Asus MG279Q 2560x1440 144Hz IPS FreeSynch Gaming Monitor

[Pudgie]

Well Santa came early to ole Pudgie's house this evening & left me an early Christmas present............

An Asus MG279Q IPS 2560x1440 144Hz FreeSynch Gaming monitor!!!!!!

Well.........maybe I need to confess..........

 

I was looking on Newegg last weekend & ran across 1 of these monitors that they had listed as open box for $489.99 & free shipping.....

 

While the price was very good I was seriously debating the wisdom of going for a Newegg open box item as I'm fully aware of the ramifications w/ Newegg's Open Box policy........but the price + shipping was the absolute best out there............
So after much wringing of my hands I found the courage to pull out my CC & close on this deal w/ fingers clasped tightly just  that all would come out OK.......I didn't really care if it didn't come w/ all the cables as I already have a DisplayPort 1.2a cable run from my Fury X to my existing DoubleSight DS-279W 2560x1440 IPS 60Hz monitor so the only cable that I was hoping was in the box was the power cable\brick for the monitor & that the monitor would work & if it had some very minor issues like a couple of dead pixels or a minor scratch on the bezel\base I would have accepted this as I knew I was rolling the dice when I went w\ an open box item of this magnitude............

When the UPS carrier dropped it off at my garage door I saw the box was looking a little rough but it was intact but when I got it inside & cut the tape that held the locking tabs in that sealed the top & opened it up I got the 1st blessing.....all the cables were in the box along w\ the original styrofoam packing & this packing wasn't busted up either! 

So I held my breath & removed the cables & the styrofoam packing & noted the monitor was packed in the original covering & the monitor base was packed in it's original covering & the sticker was still on the base & intact! Blessing #2! 

So then I removed the monitor & stand from the box & removed the covering & beheld a monitor & stand that was in as new condition.....no scratches, blemishes, marks.........NOTHING was damaged! Blessing #3! 

So I removed my ole trusty DoubleSight DS-279W monitor & installed this Asus MG279Q monitor & hooked it up & after setting the height & tilt to my liking I then hit the power button on my SurgeSlayer to power all up then hit the power button on the MG279Q & she lit up & lo & behold.........I was blessed w/ a PERFECT PANEL!!!!!!!!  No dead pixels, no blemishes, no washout, no back bleed...........just BEAUTIFUL!   

I went into the monitor's OSD & set it up for FreeSynch so I could test this out w/ my Fury X as this was 1 of the main reasons why I wanted this unit then fired up my box & she lit up & is looking just georgous. I went in Radeon Settings, Display & my drivers had already picked it up & so I enabled FreeSynch & then went up in AHII to check this out..............

In FreeSynch the monitor set itself to 60Hz (noted by the ingame FPS counter setting itself at 60 FPS) & I went up into a furball w\ approx. 20 planes in the scene & the base had been hit several times w\ several buildings smoking so this was a good test for FreeSynch & it didn't disappoint.......

The lowest frame rate I saw was 56 FPS but the gameplay was butter smooth no matter how much I moved around dodging the myriad of cons trying to pick me as I lifted off the runway.........I got not 1 hitch in the screen, got no slowdown of the scenes.....all was butter smooth!

I LOVE THIS!!!!!

Man I am stoked w\ this monitor!

I'll get around to testing this unit w\ FreeSynch off so that I can see how this FuryX can handle running at 144Hz but I'm a very happy camper at the moment w\ this MG279Q!

I ran the table & beat the odds!

