Hardware Acer Predator Gaming Monitor XB271H and RTX 2060 buyer's remorse

[the_randomizer]

So, I'm currently experiencing buyer's remorse, like, pretty bad even for me. See, I've recently updated my PC to the following specs:

CPU: Core i7 9700K
GPU: - MSI RTX 2060
RAM : 32 GB DDR4 3200

Originally, it had a GTX 1660 TI which was very good all things considered, but for some reason, I felt a bit of peer pressure from seeing others with 2K monitors, beefier GPUs and what have you. That, and well, I feared the GPU would bottleneck the new CPU, so I tried to find info on that. Sure enough, I got the Acer monitor and the GPU at about the same time, but there are a few problems, for one, 1440 games on this GPU aren't exactly ideal, struggling even at non max settings, leaving me to think it was a huge mistake getting this monitor and GPU at the same time, costing me roughly 800 dollars for both. Then we have the monitor, an IPS display, which looks amazing, but has ghosting issues even with overdrive set to normal, like, it has 4 ms grey to grey, and I can't figure out any way to further reduce it like on my last monitor. Then we have the issue of 120 Hz vs 60 Hz, and I believe the ghosting looks a bit worse on 60, but then games run smoother for me, and I focus on RPGs, emulators, but no FPS games or eSports for me at all.


- What can I do to improve the ghosting?
- Should I return this and get the 1080p version of the Acer Predator Gaming Monitor 27" XB271H instead?
- Should I return my RTX 2070 and put my 1660 TI back in, despite it not being as strong as a 1080 or 2080 but still good?

I should note that some games, even Star Ocean 4 on Steam, had some stuttering on occasion at 2560 x 1440 120 Hz, I've yet to test the 60 Hz version. I should've gotten the TN panel, with the major only downside is viewing angles. I get paid this Friday, but who knows how
long shipping will take for me to get this one back to Amazon, and the 1080p version to where I live. Why the deuce I didn't do more research, I don't know, and now I'm paying the price of being down a large chunk of change. And yes, I can get my money back, but dammit, I don't
know what my options are -_-

 

[raystriker]

So, I'm currently experiencing buyer's remorse, like, pretty bad even for me. See, I've recently updated my PC to the following specs:

CPU: Core i7 9700K
GPU: - MSI RTX 2060
RAM : 32 GB DDR4 3200

Originally, it had a GTX 1660 TI which was very good all things considered, but for some reason, I felt a bit of peer pressure from seeing others with 2K monitors, beefier GPUs and what have you. That, and well, I feared the GPU would bottleneck the new CPU, so I tried to find info on that. Sure enough, I got the Acer monitor and the GPU at about the same time, but there are a few problems, for one, 1440 games on this GPU aren't exactly ideal, struggling even at non max settings, leaving me to think it was a huge mistake getting this monitor and GPU at the same time, costing me roughly 800 dollars for both. Then we have the monitor, an IPS display, which looks amazing, but has ghosting issues even with overdrive set to normal, like, it has 4 ms grey to grey, and I can't figure out any way to further reduce it like on my last monitor. Then we have the issue of 120 Hz vs 60 Hz, and I believe the ghosting looks a bit worse on 60, but then games run smoother for me, and I focus on RPGs, emulators, but no FPS games or eSports for me at all.


- What can I do to improve the ghosting?
- Should I return this and get the 1080p version of the Acer Predator Gaming Monitor 27" XB271H instead?
- Should I return my RTX 2070 and put my 1660 TI back in, despite it not being as strong as a 1080 or 2080 but still good?

I should note that some games, even Star Ocean 4 on Steam, had some stuttering on occasion at 2560 x 1440 120 Hz, I've yet to test the 60 Hz version. I should've gotten the TN panel, with the major only downside is viewing angles. I get paid this Friday, but who knows how
long shipping will take for me to get this one back to Amazon, and the 1080p version to where I live. Why the deuce I didn't do more research, I don't know, and now I'm paying the price of being down a large chunk of change. And yes, I can get my money back, but dammit, I don't
know what my options are -_-

-Let me get this straight...do you have a 2070 or a 2060?
-A 2070 with 1440p should be able to do 60+fps, so your experience is definitely odd.

