The Asus ROG SWIFT PG278Q – a 27” 1400p 144Hz Monitor with G-SYNC

pgi947 said:
As you seem to be more clued up then me (admittedly I'm noobtastic when it comes to monitors and setting them up) care to share what settings you use for me to try? I have backed off monitor brightness to 40 and moved some other settings about, not as much glare from the screen but colors do seem deeper.
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Ok bud, will do. Spent about 2 days calibrating and testing this monitor. I should point out I've not used a monitor calibration tool (yet, I don't have one but may pick one up). I've been using my Dell IPS as a side by side comparison which came with a certified sRGB calibrated setting from the factory (even got a piece of paper!) with a very low Delta-e value for colour accuracy (low is good).
I've mainly been working on the colour settings, and some slight gamma tweaks on the Swift to get it as close to my dell as possible in a range of uses. Just using my eyes and brain, which are very good ;)

So, for you and anyone else that may be interested, these are my settings:

Monitor itself
Brightness: 21
Contrast: 50
Colour temp: User (R: 96 G: 96 B:100). Don't use any of the colour temp presets, they are all ass.

ICC/ ICM profile
In windows colour management (find it in control panel) I'm currently using the "ICM" profile that comes with the monitor driver, that you have to download and install from the Asus support website (for some stupid reason it's not on the CD that comes with the monitor).
It's called "Asus PG278Q color profile, D6500"
I've also tried the ICC from TFT central, but for now I'm finding the one described above to be a bit better.
Look on TFT central for info and guides about colour profiles and how to use and install them properly. IT'S IMPORTANT http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm

Gamma tweak
The following is a work in progress. From the reviews I've read the gamma settings are supposed to be spot on straight out of the box (a 2.2 reading is supposed to be ideal), but I think it's just slightly too bright, on mine anyway. There is no actual monitor setting to tweak gamma on the Swift, so you have to do it in the NV control panel. I keep slightly changing and altering the values, but this is what I'm doing currently:
- Open NV control panel, go to "adjust desktop colour settings"
- Go to "2" and click the use Nvidia" settings radio button
- Slide the gamma slider down to between 90 and 95 depending on your taste. I'm on 92 at the moment
- Stay away from digital vibrance or hue! It's really not necessary and will really **** things up, especially hue. If you must add a bit of vibrance, be very careful and don't go over 55. (It's like photo editing, less is more really).

And that's it for now. With these settings I find it very very good for a TN panel in terms of colour accuracy. It also performs and looks well in various tests you can see at Lagom, especially the blacks http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php - worth a look at the other tests too.

I'm still tweaking slightly so it's a work in progress, but I hope this helps. :)

(I'll write up my findings on gaming later hopefully. Gsync is mostly good, but I'm a bit disappointed in some games tbh. Also - THERE IS AN ISSUE WITH BF4, SLI and Gsync as has been reported on blurbusters! Get terrible slight judders, worse than using regular vsync. At present I have to completely disable SLI in the NV control panel (Not just run on single card in the game profile) and run on one card only. This then is nice and smooth with Gsync, but it's disappointing not to be able to run higher framerates. Must be a driver issue, so let's hope it gets sorted.)
 
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100% brightness PGI....... Christ almighty! Trying to ruin your eye sight? :p


For those that are manually tweaking the settings, I find these images quite good:

http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

http://www.indiev.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/color-test-file.jpg

http://webtransformer.com/calibrate/Calibration-Composite-No-ICC-Full.jpg

Honestly though, there is no point in trying to manually tweak the RGB values (Blue is the only value I would touch), doesn't matter how good your eye sight is! :p Just use some body else's calibration settings for that (although every panel/monitor will vary). I would just keep to the brightness and contrast setting. Windows built in gamma control isn't bad either.

Not sure about the swift, but some times the preset modes are pretty good i.e. on my LG screen, cinema preset looks the most accurate where as photo mode is far too vibrant.
 