  

 

PS--I got to looking & found that the RR was set to 60 Hz in Windows after I installed the WHQL drivers for this monitor.....I reset it to 144Hz & went back in game & flew around & I saw the screen black out a couple of times & a dialog box came up that stated that FreeSynch had kicked out due to the RR being faster than the maximum FreeSynch RR of 90 Hz so I then went back in & reset the RR in Windows to 90 Hz then went back in game to the same field & went up again........the frames were very smooth & the gameplay was stellar. I then went out & pulled up MSI AB & checked the graphs & noted that FreeSynch was working as it should......showing the GPU FPS running between 43 FPS (lowest FPS) & 90 FPS (highest FPS) so now I see what this tech does bring to the table.........but I also got to see what 144Hz could also bring as it is indeed a BIG difference from 60 Hz to 144Hz! AHII running at 144 FPS is AWESOME!

 
 

[Getback]

I was looking at the G-Synch but it they were so expensive and only one got good reviews and that one was 799.

Thanks for the post!

[pipz]

Very nice! Glad it worked out for you. 

[Gman]

I've had the Gsync variant of that monitor for a bit now, ROG Swift IPS best gaming lcd yet made IMO.  Your new LCD is pretty much the same beans but made for AMD instead of Nvidia, the IPS is much superior to my first ROG Swift which is a TN panel - I kept it for one of my systems too, but the IPS is hands down better.  I've been repeating the 144hz mantra here since I first switched to it in 2011 with Asus's first 24" 144hz gaming LCD.  Nothing improves gaming more than jumping from a 60 to 144hz or higher LCD (my latest one goes to 165, but anything over 100ish is very noticeably improved over 60 IMO).

Good xmas for you.  I'd be interested to hear your fps performance in the new Alpha with your Fury card and this monitor when using Freesync.   That really is a great deal, another AH player on another board found one for just over 600$ new, and that was a stellar deal, so under 500$ for an as-new open box is fantastic.

[Chalenge]

The thing about Gsync is that the option is already there in the DisplayPort 1.2 functionality to support Adaptive Sync. If AMD decides to include it then Nvidia would almost certainly have to offer it, but it would almost certainly dash their plans for Gsync. For that reason I cannot bring myself to support the Gsync systems even after testing it and seeing how wonderful it is. The reason is simple. We could already be enjoying this on 4k monitors, or even the lowly 60fps standard monitors as long as they offer at least DisplayPort 1.2, which would only involve a slight cost increase.

[Pudgie]

I've had the Gsync variant of that monitor for a bit now, ROG Swift IPS best gaming lcd yet made IMO.  Your new LCD is pretty much the same beans but made for AMD instead of Nvidia, the IPS is much superior to my first ROG Swift which is a TN panel - I kept it for one of my systems too, but the IPS is hands down better.  I've been repeating the 144hz mantra here since I first switched to it in 2011 with Asus's first 24" 144hz gaming LCD.  Nothing improves gaming more than jumping from a 60 to 144hz or higher LCD (my latest one goes to 165, but anything over 100ish is very noticeably improved over 60 IMO).

Good xmas for you.  I'd be interested to hear your fps performance in the new Alpha with your Fury card and this monitor when using Freesync.   That really is a great deal, another AH player on another board found one for just over 600$ new, and that was a stellar deal, so under 500$ for an as-new open box is fantastic.

Gman,

I went up and flew around in the Alpha some this morning to test performance of Fury X using Crimson 15.12 WHQL drivers on this MG279Q monitor w/ FreeSynch enabled (35Hz to 90Hz range) w/ the monitor's RR set in Windows @ 90Hz and the Alpha set for 4096 textures, ingame under Graphics Details all 3 sliders set full right, EM slider set @ 2, all effects enabled (unchecked) except the "Disable other plane's skins" checkbox (checked) and under post lighting effects (left pane) all 4 effects are checked.

Once I got done flying around I went into MSI AB, pulled up graphs of my Fury X vitals and took a snippet of the graphs for you to see as follows:



Gameplay was butter smooth w/ FreeSynch on.

Will run another test later on w/ Alpha w/ FreeSynch disabled & monitor RR set @ 144Hz for comparison.

 

PS--Note at the end of this run before I shut down the Alpha the spike up in GPU usage & drop in FPS. This is where the ground objects rendering came into play.

