Monitor Recommendation?

Hello All…

Short Version
What do you folks recommend for monitors and monitor setup. 27”or 24”? IPS? Gsync?
27” in the middle smaller vertical panels on the side?
I thought I read somewhere a long time ago there were performance issues with pushing clients to multiple panels.

Long Version
I stopped multi-boxing awhile back when the BG /follow died and as you guessed the urge to roll 5 has come back. Since that time I have moved and now have a different setup.
Previously multi-boxed with:
EVGA GeForce GTX 680 FTW 4096MB GDDR5
And
ASUS VW266H Black 25.5" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor along with 2 22” Samsung screens (which I no longer have)

I am now on the same video card but using a:
32" Vizio VIA LCD 1080p HDTV that is plugged in via HDMI into a kenwood AV receiver.

After renewing my isboxer subscription and running through the basic noob wizard with one screen layout 6 slots across the bottom leaving one hole for the swap. I am seeing square graphics around toons hands when casting. I am guessing that it is because of the size of the 32” HDTV. At any rate it looks like crap.
So to the point I am looking for monitor recommendations.

Thanks,

It all depends on how much you want to spend. I would recommend IPS or PLS monitors. If you're looking for a 1440p monitor there are cheap Korean IPS monitors on ebay. Heres a link with some 1440p monitor recommendations and links to sellers https://teksyndicate.com/news/2013/0...p-monitor-club. The Dell 2412m and 2312hm are popular IPS monitors if you don't want to go the 1440p route. I don't really know much about Gsync and there are 4K consumer grade monitors available now.

Thanks for the info and the links. I wasn't aware of the Korean IPS monitors. Although now I am wondering if my GPU is strong enough to run 3 1440p displays?

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

Hello All…

Short Version
What do you folks recommend for monitors and monitor setup. 27”or 24”? IPS? Gsync?

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IPS is nice, but they typically cost more and are susceptible to higher refresh rates when compared to TN panels; but, if you care about calibrating the color of your monitor to be perfect, then an IPS panel is going to allow you to do that.

The only way I'd recommend a 27" monitor is if you were moving up to 1440, but running 5 clients on a GTX 680 at 2560x1440 might be less than acceptable performance (it would be for me anyway).

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

27” in the middle smaller vertical panels on the side?

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This is entirely up to you and how much space you have on your desk for extra monitors. I used to run vertical monitors, but the aspect ratio never quite matched up unless I squished the game clients down. I still miss them for browsing the internet, though.

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

I thought I read somewhere a long time ago there were performance issues with pushing clients to multiple panels.

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If you have multiple GPUs attached to specific monitors, then you might incur a slight performance hit when swapping game clients from one monitor to another, but that also depends on your Window Layout in ISBoxer.

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

Gsync?

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GSync and FreeSync are completely unnecessary for multiboxing because it's recommended that you disable VSync altogether when multiboxing which completely removes the need for either of those new technologies. If you play a lot of games solo and screen tearing really ruins your gaming experience to the point where you're going to punch a hole in your screen, then maybe it's time to start looking into GSync or FreeSync (or anger management).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

After renewing my isboxer subscription and running through the basic noob wizard with one screen layout 6 slots across the bottom leaving one hole for the swap. I am seeing square graphics around toons hands when casting. I am guessing that it is because of the size of the 32” HDTV. At any rate it looks like crap.
So to the point I am looking for monitor recommendations.

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I doubt that's caused by the HDTV alone because WoW doesn't know that it's running on an HDTV rather than a monitor and it should be displaying everything like normal. I'd assume that a handful of people run their games (solo or multiboxing) on HDTVs and if that was the case you'd see more reports of weird distortion, but it sounds like it might be time to clean out your cache folder and let it rebuild.

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Originally Posted by Kyle102092

It all depends on how much you want to spend. I would recommend IPS or PLS monitors. If you're looking for a 1440p monitor there are cheap Korean IPS monitors on ebay. Heres a link with some 1440p monitor recommendations and links to sellers https://teksyndicate.com/news/2013/0...p-monitor-club. The Dell 2412m and 2312hm are popular IPS monitors if you don't want to go the 1440p route. I don't really know much about Gsync and there are 4K consumer grade monitors available now.

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While the idea behind the cheap Korean monitors is nice, I do have a few problems with them:

1) Any reputable monitor is going to come with a 3-year warranty. These Korean panels come with a 1-year warranty.
2) Are you 100% certain that someone from Korea is going to honor your warranty if something goes wrong?
3) You typically pay more for monitors that are guaranteed to have no dead pixels.
4) You can buy the same monitor in the US from Micro Center and opt to pay for an extended warranty if you want, but you also don't have to ship your monitor back to Korea if it breaks and needs to be replaced.