I think this monitor is getting better each time I look at it :p Eve online looks amazing on a big screen!

I think it's too bright on recommended settings, so I'm using brightness 10.

Still hoping for an AMD 144Hz fix soon though.
 
Nexus18 said:
Honestly though, there is no point in trying to manually tweak the RGB values (Blue is the only value I would touch), doesn't matter how good your eye sight is! :p Just use some body else's calibration settings for that
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Why? It's the only way to achieve the absolute best/ most accurate colour settings. I'm only tweaking 4-5 units max, but it makes a massive difference. Well, not massive to everyone probably, but massive to me.
Not all the swifts will be exactly the same either, they will need minor tweaking on a per user basis, and someone elses settings, although a very good starting point, may not be the absolute best for your own screen.
 
andybird123 said:
I've spent ages fiddling trying to get settings I like (and having found this easily on the Samsung 4K, I knew it must be possible on this one too and I wasn't letting "but TN" get in the way)

On the monitor: Brightness 40 (30 at night), Contrast 50, Colour Temp User (R95, G100, B100)

Nvidia Control Panel: Display: Adjust desktop Colour Settings: Use Nvidia Settings
Brightness: 40%
Contrast: 45%
Gamma: 0.8

those are the settings that work best for me, your mileage may vary
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got mine today - sunday delivery was very unexpected - so excellent service from ocuk on this (no borderlands in the box though)

Found these settings to work very well for me so far - so thanks a lot
 
wunkley said:
Why? It's the only way to achieve the absolute best/ most accurate colour settings. I'm only tweaking 4-5 units max, but it makes a massive difference. Well, not massive to everyone probably, but massive to me.
Not all the swifts will be exactly the same either, they will need minor tweaking on a per user basis, and someone elses settings, although a very good starting point, may not be the absolute best for your own screen.
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Too many variables to list when using your own eye sight. I also tried doing the exact same with my LG monitor but once you find a setting you like for one thing then move onto the next, you then have to go back and redo the previous setting, rinse and repeat, at least that is what I found...

I spent ages googling for best ways to calibrate a monitor without a calibrator and pretty much everyone says, don't bother :p :(

If you want the best/most accurate colours then a calibrator is the only "guaranteed" way to get them.

Of course if you have the time and patience, fiddle away :)
 
It's true that everyones view/pref will be different, and again you have variations in the panel itself - however I find trying to use a few different profiles to find my preference, then make adjustments to get how I like it.
 
andybird123 said:
I've spent ages fiddling trying to get settings I like (and having found this easily on the Samsung 4K, I knew it must be possible on this one too and I wasn't letting "but TN" get in the way)

On the monitor: Brightness 40 (30 at night), Contrast 50, Colour Temp User (R95, G100, B100)

Nvidia Control Panel: Display: Adjust desktop Colour Settings: Use Nvidia Settings
Brightness: 40%
Contrast: 45%
Gamma: 0.8

those are the settings that work best for me, your mileage may vary
Click to expand...

Your settings work nice for me cheers :)
 
anyone managed to get diablo 3 to work with this? did a fresh install so only game on at the moment but when I change res - out of signal - then I have to reboot to get it working again....
 
been testing a few more games now I've got the colours etc looking good. I'm very sorry to say that there does seem to be a real problem with SLI and Gsync in some games.

Battlefield 4 (multiplayer), Bioshock infinite and Crysis 3 are the 3 games I'm testing for comparisons at present.

When running SLI and gsync I'm getting slight judder/ microstutter in both BF4 and Bioshock when the framerate varies (running at 120hz mostly but tried others).
Crysis 3 however is butter smooth and feels superb.

When I totally disable SLI via the nv control panel it's smooth as silk with Gsync running on one card only in BF 4 and Bioshock.