 

[Pudgie]

Gman,

I went up and flew around in the Alpha some this morning to test performance of Fury X using Crimson 15.12 WHQL drivers on this MG279Q monitor w/ FreeSynch enabled (35Hz to 90Hz range) w/ the monitor's RR set in Windows @ 90Hz and the Alpha set for 4096 textures, ingame under Graphics Details all 3 sliders set full right, EM slider set @ 2, all effects enabled (unchecked) except the "Disable other plane's skins" checkbox (checked) and under post lighting effects (left pane) all 4 effects are checked.

Once I got done flying around I went into MSI AB, pulled up graphs of my Fury X vitals and took a snippet of the graphs for you to see as follows:



Gameplay was butter smooth w/ FreeSynch on.

Will run another test later on w/ Alpha w/ FreeSynch disabled & monitor RR set @ 144Hz for comparison.

 

PS--Note at the end of this run before I shut down the Alpha the spike up in GPU usage & drop in FPS. This is where the ground objects rendering came into play.

 

And here is a snippet of this Fury X running Alpha at same ingame settings as mentioned in prior posting but FreeSynch is disabled & MG279Q RR was set @ 144Hz:



As you can see, the game ran very smooth w/ no hitching but the FPS tops out around the 90 FPS avg mark once above 500' alt w/ GPU pretty much maxed out (FPS would creep higher than 90 FPS as I increased in altitude due to rendering less ground object detail....note the 142 FPS spike-this was due to looking up @ 90*). On runway the FPS was at 65-67 FPS.

I'll most likely reenable FreeSynch & reset MG279Q back to 90 Hz to keep FreeSynch from cutting out due to hi FPS.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[Pudgie]

And here is a snippet of this Fury X running Alpha at same ingame settings as mentioned in prior posting but FreeSynch is disabled & MG279Q RR was set @ 144Hz:



As you can see, the game ran very smooth w/ no hitching but the FPS tops out around the 90 FPS avg mark once above 500' alt w/ GPU pretty much maxed out (FPS would creep higher than 90 FPS as I increased in altitude due to rendering less ground object detail....note the 142 FPS spike-this was due to looking up @ 90*). On runway the FPS was at 65-67 FPS.

I'll most likely reenable FreeSynch & reset MG279Q back to 90 Hz to keep FreeSynch from cutting out due to hi FPS.

Hope this helps you out.

 

Here is a snippet of this Fury X running the Alpha at the same settings as mentioned prior, w/ FreeSynch enabled and MG279Q RR set @ 90 Hz to stop FreeSynch from kicking out due to exceeding the high FPS range but this time I have enabled AMD's Frame Rate Target Control & set the control FR in Crimson 15.12 driver @ 85 FPS so that both are running at the same time:



With the Crimson 15.12 driver set up as mentioned this gives the absolute best performance that I've ever seen to date w/ the new Alpha. I really pushed the Alpha here by moving the plane controls around while moving the views around as fast as I could w\o causing the Alpha to cut in on stick stirring & I couldn't force the game to make ANY stutter, not 1 stutter--no matter how hard I tried to force it! Even while doing all this the game ran butter smooth and I mean BUTTER smooth. This is welcome news! 

    

From what I have witnessed today it appears that AMD has got something going here w\ the new Crimson 15.12 drivers & w\ this Asus MG279Q monitor (which meets the 2.5x low FreeSynch FPS range criteria so that the new AMD LFRC--low frame rate compensation--coding is active within the driver) w/ FreeSynch and AMD's FRTC active is going to become the bee's knees in graphical experience, IMHO.

You really have to experience it to understand just how good this works together.

