New monitor time

Marakith · 10 Apr 2014 at 09:09

Hello,

Apologies if this has been asked before. Also this question spans both GPU and Monitor so I hope I'm in the right place.

I'm looking to upgrade my 22" monitor to a 28" beast for my desk. I do mostly photo processing and gaming (Planetside 2 mostly).

I am currently using a Radeon HD 6950 2GB card to drive the monitor. I'm broadly happy with the performance, but I know that it will start to crawl once it's pushing more pixels.

I've had my monitor for about 6 years now, so I'm a long term buyer. With this in mind, I thought of skipping the 1080p tier altogether and going for a 4k monitor so that I have something for my future rigs to "grow into".

The question I have is:

What bang for buck GPU is the best to drive a 4k monitor? Budget is sub £250
What 4k monitor due for release soon will give the best colour and gaming performance (to solve my twin photo and gaming interests)?
Can the 4k monitor be driven well by the chosen graphics card at a lower res if needed on high quality settings for gaming (I anticipate that no sub £250 card will drive a 4k monitor at max res on ultra right now)?

I guess, all in, I'm looking at around a £750 budget to upgrade both.

Thanks so much in advance!

Venares · 10 Apr 2014 at 09:25

The nice thing about 4k is that it sub-divides perfectly to 1080p.
So running a game at 1080p will look absolutely fine.

drakioned · 10 Apr 2014 at 10:55

The best deal you can pick up under £250 for a graphics card will probably be all the ex-miner Radeon GPUs that'll get dumped due to mining being unprofitable now.

If you want a new card... probably the R9 280X or the GTX 770 depending on whether you prefer Red or Green.

The best value 4K monitors you can find will be £500-600 ones from AOC/Samsung/Asus. They are all the same panel with different stands, so any difference in price will be down to the brand and stand.

cmndr_andi · 10 Apr 2014 at 11:21

If you are thinking of gaming at a high resolution then I would strongly recommend you opt for a R9 290 4GB graphics card. As these cards tend to run games much smoother than the GTX 770 and 280X at 1440p resolutions and above. As draioned mentions, if you find an ex-mining R9 290 then it is likely to be within your budget.

As for 4K monitors, there are sub-£500 28in ones just arriving, however they all use a TN type panel. This type of panel is good for gaming, but is not ideal for colour accuracy or wide viewing angles - therefore isn't recommended for image editing. For these uses an IPS or PLS type panel would be much better, however the cheapest 4K IPS monitor is the Dell 24in which costs £900.

Instead I would recommend going for a 27in 1440p IPS/PLS panel monitor like this one (also the AOC one currently on daily deal looks pretty good for the price).

dacads · 10 Apr 2014 at 14:25

For £250 you're best bet would be a R9 280X or R9 290 if you can stretch to £300.

You're going to have to spend more than £250 to drive a 4k monitor at max game settings.

As stated above a 27" 1440p monitor would be the way to go

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus PB278Q 27" Professional LED Multimedia Monitor - Black £449.99
Total : £459.59 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Venares · 10 Apr 2014 at 14:35

cmndr_andi said:
Instead I would recommend going for a 27in 1440p IPS/PLS panel monitor like this one (also the AOC one currently on daily deal looks pretty good for the price).

I bought the AOC last week and they are VERY good screens for the money.

Marakith · 10 Apr 2014 at 20:38

Thanks for all the advice so far!

Lots to think about, especially when the 1440p IPS monitors are similar in price to 4k monitors (even if the colour performance is inferior).

cmndr_andi · 10 Apr 2014 at 21:06

The £500 4K monitors are really impressive for the money, however if you can only spend £250 on a graphics card then 4K will be a bit wasted - as you will need to run at a lower resolution to get decent framerates or watch a 4K slideshow.

The general recommendation for playing games on a 4K monitor (to hopefully achieve 60fps most of the time) is two GTX 780 Ti 3GB in SLI or two R9 290X 4GB cards in CrossfireX (which will cost you £700 at the very least just for the cards). And even with these setups they are not always providing the target framerates.

In contrast, a nice single card like the R9 290 (with a custom cooler) can happily run all modern games well at 1440p.

Marakith · 13 Apr 2014 at 20:15

Thanks for all the tips, guys!

I think I'm going to go for the 1440 AOC with a R9 290 Graphics card.

Warsam71 · 16 Apr 2014 at 01:33

Hello Marakith,

When you are about to purchase the R9 290 GPU, make sure to ask the retailer (or etailer), wherever you buy the GPU from if you are eligible for a free game (or two)

WGP Images · 16 Apr 2014 at 09:30

Marakith said:
Thanks for all the tips, guys!

I think I'm going to go for the 1440 AOC with a R9 290 Graphics card.

Good choice this is the way i am going .... buying a AOC Q2770 soon when they arrive back in stock with OC, then an upgrade of card and PSU.

Marakith · 16 Apr 2014 at 11:12

Update

I took delivery of the AOC Q2770 yesterday and plugged it into an R9 290. Out of the box brightness is a little nuts, so I adjusted the settings as recommended in this review:

http://www.digitalversus.com/lcd-monitor/aoc-q2770pqu-p17978/test.html

So far, so good! The colours are great, there's tonnes of room, and the new card eats up my current FPS of choice (Planetside 2) on Ultra settings at 2560x1440.

I'm going to give it some heavy use to see if it triggers a headache - will let you know if it does!

Thanks again for all the help!

WGP Images · 16 Apr 2014 at 14:28

Marakith said:
Update

I took delivery of the AOC Q2770 yesterday and plugged it into an R9 290. Out of the box brightness is a little nuts, so I adjusted the settings as recommended in this review:

http://www.digitalversus.com/lcd-monitor/aoc-q2770pqu-p17978/test.html

Nice one, thanks for the link on the settings, will certainly bear this in mind when i come to alter mine.