EDIT - Tested a few more games with SLI and Gsync running - Hitman Absolution and Crysis 2 MaldoHD modded out. I feel a bit better now as these both run amazingly well and smooth as silk. Hitman was a good one to test running at max settings at 120hz, and the framerate was going between 70 and 120 and it was butter smooth with SLI and Gsync on!

I think it's the age old problem of some games and or driver combinations are going to cause issues with SLI and Gsync. Driver or game updates might sort it, but going on past experience I fear not for some stuff.

I've found very similar user findings on the Geforce forums and blurbusters to name a few. Seems like there's a big problem with SLI and Gsync in some games at present.

SO...... wait for driver fixes (I'm running latest release from the other day), just accept that some games will be ****ed with SLI and Gsync, ooooooor sell one of my Ti's as most games seem to run brilliantly on one card with Gsync? :)
 
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llamadal said:
It's true that everyones view/pref will be different, and again you have variations in the panel itself - however I find trying to use a few different profiles to find my preference, then make adjustments to get how I like it.
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Yup pretty much! :)

I had about 10 different choices for my dell u2311h monitor and tried them all out, chose the best one and then finely tuned a setting or two to my liking.

With my LG 29UM65, I did what wunkley did before but then noticed people saying cinema preset was the closest to a proper calibrated screen so switched to it but gone back to my custom settings as I found the image a bit too dark/dull overall with cinema preset.
 
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wunkley said:
SO...... wait for driver fixes (I'm running latest release from the other day), just accept that some games will be ****ed with SLI and Gsync, ooooooor sell one of my Ti's as most games seem to run brilliantly on one card with Gsync? :)
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On a scale of 1-10, in terms of smoothness, how would you rate say BF4 running between 30-50 FPS (which is about what you will get on multiplayer with a single 780 ti running @ 1440p) with G sync enabled, and the same game running at a solid v-sync'd 60 FPS? If a G-syncd game running at 40 fps is actually better than a v-sync running at a smooth 60fps (I seriously doubt it but have seen people report it), then feel free to give 11/10, or whatever.

I am looking at a G-sync monitor but the only one that seems any good is indeed the Asus Swift. Even if I go for a 980 GTX however, I know that this isn't enough to power the most demanding games at 60 fps + at 1440p resolutions. I am firmly in the camp of lower resolution and smooth frames/high eye candy > higher resolution and sub 60 Hz frames/reduced eye candy.

(screen tearing for me also totally unacceptable when gaming).
 
MatTheCat said:
On a scale of 1-10, in terms of smoothness, how would you rate say BF4 running between 30-50 FPS (which is about what you will get on multiplayer with a single 780 ti running @ 1440p) with G sync enabled, and the same game running at a solid v-sync'd 60 FPS? If a G-syncd game running at 40 fps is actually better than a v-sync running at a smooth 60fps (I seriously doubt it but have seen people report it), then feel free to give 11/10, or whatever.

I am looking at a G-sync monitor but the only one that seems any good is indeed the Asus Swift. Even if I go for a 980 GTX however, I know that this isn't enough to power the most demanding games at 60 fps + at 1440p resolutions. I am firmly in the camp of lower resolution and smooth frames/high eye candy > higher resolution and sub 60 Hz frames/reduced eye candy.

(screen tearing for me also totally unacceptable when gaming).
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I'm not really sure this test/comparison makes sense. GSYNC is a natural successor to VSYNC and if you were able to maintain 60fps with VSYNC then you would be able to maintain the same FPS with GSYNC. Where GSYNC shines over VSYNC is where you are getting drops in FPS - the experience is much smoother. GSYNC will also reduce the input lag you will be getting with VSYNC so the experience will feel snappier.

If you're going to be running a 980/780Ti then I would drop the MSAA as it doesn't make a huge difference IMO at this resolution. That way you can maintain a solid 144fps and the experience will be so much better. Getting solid 135fps (I restrict my FPS to 135) with GSYNC in battlefield is unreal.
 
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