 

[Pudgie]

Here is a snippet of this Fury X running the Alpha at the same settings as mentioned prior, w/ FreeSynch enabled and MG279Q RR set @ 90 Hz to stop FreeSynch from kicking out due to exceeding the high FPS range but this time I have enabled AMD's Frame Rate Target Control & set the control FR in Crimson 15.12 driver @ 85 FPS so that both are running at the same time:



With the Crimson 15.12 driver set up as mentioned this gives the absolute best performance that I've ever seen to date w/ the new Alpha. I really pushed the Alpha here by moving the plane controls around while moving the views around as fast as I could w\o causing the Alpha to cut in on stick stirring & I couldn't force the game to make ANY stutter, not 1 stutter--no matter how hard I tried to force it! Even while doing all this the game ran butter smooth and I mean BUTTER smooth. This is welcome news! 

    

From what I have witnessed today it appears that AMD has got something going here w\ the new Crimson 15.12 drivers & w\ this Asus MG279Q monitor (which meets the 2.5x low FreeSynch FPS range criteria so that the new AMD LFRC--low frame rate compensation--coding is active within the driver) w/ FreeSynch and AMD's FRTC active is going to become the bee's knees in graphical experience, IMHO.

You really have to experience it to understand just how good this works together.

 

Here is another snippet of this Fury X set up as mentioned above w\ the only setting change is that I lowered the AMD FRTC setting from 85 FPS to 80 FPS in Crimson 15.12 drivers:



Note the FPS line graph is almost fully straightened out.....even when sitting on the runway (ingame FPS flatlined at 78 FPS w\ occasional dips to no lower than 73 FPS when down on the deck getting busy). Actual gameplay is same as mentioned earlier.

This is looking like the sweet spot for this Fury X on my setup running Crimson 15.12 drivers w\ this Asus MG279Q monitor w/ FreeSynch enabled along w\ AMD FRTC enabled & set @ 80 FPS.

 

[SirNuke]

shouldn't freesync cap the fps to the highest available like gsych does?

[Pudgie]

In general terms yes except in the special case of this particular monitor.

This Asus MG279Q is a native 144Hz IPS monitor that has FreeSynch (or DisplayPort AdaptiveSynch if you prefer) capabilities w\ the min-max range set at 35-90 by Asus, not an Adaptive-Synch standard range. This was 1 of the 1st true IPS monitors w\ FreeSynch put out on the market. The Adaptive-Synch standard is either 36-240, 21-144, 17-120 or 9-60.

Asus chose to set the range as mentioned above which can cause the issues that I have stated as the monitor's EDID reports it as a native 144Hz monitor to the AMD drivers while the FreeSynch upper range is coded by Asus at 90 Hz......so if the vid card can take the RR above the 90Hz range this will cause the monitor to black out & show a dialog box stating that the upper FreeSynch range has been exceeded & the monitor will disable FreeSynch in it's drivers to allow the monitor to hit the EDID RR settings.

This is an issue w/ this particular Asus monitor.........not the AMD vid card drivers or vid cards themselves or the DisplayPort Adaptive-Synch standards. So to stop this from occurring I set the RR in Windows (which also sets this for the AMD drivers) to 90 Hz. Now the monitor's RR will not exceed the upper FreeSynch range as set by Asus thus stopping this from occurring.

This issue could be an annoyance for some but since I understand what's going on here & the price that I paid for it was so good & the fact that this does limit the monitor to 90 Hz (games to 90 FPS using V-Synch) doesn't bother me as it may others (still better than 60 Hz) so I don't fret it at all.

Most FreeSynch monitors coming out now are using a range set from 40-144 so you can't run into this issue on the high end anymore and w\ AMD's recent usage of their LFRC coding in Crimson 15.12 drivers they will now work the low end much like G-Synch has been able to do for some time when actual FPS dips below the low G-Synch range & retain good clean frames. Since AMD Crimson 15.12 drivers bring AMD's FRTC coding to bear I'm using it to further "fine tune" the FR to the optimal FR that will also optimize FreeSynch performance as well w\ this Asus MG279Q monitor using FreeSynch.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[MADe]

know what u mean about newegg, they just make so worth it tho and to ez. usually free shipping, fast delivery time.