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

Thanks for the info and the links. I wasn't aware of the Korean IPS monitors. Although now I am wondering if my GPU is strong enough to run 3 1440p displays?

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Running the displays is unlikely to be an issue, but running five game clients at acceptable video settings and FPS could be an entirely different story.

First I would like to say thanks for taking the time to respond. Lots of food for thought here and has made me realize that what I initially thought a simple question isn’t so simple. I now believe that I should upgrade my GPU and display.

I am leaning towards a GTX 770 4GB or a GTX 780TI 3GB (I know there are better cards but I want to stay below $750.00)

AND

1 27” tn panel
Or
3 24” panels

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IPS is nice, but they typically cost more and are susceptible to higher refresh rates when compared to TN panels; but, if you care about calibrating the color of your monitor to be perfect, then an IPS panel is going to allow you to do that.

The only way I'd recommend a 27" monitor is if you were moving up to 1440, but running 5 clients on a GTX 680 at 2560x1440 might be less than acceptable performance (it would be for me anyway).

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So ignorance is bliss right? I have never seen an IPS panel so I wouldn’t know what I am missing. However I do know that low frame rates don’t make me happy.

My take away is that I am going to sacrifice some frame rate to run a 27” IPS panel with my GTX 680. I am not sure what yours or anyone else consider acceptable frame rates but I believe that I am usually hovering around 60 frames. There are spikes now and then and those can hurt.

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If you have multiple GPUs attached to specific monitors, then you might incur a slight performance hit when swapping game clients from one monitor to another, but that also depends on your Window Layout in ISBoxer.

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If I setup my isboxer screen layout to incorporate all clients on one screen, is there any performance hits when swapping clients if running multiple GPUs. Seems that you are saying that the lag in performance with multiple GPUs is when swapping a client from one display on one GPU to another display and GPU

Sorry for the “hello it’s Mr. Obvious question”. Just want to make sure that I understand.

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GSync and FreeSync are completely unnecessary for multiboxing because it's recommended that you disable VSync altogether when multiboxing which completely removes the need for either of those new technologies. If you play a lot of games solo and screen tearing really ruins your gaming experience to the point where you're going to punch a hole in your screen, then maybe it's time to start looking into GSync or FreeSync (or anger management).

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I wasn’t aware of the VSync setting. I will make sure to check this and disable if needed.

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I doubt that's caused by the HDTV alone because WoW doesn't know that it's running on an HDTV rather than a monitor and it should be displaying everything like normal. I'd assume that a handful of people run their games (solo or multiboxing) on HDTVs and if that was the case you'd see more reports of weird distortion, but it sounds like it might be time to clean out your cache folder and let it rebuild.

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I don’t know why this got me thinking about DirectX versions, but I checked this last night and found that I was running DirectX9 in my isboxer settings but DirectX11 in my game client. I changed this and it seemed to help.

The cache that you are referring to is in isboxer?

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While the idea behind the cheap Korean monitors is nice, I do have a few problems with them:

1) Any reputable monitor is going to come with a 3-year warranty. These Korean panels come with a 1-year warranty.
2) Are you 100% certain that someone from Korea is going to honor your warranty if something goes wrong?
3) You typically pay more for monitors that are guaranteed to have no dead pixels.
4) You can buy the same monitor in the US from Micro Center and opt to pay for an extended warranty if you want, but you also don't have to ship your monitor back to Korea if it breaks and needs to be replaced.

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Yeah after I looked into this a bit I found videos talking about how some of these are Apple display rejects and most will certainly have some dead or stuck pixels. I am not much of a gambler so this is probably not the road for me.

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Running the displays is unlikely to be an issue, but running five game clients at acceptable video settings and FPS could be an entirely different story.

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This along with some of your other comments got me looking at different GPUs. I am curious if you have any thoughts on whether or not it’s better to run multiple displays (3) on a GTX 770 SC with 4GB or on a faster engine like a GTX 780Ti that only has 3GB.

If I were you, I'd keep your current video card. I have a Dell 30" 2560x1600 and a GTX 770 4GB card(which is pretty close to what you have now), running all windows at 1080p. Full screen stacked, and I have 4 smaller VideoFX(ISboxer) windows along the right side of my screen to keep an eye on the party, click on stuff in each window, etc. I do use a 27" LG monitor on the side for web browsing, also at 1080p.

You might wonder why I run WoW @ 1080p on a 1600p monitor. My system bogs way down, even with just the main at 1600p. I've played around a bit at the higher res, and there isn't that much of a difference anyway imo.

