ROG SWIFT PG278Q Premium Gaming Monitor

Well, just for the protocol, no other monitor besides the Swift combines 1440p, 144Hz and ULMB at the moment. That's why it's a nice package, but as we know, it comes with a matching price tag. Which wouldn't be so bad in my opinion if at least 99% of the units shipped was technicalls flawless, which they don't seem to be with all the problems and little disadvantages people experience, as one can read here.

 

Well I must say that I've had no issues with my Swift its an awesome piece of kit I'm delighted with it . Its like playing an FPS game on an old CRT at high fps super smooth.I think a lot of problems people are getting are a result of poor shipping/handling, my last monitor was delivered & they delivery guy rang my door bell when I opened the door instead of placing it at my feet or handing it to me to sign for it he dropped it on the ground my feet from knee height, sure enough when I tried it(wouldn't sign for it made the driver wait) it was totally dead sent it back & had the shop use different shipping company.

 

Well that could happen with any hardware you order. Still, now you know why he's a delivery boy and not a surgeon

 

No, after using the desktop for only ten minutes, my screen would get really hot, then I'd get slight flickering, then I'd get dark, hazy horizontal lines about 3-4 mm thick across the entire display. A minute or two after that, the straight edges on all my windows would begin to 'crawl" and text would start to look blurry and corrupted.

At first, I would change the refresh rate and it would correct it, but after a few hours it was the same in all modes, so off it went back to Amazon! I'm still pondering if I should try to buy again.

 

Ahhh yayaya, that is great news, I hope I'll join you soon

 

The post here shows the inversion issue:

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...p.-in-3D-mode.&p=439589&viewfull=1#post439589

If that's even what's happening. I doubt it's called inversion at this point it just looks similar but yeah.

 

I may have spoken to soon, noticed this tonight.
Vertical lines in the blue range going from centre to the far right edge of the screen

 

Hey guys, i'm curious how this monitor looks at 1080p?

I know, might sound odd, but i know many times when you go with a high resolution monitor, going at a lower resolution can look blurred and washed out. I ask, because i'm quite curious in this monitor (or another monitor at 1440p, but considering this one has g-sync and no other does...) but i want to make sure that if i need to run a game at 1080p due to not enough FPS at 1440p, that it will still look decent....

Anyone looked at 1080p on this monitor for any reasonable amount of time?

 

Oh lord, that **** looks horrible

 

I hope u all guys get a good swift monitor, in case u replace.

After reading your issues and similar on ROG, it seems that many of those are faulty, and i wanted to buy one...

 

Yeh i'm gutted, in games its hardly noticeable but it is there & when paying such a premium price you want it perfect really.

I going to have to pop to work tomorrow & see if we have any spare DP cables (which i don't think is the problem) if its not then its back to Amazon which is a pain sending as the monitor box was in an Amazon box which is massive! & at my own expense. (edit: Amazon are collecting at no extra cost, that's good service)
Then the dilemma of replacement (i really love the monitor) or refund?

 

I'm curios what ASUS would do if every user having such problems would send them back, and retailers complaining to the manufacturer about it.

 

Well i've just arranged for Amazon to pick my Swift up & i'm opting for a refund not a replacement.
I'm going to wait it out a bit, hopefully they get some of their problems sorted out or a competitor releases a similar spec monitor.

back to 1080p for me :frown:

 

Yea, that particular problem shouldn't happen, my colors are looking quite okay and there is no banding with solid colors.

So, I received mine today!
I started out playing some CS:GO with both my screens hooked up and the first thing that happened was a crash xD. Not even a BSOD, just a straight instant reboot of the computer. So then I tried to play with just the single display and after changing the display settings in-game that seemed to work fine.

The first thing that I noticed is obviously the reduce in input lag, but I noticed that movements are still subject to some input lag at least in CS:GO.
The CS:GO menu is capped to your display's refresh rate. With GSync enabled it doesn't really want to touch 120fps and you can still see noticeable input lag (though MUCH less than with vSync and 60hz), while with GSync and vSync off there is no noticeable input lag.
I had the same feeling in-game. It was smooth and all and definitely the mouse movements were close to instantanious, but there is still this noticeable difference compared to no vSync. For some reason the game also hitches when the fps drops below 120fps and it didn't really want to touch 120fps. It's always between 117 and 119.
These things might also be related to the game engine or drivers, but I wasn't too impressed with the performance here.

But then I tried Crysis 3. And DAMN, that is impressive. Even though the game ran between 30 and 50 fps most of the time, the difference that gSync makes becomes really clear here. It's just so smooth and it doesn't lag at all. Movements feel right and the image quality is perfect without any tearing. I found myself playing Crysis for 2 hours, simply because it looked great and felt so right xD

Then I tried a less demanding game Unreal Tournament 3. And again WOW, I'm stunned. I've always played this game without vSync and the engine caps it to 62 fps, but oh my god, the image quality is just PERFECT now, difference of night and day and I don't detect any noticeable input lag!
This is really where it shines. GSync if it works right is really worth it, 10/10.

Then I turned the fps cap off... And guess what, noticeable input lag again. It ran at 120Hz now, but it felt less smooth than at 62 fps! I am shocked. GSync is not that impressive when you run at your monitors refresh rate. The impact of gSync really becomes clear at lower frame rates, if you're close to the screen's refresh rate there is virtually no difference (in my testing). Here also the framerate is stuck between 118.5 and 119.4 all the time, I just can't get a solid 120 fps in any game, really disappointing.
I've also tried normal vSync at 120Hz and while that keeps 119.9fps all the time there is definitely more input lag than with gSync. So it does make a difference, but it becomes less and less apparent once you reach the monitors maximum refresh rate.

