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chuckula
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High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Fri May 13, 2016 9:09 pm

So I recently jumped from an over 8 year old 27" Dell monitor (1920x1200, not 1080) to a new G-sync enabled 2640x1440 Dell 144Hz monitor (Dell S2716DG). I got it for $515, which seems to be a small discount off the going rate that I've seen around, and frankly in this resolution & FPS range it was only about $45 more than the cheapest Acers that don't have any variable frame rate capabilities at all.

This is a TN panel and I came from a PVA panel that delivered somewhat better colors by default. However, I will say that as far as TN panels go, this one delivers decent enough colors after making some monitor tweaks. Another setting that I strongly recommend for this particular monitor is to go into the OSD menu and turn off the "deep power sleep" option that apparently caused lots of trouble for some people. The monitor will still go into low power mode and deactivate the backlight when I suspend the computer, so I guess that deep sleep isn't overly necessary.

First of all: WOW. I had heard about the advantages of higher refresh rates beyond 60 Hz, but you have to see it to believe it. The present windows & desktop wall effects that looked OK on my old 60Hz display now look incredibly smooth, and it's almost hard to go back to lower refresh rate displays now. The funny thing is that I've increased the pixel count on my display by 60% but I think the most noticeable improvement is to the temporal resolution with the higher refresh rates vs. the spatial resolution improvements.

Second of all: G-sync works under Linux. It's got a few rough edges compared to Windows since games have to be run in fullscreen (which I do anyway) and you need to suspend desktop compositing, but I've already run the Talos Principle and Borderlands 2 with the G-sync visual indicator showing up in the upper right hand corner for confirmation. I honestly don't know how much it helps, but its nice to know that there is support for this technology under Linux.

Oh, and I'm not even at 144Hz quite yet. It turns out my GTX-770 will drive 120 Hz just fine, but can't quite push 2560x1440 at the full 144Hz ( https://forums.geforce.com/default/topi ... -s2716dg-/ )

So uh yeah. Since my poor old GTX-770 won't do the full 144Hz I think it's TOTALLY time for an upgrade. How about a GTX-1080? Yeah, that'll push those extra 24 Hz ok. Upgrade Justified!

Linux handles the high refresh rates relatively well. For the physical GPU configuration, I just selected the refresh rate using nvidia-settings and then saved a custom X.org config file so that the correct refresh rate is used every time that I login. I use KDE Plasma 5, and it needs a little manual tweaking to get the desktop compositor rendering running at higher than 60 FPS, which is its normal default. You need to add two entries to the ~/.config/kwinrc file that I show below. After that, restart kwin and you *will* notice the difference.

Here are the settings for the ~/.config/kwinrc file. There will likely be additional entries under the [Compositing] header, just add these two extra entries, and modify based on your actual refresh rate:

[Compositing]
MaxFPS=144
RefreshRate=120 # I can't go higher than 120 now, but this will go up to 144 when the video card can handle the higher refresh rate

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f0d
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Fri May 13, 2016 9:49 pm

great to see you noticed how good a high refresh display is

for years i have been trying to tell people how good they are and i keep getting told stuff like "you cant see any more than 60hz/fps" "the eye can only see up to 24hz" etc etc
bull****

i find you notice it the most after using nothing but high refresh for months then all of a sudden trying to use a 60hz display, all of a sudden it just doesnt look right and you can tell something is wrong

i have freesync and imo high refresh makes way more difference than freesync does, id gladly pick a high refresh monitor over a 60hz freesync any day of the week
i would also rather a high refresh TN than 60hz IPS - sure ips is nice but high refresh is way more of an improvement imo
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biffzinker
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Fri May 13, 2016 10:18 pm

I definitely can notice a difference between 60, and 80 myself. Whenever I switch my screen from being overclocked to 80 down to the default 60 it looks/feels less fluid examples being animation of the GUI, scrolling in a web page, and moving the mouse cursor around etc.
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DrDominodog51
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Fri May 13, 2016 10:49 pm

I need to jump on the high refresh rate (and 1440p) bandwagon. When I overclocked my monitor to 64 Hz, I could tell a difference in some gamesor was that artifacts. The monitor wasn't quite stable at 64 Hz and at 65 the resolution went down.

Hopefully the new monitor will help you shoot down those damn rakks. :D
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Topinio
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Sat May 14, 2016 5:34 am

gz on the VRR and high-RR screen, great ain't it 8)

Does "X --probeonly" still exist to tell you the maximum dot clock of your GTX 770? (Obviously the max. available refresh rate is that over the frame size.)
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RyuKobs
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Sat May 14, 2016 8:52 am

Congrats on the purchase!
The smoothness is quite awesome at 120hz.
I purchased a Asus MG279Q and my GTX 760 also cant run it at 144Hz. I cant wait to purchase next gen AMD vidcard to test out variable refresh rate and 144Hz :D
 
Aphasia
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Re: High Refresh Rate Display: It Hertz SO GOOD!

Sat May 14, 2016 12:01 pm

After I got my Asus Freesync one I would say that adaptive refresh is one of the best enhancements in the last years to hit the graphics market. It just give you such an impact on perceived quality.

Just getting higher refresh-rates is nice, but nothing new. Many of the good old CRT's had 85Hz without problems, and 100Hz and higher has been out for a while, but to get that sustained smoothness you either need a double cards, which has their own problems, or turn down settings. Or you can deal with tearing. But getting the GSync / Freesync you kind of get everything good. No V-Sync... you get perfect refreshes, and no tearing.

And what I didn't expect was how smooth it actually looked compared to a normal syncing FPS as well. Most prevalent in some scenes, like the demos with rotating windmills, etc, having a refresh that adapts instead of chopping up the motion was surprisingly good as well. Especially in the 60-90Hz range.

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