Performance hit when using 120hz monitor?

clippa · 14 Apr 2011 at 23:01

LG w2363d + Performance hit when using 120hz monitor?

Hi, wondered if any of you lot could help me. Interested in a 120hz monitor but have a question.
When running a true 120hz dual link dvi monitor, what is the performance hit like? I'm not talking about 3D being on, not interested in that. Just running the monitor normally at 120hz.

Do any of you know of any benchmarks that show the framerates of games being run on a regular monitor and then a 120hz monitor?
Is the framerate loss minimal or something I should be worrying about?

Thanks in advance

Surveyor · 14 Apr 2011 at 23:33

It won't make any difference.

Snykch · 15 Apr 2011 at 08:05

One thing I have noticed is that having the screen at 120 refresh rate all the time will stop your gpu dropping down to the 2d power state. Best to enable it for games or video only I think.

as905 · 15 Apr 2011 at 13:16

Snykch said:
One thing I have noticed is that having the screen at 120 refresh rate all the time will stop your gpu dropping down to the 2d power state. Best to enable it for games or video only I think.

my monitor is always on 120hz & my hd5770 drops down to 2d power mode when not gaming.

btw how do you enable 120hz for gaming only ? is it from the game's video settings or PC settings ?

clippa · 15 Apr 2011 at 18:53

Ah right, so it doesn't tax the gpu at all? I thought with the dual link cable it was effectively running two monitors at once and would have an impact on performance.
Thanks for your help.

Still umming and ahhing but does anyone have a 120hz monitor they'd recommend?

titaniumx3 · 16 Apr 2011 at 17:04

The screen is just refreshing itself faster (compared to a 60hz monitor), it's not acutally rendering anything faster.

If anything, it will increash the upper limit of performance, especially in cases where vsync is enabled, whereby the max fps will increase from 60fps to 120fps.

clippa · 17 Apr 2011 at 03:03

Yes, I wrongly assumed (I think the term "dual link dvi" threw me) that it was basically the same idea as 3D, rendering twice, but showing each frame consecutively rather than on screen together.
I don't know, I was confused

Sure I'd read somewhere that running 120hz had an impact on performance, not as much as running 3d but it was still there. That must have been all guff and that's whats made me wrongly assume how the whole thing worked.

Thanks all for your help. Going to try that lg w2363d since it's nice and cheap and everyone seems to rate it to be as good if not better than the other offerings.
At sub 200 quid, it'll give me the chance to check out the technology and sell it on if I'm not convinced.
I'm going from 24" 16:10 1920x1200 so I'm hoping I'll get used to it. If the 120hz is as good as my old crt then I'll be keeping it for sure and if it is too small then I can always flog it at a later date and get the samsung if it turns out to be decent.
Will report back and give my opinions if anyone's interested.

Snykch · 17 Apr 2011 at 19:44

as905 said:
my monitor is always on 120hz & my hd5770 drops down to 2d power mode when not gaming.

btw how do you enable 120hz for gaming only ? is it from the game's video settings or PC settings ?

I'd love to know, because my gtx580 will not drop to 50MHz when the monitor is refreshing at 120, and I'm getting fed up changing it manually

Bubo · 18 Apr 2011 at 10:28

Snykch said:
I'd love to know, because my gtx580 will not drop to 50MHz when the monitor is refreshing at 120, and I'm getting fed up changing it manually

I mentiond this "feature" in another thread recently and someone said that if you run the card at 110Hz when on windows desktop it will drop down to 2D clock speeds as it should. Then in games you force the refresh rate to 120Hz using the games settings. I haven't got round to trying this yet so can't verify if this works.

ewarwoowar · 18 Apr 2011 at 10:32

Just take notice that unless you can pump 120fps you wont admire the 120hz refresh rate in game.

shuffle · 19 Apr 2011 at 18:24

clippa said:
Yes, I wrongly assumed (I think the term "dual link dvi" threw me) that it was basically the same idea as 3D, rendering twice, but showing each frame consecutively rather than on screen together.
I don't know, I was confused

Sure I'd read somewhere that running 120hz had an impact on performance, not as much as running 3d but it was still there. That must have been all guff and that's whats made me wrongly assume how the whole thing worked.

Thanks all for your help. Going to try that lg w2363d since it's nice and cheap and everyone seems to rate it to be as good if not better than the other offerings.
At sub 200 quid, it'll give me the chance to check out the technology and sell it on if I'm not convinced.
I'm going from 24" 16:10 1920x1200 so I'm hoping I'll get used to it. If the 120hz is as good as my old crt then I'll be keeping it for sure and if it is too small then I can always flog it at a later date and get the samsung if it turns out to be decent.
Will report back and give my opinions if anyone's interested.