 

[Xzi]

I was recently shopping around for a 1440p 144Hz monitor, and after a lot of research I ended up coming to the conclusion that IPS simply isn't worth it on a high refresh rate/fast response time panel. Not only is there a markup for it compared to TN and VA panels, ghosting and poor blacks seem to be universal issues across all manufacturers. I ended up settling on a refurbished AOC Agon, which I'm very pleased with. The one drawback being that I can't tune the colors to exactly match the hue and tone of my IPS 4K TV, but they aren't any less vibrant and I just stopped noticing it after a while. Obviously not an issue unless you're going for a multi-monitor setup anyway.

So yeah, I'd vote return the monitor and pick up a different brand or model with a TN or VA panel. Stick with 1440p for future-proofing, though, especially if you plan on getting a PS5 or XBSX at any point. Also: regardless of which GPU you end up sticking with, it should be able to drive some games at 120+ FPS, even if they aren't the very latest AAA releases.

As to the 1660 Ti vs RTX 2060, I'll admit to a bit of bias up front because I think RTX cards have a really poor price-to-performance ratio. Even speaking objectively, you're only gaining about 1 tflop of performance in that exchange, and spending quite a bit of extra money to do it. Not to mention the RTX 2060 isn't powerful enough to enable ray-tracing without totally tanking your FPS. Again I'm going to recommend you return it, and if you HAVE to upgrade now, get a used GTX 1070 or 1080 still under warranty on eBay. Otherwise look into AMD cards or just wait for Nvidia's 3000 series to release, at which point RTX cards should see a price drop.

 

[raystriker]

Yeah, this was really a bad time to "upgrade". RTX3000 and RDNA2 are due in a few months, and they promise to be much better and aggressively priced than the previous generation.

 

[Xzi]

Yeah, this was really a bad time to "upgrade". RTX3000 and RDNA2 are due in a few months, and they promise to be much better and aggressively priced than the previous generation.

Depends on whether AMD's next set of GPUs can challenge Nvidia on the high-end of performance. If not, I expect the same ridiculous launch pricing for the 3000 series that the 2000 series had.

 

[the_randomizer]

I was recently shopping around for a 1440p 144Hz monitor, and after a lot of research I ended up coming to the conclusion that IPS simply isn't worth it on a high refresh rate/fast response time panel. Not only is there a markup for it compared to TN and VA panels, ghosting and poor blacks seem to be universal issues across all manufacturers. I ended up settling on a refurbished AOC Agon, which I'm very pleased with. The one drawback being that I can't tune the colors to exactly match the hue and tone of my IPS 4K TV, but they aren't any less vibrant and I just stopped noticing it after a while. Obviously not an issue unless you're going for a multi-monitor setup anyway.

So yeah, I'd vote return the monitor and pick up a different brand or model with a TN or VA panel. Stick with 1440p for future-proofing, though, especially if you plan on getting a PS5 or XBSX at any point. Also: regardless of which GPU you end up sticking with, it should be able to drive some games at 120+ FPS, even if they aren't the very latest AAA releases.

As to the 1660 Ti vs RTX 2060, I'll admit to a bit of bias up front because I think RTX cards have a really poor price-to-performance ratio. Even speaking objectively, you're only gaining about 1 tflop of performance in that exchange, and spending quite a bit of extra money to do it. Not to mention the RTX 2060 isn't powerful enough to enable ray-tracing without totally tanking your FPS. Again I'm going to recommend you return it, and if you HAVE to upgrade now, get a used GTX 1070 or 1080 still under warranty on eBay. Otherwise look into AMD cards or just wait for Nvidia's 3000 series to release, at which point RTX cards should see a price drop.

