Input Lag or Response Time

Daniel - LG · 3 Dec 2015 at 14:05

Hi everyone, bit of a consensus here, so interested in your opinions

What is more important to you in regards to gaming - a low response time (sub 5ms) or a low input lag (sub 10ms)?

Let me know what you think!

Wucked · 3 Dec 2015 at 14:15

The lower the better for both. But if we're making up imaginary monitors, then within the confines of your scenario I'd take a screen rated at 5ms for everything. It takes 5ms to power up, response time is 5ms, input lag is 5ms and it only takes 5ms to get a warranty replacement if something goes wrong. Oh, and it costs £5. That'll do.

Daniel - LG · 3 Dec 2015 at 14:31

Of Course

What if you had to choose between these two;

Input Lag of 15ms with 2ms response
or
Input Lag lower than 10ms with 5ms response

jigger · 3 Dec 2015 at 15:19

Depends on what I'm doing with the screen at the time and if thats an advertised theoretical spec or a really one.

Out of those two I would take 10ms input and 5ms pixel response. If those two spec's are true averages and the screen tech is IPS that has the potential making of a nice screen.

This is all assuming LG are on the ball with the quality control side of the things. If thats not right I don't care what bullet points the screen comes with.

David Bisset · 3 Dec 2015 at 20:43

If the worst transition is 5ms then that's awesome already, I'll take the lower input lag please!

Wucked · 3 Dec 2015 at 22:54

Daniel - LG said:
Of Course

What if you had to choose between these two;

Input Lag of 15ms with 2ms response
or
Input Lag lower than 10ms with 5ms response

For a gaming monitor? I'd take the latter. I can tolerate a certain amount of motion blur and 5ms is actually decent, but noticeable input lag is extremely irritating.

Daniel - LG · 4 Dec 2015 at 11:41

Jigger - thanks for your input, we have put real effort in QC recently and the feedback is good - we are ahead of others in regards to IPS bleed and i notice some others are struggling with this whereas we went through this and ahve come out the other side.

David - clear response, i like!

Wucked - thank you

I wanted to check we are moving in the right direction with our offerings, we missed the boat with G-Sync when it came out and we are focussing on Ultra-Low Input Lag - example is 27MU67 - 4K IPS with 5ms Response and 9.7ms Input Lag

Great feedback - keep it coming!!!

lamboman · 4 Dec 2015 at 12:07

A killer gaming monitor should suffer no compromises (and regardless of QC, from a technical standpoint this is what the Asus and Acer competition have done this successfully with their IPS offerings); these issues aren't related unless I'm mistaken, therefore it shouldn't be a balancing act between the two.

Push comes to shove - and if the monitor is decent in all areas - lower input lag would be preferable. Input lag is an issue with contributions from everything in the chain from mouse to monitor, with the latter being the big culprit 99.99% of the time. However that's really missing the point.

If the panel manufacturing process was the main cause of backlight bleed issues with LG panels (as opposed to enclosure construction), I think it's fair to say that LG has improved - the 34" panels that were plagued with issues seem to be better now; out of all the issues with the X34, backlight bleed hasn't been one of them (and on mine it's minimal and beyond acceptable).

It's certainly the weakest market in the PC industry right now. Notably, QC in monitors integrated into mobile devices and notebooks seems to be universally decent, so why we can't have a similar level of quality across a market of far more expensive monitors?

andybird123 · 4 Dec 2015 at 12:22

You can drive response times lower using overdrive, but that can cause overshoot, if you are using clever processing to get the response times down without overshoot you could be increasing the input lag

Nexus18 · 4 Dec 2015 at 13:26

I can't stand crap motion clarity i.e. the smeary mess you get when you look around or/and overshoot so for me a low response time with very little to no overshoot is very important, probably more so than input lag.

Having gamed on various IPS panels, despite input lag being higher than TN 144HZ panels, it has never bothered me nor affected how well I do in semi-competitive FPS games but the motion clarity difference/response time does

I would say <10ms input lag with <5ms response time is good, like anything though, lower will always be better

EDIT:

Whilst you are in here, any idea if LG (or any other manufacturers) will be bringing any 34" 1440 free/g sync 75/100HZ panels to the market soon?

Rroff · 4 Dec 2015 at 13:31

Don't find either at an unacceptable level something I can live with - if I can at all feel that what I see is trailing my input that monitor is gone. Motion clarity I have a little more tolerance for but not much - its a little easier for the brain to get used to and compensate for it but you quickly notice the difference when using a panel that is better for it.

nails666 · 4 Dec 2015 at 13:40

Nexus18 said:
Whilst you are in here, any idea if LG (or any other manufacturers) will be bringing any 34" 1440 free/g sync 75/100HZ panels to the market soon?