Yes look forward to reading what you think of your new LG.

cainer · 19 Apr 2011 at 19:44

clippa said:
If the 120hz is as good as my old crt then I'll be keeping it for sure .

i switched from a 19" crt to a 23.6" aw2310 120hz screen last year and i think its great, hardly noticed a difference (appart from the aw2310 having crap viewing angles like most others)
so im sure you'l keep it

clippa · 20 Apr 2011 at 00:34

shuffle said:
Yes look forward to reading what you think of your new LG.

Well, there's good and bad

First the bad

The HDMI ports on the monitor I recieved are faulty (serves me right for going with a competitor

) but they're sending a van to pick it up and I'll hopefully get a fully working replacement.
The backlight bleeding was a little disappointing after I was lead to believe it was almost none exsistant in the review I read

Here's mine - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14326828/backlight.jpg

Hoping the replacement will be a little better in this regard.
The uniformity of the screen is not good, I'd say slightly worse than my previous TN panel (samsung 245b) in this respect.

Look at it with a white background - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14326828/white.jpg

You can see the dark areas at the side and that blue tint at the bottom is quite noticeable when browsing the web.
I think that's more to do with the vertical viewing angle as the blue tint goes when I stoop down far enough but as you can't change the height of the monitor on the stand then that's what I see.
The stand is terrible, the monitor wobbles about if you move the mouse fast.
The buttons are also naff.

and now the good

For gaming, this monitor is amazing. Bearing in mind that it's my first 120hz panel, I can't say how much better or worse it is than other models.
Running rift, I get around 70fps average and even at that framerate you can tell the difference. Everything is smooth as silk and no tearing, you really notice it. The thru mode which gives 0ms lag honestly works. Playing black ops at 110fps, getting into a knife dance is no longer a confused blurry mess. You whip the mouse and you're facing the opposite direction instantly and you can see everything crystal clear.
It's one of those things, you won't think that you need it until you try it.
It's smoother than having v-sync on but without any of the lag.
I don't notice the inconsistency of the screen at all when gaming, only when using notepad or something like that with a full white screen. Still messing round with colour/brightness settings and so on so that might get better.

It will be interesting to compare this screen to the replacement I get. See how different the uniformity of the colours are and how bad the backlight bleeding is.
The bad points I've mentioned don't really bother me but I wanted to be honest. The pros outweigh the cons and when you factor in the less than £200 price. I'd recommend this monitor to any pc gamer.
Coming from a 24" 16:10 1920x1200 screen, I can tell you that I haven't missed the extra size or pixels at all.
Will report back when I get the replacement and tell you how different it is. Whether it's better or worse and if the HDMI ports work

as905 · 20 Apr 2011 at 03:17

@ clippa

your LG is faulty because i have the same monitor & mine is almost perfect (most perfect monitor i have had so far),just like what they said on the review.

edit:

btw mine was manufactured on Feb 2011 (2 months ago).

clippa · 20 Apr 2011 at 14:55

Yeah, it's looking like I got a bad apple when it comes to the screen. Will be interesting to see the difference when I get the replacement

djkav · 22 Apr 2011 at 20:18

clippa said:
Yeah, it's looking like I got a bad apple when it comes to the screen. Will be interesting to see the difference when I get the replacement

I had a bad screen on mine, back light bleed across the whole top and bottom edges. LG said it was faulty and instructed the supplier to replace it.

I'm expecting it on Tues 26th. Otherwise its a great monitor

clippa · 22 Apr 2011 at 20:34

Did the colours look a little washed out on yours? I'm hoping that was down to the backlight.

as905 · 22 Apr 2011 at 21:53

clippa said:
Did the colours look a little washed out on yours? I'm hoping that was down to the backlight.

picture is really nice & clear on this LG monitor,the colours are best i have seen on a tn monitor (just right) but you can always change the settings to change the colours to how you want them.at last i'm watching my old movies which i wanted to watch for the past year (godfather,goodfellas..etc) all thanks to this monitor,its perfect not just for games but movies too.

djkav · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:19

clippa said:
Did the colours look a little washed out on yours? I'm hoping that was down to the backlight.

I didn't notice. It looked nice and vibrant when i last seen it. I did look a bit washed out towards the top and bottom edges due to the bleed.

clippa · 27 Apr 2011 at 13:54

Well they sent a van round to pick the monitor up, drove off somewhere, turned the van around and brought it back.
Yes, they delivered the monitor back to the place where they picked it up.
They seemingly went with the small crossed out address on the box rather than the much larger and clearly printed RMA address.
The mind boggles. I seriously couldn't believe it.
So there's another van coming tomorrow, I've just asked for a refund instead. It's 11 days since I ordered the monitor and I'm no closer to owning it so I thought bugger it, I'll just wait for the new samsung to come out and decide whether I want one of those.
I doubt overclockers would mind if I mentioned the competitors name now

Suffice to say I won't be using them again.