2500k since at factory clocks, combined with any modern GPU it runs WoW at 60 FPS. Sorry, I made myself unclear at first.

ps. still waiting for real review / data about WoW performance in an overclocked 2500k-environment.

nope

under max settings at 1080, you will be lucky to hit 55 fps in a 25 man with a 4.6 clock

[Skarsguard]

Great bedtime story..

or wait, weren't we talking about gaming performance in World of Warcraft? Sure, it's a fact you get more points in benchmarks, but there is no use to overclock i5 2500k since at factory clocks, combined with any modern GPU it runs WoW at 60 FPS. Sorry, I made myself unclear at first.

ps. still waiting for real review / data about WoW performance in an overclocked 2500k-environment.

I have a 2500k sitting at 4.3 gigs atm and everything sitting at ultra with an overclocked HD7850 I sit around 40 fps in a 25 man raid. If I turn off shadows I sit around 50 fps on the avg. This is with a 23' 1080p monitor.