Ah snap, I was just about to ask exactly the same question

lamboman · 4 Dec 2015 at 13:49

andybird123 said:
You can drive response times lower using overdrive, but that can cause overshoot, if you are using clever processing to get the response times down without overshoot you could be increasing the input lag

That's true. I'm guessing that most don't use any clever processing and just stick with mild overdrive options that don't introduce overshoot? I don't remember seeing any tests for any particular models that show increased input lag as a result of increasing pixel response settings.

johnnystuff · 5 Dec 2015 at 00:34

Input lag is literally Hitler. Nuff said

johnnystuff · 5 Dec 2015 at 00:55

@Daniel.

About time for some new 21:9 panels isn't it?

MikeLoader · 5 Dec 2015 at 09:55

I second motion clarity, thats the absolute most important for me!

My old LG plasma Tv seems to have better motion clarity than even the ROG Swift PG278Q, atleast thats what I thought when I had one.

I cant wait for a monitor with silky smooth motion clarity. Maybe with OLED first ?

Anyway, I have lived without a gaming comp for over a year, but now - fianaly I will build a new one and be back to Pc gaming, feels darn good

Falkentyne · 5 Dec 2015 at 15:53

I think more important than either of those, Daniel, is motion blur reduction.
You know the old Benq blur reduction (before it got broken in the XL2730Z) and Lightboost increased backlight current voltage by 1.8x to compensate for the strobing loss of cd/m2. ULMB doesn't do that.

What we need are panels with faster black to white to black (NOT grey to grey!!) response times AND a way to combine blur reduction with Gsync and freesync.
That's what I think your company should try to focus on.

Gsync is fine and all, but it's STILL blurry !! no matter what way you slice it, 144 hz stutter free is STILL 6.9 miliseconds of PIXEL PERSISTENCE which is blurry

If you could combine variable refresh rate with blur reduction without adding too many frames of input lag and not adding ridiculous amounts of strobe crosstalk, this would be ideal. of course OLED's will make this a walk in the park....

jigger · 6 Dec 2015 at 11:54

Falkentyne said:
I think more important than either of those, Daniel, is motion blur reduction.
You know the old Benq blur reduction (before it got broken in the XL2730Z) and Lightboost increased backlight current voltage by 1.8x to compensate for the strobing loss of cd/m2. ULMB doesn't do that.

What we need are panels with faster black to white to black (NOT grey to grey!!) response times AND a way to combine blur reduction with Gsync and freesync.
That's what I think your company should try to focus on.

Gsync is fine and all, but it's STILL blurry !! no matter what way you slice it, 144 hz stutter free is STILL 6.9 miliseconds of PIXEL PERSISTENCE which is blurry

If you could combine variable refresh rate with blur reduction without adding too many frames of input lag and not adding ridiculous amounts of strobe crosstalk, this would be ideal. of course OLED's will make this a walk in the park....

Image persistence is a slightly different issue and you really have to starting looking at pixel rise and fall times.

Come back CRT!

Scougar · 7 Dec 2015 at 01:09

The lower response time for pixel change, purely because that is where IPS is lacking. If you nailed that, you could work on the input lag later. Now, the lag would have to be within acceptable margins for a gamer anyway, but if you can have the gorgeous look of IPS and low pixel response time time, then there would be no reason to get an TN panel for gaming.

I was originally going to say the lower input lag time but then I thought of where IPS was lacking, so I changed the way I was thinking about it.

Rroff · 7 Dec 2015 at 01:32

Scougar said:
The lower response time for pixel change, purely because that is where IPS is lacking. If you nailed that, you could work on the input lag later. Now, the lag would have to be within acceptable margins for a gamer anyway, but if you can have the gorgeous look of IPS and low pixel response time time, then there would be no reason to get an TN panel for gaming.

I was originally going to say the lower input lag time but then I thought of where IPS was lacking, so I changed the way I was thinking about it.

Even a lot of IPS panels already have good enough input latency to be fair though some are cutting it fine - while not available to all of them and/or doesn't have as much effect on all often IPS panels have gaming mode and/or disabling some image quality features in the OSD will also reduce input latency.

But so far even the best IPS panels I've seen can't come close to good enough motion clarity for serious gaming.