Hope that helps you:)

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

My take away is that I am going to sacrifice some frame rate to run a 27” IPS panel with my GTX 680. I am not sure what yours or anyone else consider acceptable frame rates but I believe that I am usually hovering around 60 frames. There are spikes now and then and those can hurt.

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Well, FPS also comes down to video settings, as well as your CPU (both of which you didn't mention).

Also, whenever I'm talking about resolution sizes of a monitor I always assume that people are going to be running their game clients at the native resolution. So, if you wanted a panel that ran at 2560x1440, then I automatically assume that you'd want to run all of the game clients at 2560x1440. Overall, I find it easier to assume this information, but in all honesty, I've always thought I'd use Damons's approach if I had a 2560x1440 monitor and just run the game clients at 1920x1080 because there's typically enough in-game screen real estate for me to have a fancy UI and still be able to see everything that's happening.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

If I setup my isboxer screen layout to incorporate all clients on one screen, is there any performance hits when swapping clients if running multiple GPUs. Seems that you are saying that the lag in performance with multiple GPUs is when swapping a client from one display on one GPU to another display and GPU.

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If all of the clients are launched from a single monitor and stay there after they're fully launched, then there is no performance hit (assuming multiple GPUs assigned to specific monitors); but then you're wasting the rest of your GPU power. If your GPUs are in SLI then you might not have access to all of your monitors when it's enabled because... SLI is finicky like that, so you might be restricted to a single monitor anyway. I would also not recommend running the GPUs in Surround mode and then trying to build a Window Layout around that. My experience with that was absolutely terrible, but it was a quick test and I was wanting to give it another try (not that I really expect different results).

I've recently begun to move away from SLI while gaming and am much more of a fan of splitting the load of the game clients across multiple GPUs these days.

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

I don’t know why this got me thinking about DirectX versions, but I checked this last night and found that I was running DirectX9 in my isboxer settings but DirectX11 in my game client. I changed this and it seemed to help.

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I've been telling people that DX11 was superior for awhile now, but in all honesty (lots of confessions in this thread), I've recently moved away from DX11 because there is no visual difference between the two APIs and DX9 requires so much less power to run. The only benefit to DX11 that I've noticed is, at most, a 10FPS increase in certain areas. -_-

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

The cache that you are referring to is in isboxer?

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The cache folders are in your WoW folder. These are the same cache folders that Blizzard tells you to delete if you're experiencing issues with the game.

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Originally Posted by Grimgen

This along with some of your other comments got me looking at different GPUs. I am curious if you have any thoughts on whether or not it’s better to run multiple displays (3) on a GTX 770 SC with 4GB or on a faster engine like a GTX 780Ti that only has 3GB.

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Based on what I said about using DX9 above, I'd imagine (and this is just a guess based on not knowing what video settings you play at or what FPS you find acceptable) that a single 780Ti should satisfy your needs. It's highly unlikely that you're going to hit the 3GB limit of VRAM when using DX9 (and running five clients) unless you're playing with high levels of anti-aliasing on all of the clients when running Ultra settings

I would recommend finding a budget before getting too far into this. There are a lot of variation in the quality and performance of monitors. Decent gaming monitors vary anywhere from $150 (Asus VE247H) to $900 (Asus PG279Q ROG Swift). I would recommend running either 3x Asus VG248QE or 1x Asus ROG Swift. I recently read this article that reviews several gaming monitors.

I am also wondering what your guys' opinion is about the Asus VG248QE verse the Asus VS278Q-P. The VS278Q-P is only 60Hz, but do you guys think it will work for games that don't require a really fast refresh rate?

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Originally Posted by ghostlord97

The VS278Q-P is only 60Hz, but do you guys think it will work for games that don't require a really fast refresh rate?

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What games require more than 60Hz refresh rate?

Newegg has a 48hr sale on a Dell U2713HM ,it's a 27" IPS monitor ..... $469.99
looks like a decent 2560x1440 monitor.
any opinions?

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Originally Posted by Ñightsham

Newegg has a 48hr sale on a Dell U2713HM ,it's a 27" IPS monitor ..... $469.99
looks like a decent 2560x1440 monitor.
any opinions?

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It looks fine if you can handle the thicker bezels. I was eyeballing this the other day which is the next step up - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824260234 (obviously not on sale)

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Originally Posted by MiRai

It looks fine if you can handle the thicker bezels. I was eyeballing this the other day which is the next step up - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824260234 (obviously not on sale)

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Good point about the bezel thickness, I'll have to weigh this out with the one you linked. Not sure if its worth the extra $$ plus ill need 2 :)

Getting closer on price U2715H from amazon . $574
....now if that 980Ti will come out LoL