Then... I did some tests on this site: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ and some results are shocking. Shockingly bad that is.

First off I'd like to say that the darks are really good on this monitor. In the contrast test you can see clearly see all the different color bands (except for the darkest blue ones). Also in the black level tests you can clearly see the difference between the blocks up until 3 in a light environment, which is pretty good in my books. I also really like the anti-glare coating. Even when a little sun is shining on the monitor you are still able to view a nice picture.

Then the horrible tests begin. First off, the clock and phase test, an interleaved pattern of grey and white pixels looks GREEN on this monitor depending on its position...
Here it is still correct:


Then we scroll down a bit:


This does not happen on my other monitor. Also when you close the window you get the grainy effect that some other users here have been talking about, giving WoW with moving bright objects as an example. It looks really weird and should not happen...

Then the sharpness test. Oh my god, it's way too sharp! It looks exactly like what it should not look like and what happens if the sharpness is too high. And now the fun thing, there are virtually NO costumization options on this monitor. You can't change gamma, you can't change sharpness. So basically you're ****ed here and have to deal with it.

Then the gamma calibration. Obviously this was not correct by default, but there is no way to change this on the monitor. So I lowered the gamma a bit via the driver to get the correct values. But I found that this is very sensitive to your viewing angle. If you move your head only slightly up or down the whole part where it blends in moves with it. So while this monitor has excellent viewing angles in terms of color (solid color blocks look almost exactly the same from different viewing angles), changes in gamma are very noticeable if you move your head. Not desirable.

Then the white level is a bit too bright, but also quite good if you lower your brightness and contrast settings a bit. However if you put your contrast settings too low you will get a green screen in every occasion in the clock and phase test, so this is really annoying. I've settled with a contrast value of 40 now. You can't see the difference in the last block, but very vaguely you can see the difference in the two blocks before that and the rest is just excellent.

Then in the gradient test it is not completely smooth, but the vertical banding is barely noticeable. I would say that my older monitor actually does this better, but the differences are negligible. The result is not disturbing to look at.

And then the inversion test... While I have no flickering in any of the images, Images 2a and 2b are just green. Here's a picture of my two monitors showing the same image, with the old monitor on the left:

Seriously you must be joking?

The above picture was taken with Google Chrome and it shows horrible banding issues as well. Vertical and horizontal bands are showing.
In IE I do not get these banding issues, but the screen is still solid green. This is very bad. So I don't know to what extent this is a driver issue, but it seems to me that this is inherent to the monitor, in this picture it looks like I just bought a faulty monitor!

Other things I noticed is that ULMB mode is really good, it reduces motion blur by quite a bit compared to having it off. Fast smooth scroll text downwards is still what blurry, though, but I don't think any other panel can do this better. Also when doing the response time test I get no flickering whatsoever from the boxes with ULMB enabled. Without it (using OD mode) there is slight flickering in two boxes. If you use OD mode then don't put it to Extreme it works worse than Normal mode. Extreme mode also introduces ghosting in motion. So best to use ULMB at all times.

Other things I noticed is that the display while loading CS:GO showed a slight flicker in the still image. The manual says this is normal behaviour, though and that it will go away once the monitor is warmed up. This seems to be true as I've only noticed is when I just started testing.

All in all I think I can be satisfied, though. I've played some Outlast, which is a dark horror game and I must say that my experience has been nothing but satisfying gaming wise. It's a huge upgrade from my previous screen. There is great picture quality, the colors look right and gSync is doing it's magic if you put a cap on your frames. So I'll figure some things out with fps caps and I'm sure I'll have a great experience in most games!

 

I'm glad to hear everything is ok with your screen .I feel for the people who gotten bad ones,I hope they get sorted aswell because man what a screen !.

 

No one has any input on this?

 

Speaking as someone that has two 2560x1440 monitors, the dell u2711, and the catleap 2b. Yes, 1920x1080p does look blurred and washed out. Native resolution is the only time it looks sharp and clear.

The u2711 monitor sharpness setting combined with the onboard scaler makes it look a fraction less blurry than gpu scaling. But it also makes the imagine look wrong somehow.

I am actually considering going back to 1920x1080p when ips gsync becomes available. Since graphics performance is twice the price in graphics cards at 2560x1440.

The only upscaling that looks half decent to me at the moment is gadosato running at a lower internal resolution, however that only works for dx9 games. And nvidia's new DSR seems to only downscale (higher resolution) and not do lower resolutions.

 

That's what i was worried about

 

One other thing to keep in mind is that when using GSync you lose ULMB mode and therefore a great deal of image clarity. You can't use LightBoost to compensate for this either.

If you're close to 120fps then use vSync at all times. The image is better because you can use ULMB mode and the difference with input lag between gSync and vSync at maximum fps is negligible. Besides that with vSync you actually get 120fps, while with gSync its stuck between 117 and 119 all the time.

GSync shines only at low fps unfortunately. There the input lag of vSync is greatly decreased and your image has low motion blur due to low fps. I'm a bit disappointed with this. I thought more of it. You can't use it with 3D either.