There is the RTX 2060 super, which is better than vanilla 2060, but again, I've decided to send this monitor back, but not without getting a ASUS VG278QR to replace the one I had before (which I gave to my parents and they love it). It's pretty cheap, and ia TN panel with super fast response time. I've learned my lesson to be sure, the hard way, but I'm glad I can get full refunds on the monitor and GPU.

Yeah, this was really a bad time to "upgrade". RTX3000 and RDNA2 are due in a few months, and they promise to be much better and aggressively priced than the previous generation.

Perhaps, I've always been an NVidia fanboy to be honest, I'll probably stick to my 1660 TI as it's still a very good card IMO. I think my problem was, I was trying to emulate my older brother, who has a beefy PC rig of his own (more so than mine) and well, yeah, lesson learned *whew*.

Is VA that much worse than IPS? I've heard that there's quite a bit of ghosting

 

[FAST6191]

If something says gaming in the title I usually expect a 50% tax over something equivalent, that or a shiny bezel.

Likewise pumping resolution and framerate... if you double the framerate you effectively double the pixels needed to be pushed, and resolution bumps vary (4K being basically 4 1080 monitors which is 4 times the fun, and if you are also bumping to 120fps that now becomes 8 times the baseline 1080p60. 2560x1440 is still 16:9 and only a slight bump at about 78% more pixels). Unless your new GPU is going to be that many times faster you find yourself going backwards in performance. If it is a whole new tech, the game happens to make use of the tech and it is clocked that much more (say entry level old to higher end new) you might stay in place but eh.
Running in place is not so bad compared to empty changes ("I get 300fps even during high action... and my monitor is 60Hz") but it is not something I would care to drop real coin on.
I remain dubious of the perks of 120+fps on non CRT monitors or VR goggles (at least until proper motion blur is cracked) but it is at least a goal I guess.

Also 2k is a term people are unironically using? Bloody marketing parasites.
Does it have many perks for gaming, at least outside of games where you are looking into the extreme rifle distance a lot (not so many these days, and at 78% your original 4 pixels is now maybe 9 but crammed into an even smaller space) or RTS games that effectively allow you to cheat by having more on the screen at once does it make any odds?

Personally I would have rather gone for an ultrawide (21:9 maybe), or actually did a proper resolution upgrade and had a look at the 4K world (though outside of spreadsheets, CAD and maybe video editing of some types I am not convinced there either). As mentioned though this is probably not the best time to be investing in higher end stuff with actual change new stuff due before long.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

There is the RTX 2060 super, which is better than vanilla 2060, but again, I've decided to send this monitor back, but not without getting a ASUS VG278QR to replace the one I had before (which I gave to my parents and they love it). It's pretty cheap, and ia TN panel with super fast response time. I've learned my lesson to be sure, the hard way, but I'm glad I can get full refunds on the monitor and GPU.



Perhaps, I've always been an NVidia fanboy to be honest, I'll probably stick to my 1660 TI as it's still a very good card IMO. I think my problem was, I was trying to emulate my older brother, who has a beefy PC rig of his own (more so than mine) and well, yeah, lesson learned *whew*.

Is VA that much worse than IPS? I've heard that there's quite a bit of ghosting

VA in my opinion is not worse, it's just different. TN has its strengths (fast response times...) IPS has its strengths (good viewing angles...) and VA is inbetween, being pretty decent in all aspects but excelling at none. That said VA is not a bad one to go for. My new TV has a VA panel and I love it. I'd say VA is largely an improvement over TN and depending on your use case, may be a better choice than IPS.

 

[the_randomizer]

VA in my opinion is not worse, it's just different. TN has its strengths (fast response times...) IPS has its strengths (good viewing angles...) and VA is inbetween, being pretty decent in all aspects but excelling at none. That said VA is not a bad one to go for. My new TV has a VA panel and I love it. I'd say VA is largely an improvement over TN and depending on your use case, may be a better choice than IPS.

Already on its way, the Asus VG278QR 1080p 165 Hz 0.5 ms gtg display. I'm used to high quality TN panels at 1080p, but given this will be used with my RTX 2060, 120 Hz won't be an issue at that res.