ASUS Swift ROG PG278 G-Sync monitor: This is a gamer's dream display!

G-Sync Arrives

ASUS’ ROG (Republlic of Gamers) sub-brand has grown to become a force to be reckoned with in high-end computing market. Today, the ROG lineup runs the entire gamut of computing hardware and products ranging from motherboards and graphics cards to notebooks, gaming mice, sound cards, storage and even monitors. And no matter what the product category, users can rest assured that if it is an ROG product, that means the bleeding edge of technology.

Today, we turn our attention to monitors and to be fair, ASUS’ has been offering gaming-grade monitors for some time. For example, the 24-inch VG248QE has been popular with gamers thanks to its impressive specifications - 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response times - but it was not an official ROG product.

Fortunately, ASUS has just introduced a new ROG monitor, the ROG Swift PG278Q. We actually reported about this monitor as early as January this year, but production issues have delayed its launch. But now that it is finally here, let’s find out if it has been worth the wait.

Hardware, Features & Design

The first thing that strikes you about the ROG PG278 monitor is how thin the bezel is. The sides as well as the top measures just 7mm, while the bottom is slightly thicker at roughly 1.2cm. And as you reach out to adjust the display, you would find that the display itself is actually pretty light for a 27-inch monitor and that its stand allows for a wide range of adjustment. The stand adjusts not only for height and tilt, it can also swivel on its base and pivot, allowing users to use it in portrait mode for surround gaming. Speaking of which, the stand also features a base with intricate geometric patterns that light up when the monitor is powered. The base has rubber feet that gives the monitor is a firm stance, making it easy for users to adjust the display to their liking. Round the back, users will find slanted cuts that double up as vents to help keep the monitor cool during marathon gaming sessions.

The ASUS ROG Swift PG278 looks great and we are thankful that the design team did not go overboard and make it look too outlandish. We think most gamers would be happy to have a monitor looking like this at their desk. Additionally, overall build quality is good and the stand is especially well-engineered, it feels fluid to adjust and yet retains just the right amount of firmness in its actions.

Moving on, the ROG Swift PG278 monitor is choke-full of cutting edge monitor features. To begin, the ROG Swift PG278’s display has a diagonal measurement of 27-inches and a native resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. It uses a TN panel for maximum responsiveness and it has a rated grey-to-grey responsive time of just 1ms. It also supports an ultra-fast refresh rate of 144Hz - typically most monitors have a refresh rate of just 60Hz. It also has a matte finish, so no reflections and glare is kept down to a minimum.

Speaking of refresh rates, the key feature of the ROG Swift PG278 is its support for NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology. G-Sync was announced late last year and addresses the incompatibility of a GPU’s draw rates and a monitor’s refresh rate. This incompatibility is the cause of stutter, lag and tearing. Inside the ROG PG278 is a special chip that synchronizes both the GPU and monitor refresh rates and the end result is that the monitor will have a variable refresh rate that can range from as low as 30Hz to as high as 144Hz. However, do note this requires a compatible NVIDIA graphics card, GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost and higher. We will elaborate more on G-Sync further below.

It also supports two NVIDIA other technologies - 3D Vision and Ultra Low Motion Blur. 3D Vision has actually been around for quite some time and we first wrote about it five long years ago when we reviewed the NVIDIA 3D Vision Kit. The technology still works very much in the same way though we have now come a long way in terms of game and driver support and also performance, thanks to faster and more powerful graphics cards. Additionally, the ultra-fast 144Hz refresh rate of the ROG PG278 should also come in handy for anyone who is into 3D gaming. On the other hand, Ultra Low Motion Blur is a new NVIDIA technology that reduces the effects of motion blur that you sometimes see on slower 60Hz monitors, especially when there is fast scenes being displayed.

As for inputs,  the ROG Swift PG278 only offers a single DisplayPort, which is a bit of a downer. While only the DisplayPort interface has sufficient bandwidth to support the ROG PG278’s high resolution and refresh rates, the inclusion of HDMI or even dual-link DVI ports would make it easy for users to plug multiple sources such as a gaming console to the ROG PG278. The monitor also conveniently features two USB 3.0 ports, but their usefulness is negated by how difficult it is to actually access them. It would have been better if they were located at the sides of the display rather than at the back.

How G-Sync Works

To understand how G-Sync works, it is necessary to understand first that monitor refresh rates are typically fixed. For example, if a monitor has a refresh rate of 60Hz, this means it refreshes its screen 60 times a second or once every 16 millisecond. However, as we all know, a GPU rarely renders frames at a fixed frame rate. Depending on the scene and load, a GPU’s frame rates can vary wildly and greatly. The incongruous nature of the GPU’s frame rates and the monitor refresh rate is why we experience tearing, lag and stuttering images.

Looking at the top most graph, we can see that the GPU is rendering frames at a rate that is asynchronous to that of the monitor’s refresh rate. What happens then is that the GPU presents the frame even before the monitor is ready to refresh itself and this causes tearing. There are existing technologies that are used to overcome this and you might have probably heard of V-Sync. What V-Sync does is that it forces the monitor to only accept a new frame from the GPU only when its refresh cycle is up. However, as can been seen in the graph directly above, since the GPU does not render every frame at an equal speed, this can cause lag and stuttering images. That is not to say that V-Sync is not useful, but its effectiveness is limited in instances only when the GPU can consistently render faster than the monitor’s refresh rate.

NVIDIA’s G-Sync offers a simple and elegant solution to address this problem - simply synchronize the rate at which the monitor refreshes to the rate at which the GPU finishes rendering a scene. A special controller in the monitor simply tells the monitor that its time to refresh after the GPU finishes rendering. The end result is a smoother gaming experience.

On-screen Display Settings

The on-screen display (OSD) controls are located on the bottom right of the display and features what ASUS calls a “5-way OSD Navigation Key”. This special key works like a joystick and is really intuitive to use, which is a joy because some monitors have really fiddly and confusing controls.

As for the options, the ASUS ROG Swift PG278 features the usual brightness and contrast settings as well as a colors setting with various presets and a custom mode for more picky users.

There also a GamePlus button that lets users quickly put a permanent crosshair overlay on their screens. Obviously, this will give gamers an added advantage when playing FPS games (quickscope anyone?). GamePlus also lets users put an on-screen timer, which can come in handy for RTS or MMORPGs.

And finally there’s a special Turbo button that quickly switches the monitors’ refresh rate. Users can pick from 60Hz, 120Hz and the maximum 144Hz. This changes the ROG Swift PG278's monitor on the fly and the switch is almost instantaneous, with only a slight pause before the new refresh rate takes effect.

Display Measurements

We begin our analysis of the ASUS ROG Swift PG278 by taking a look at some of its key specifications. It uses a TN panel that produces 16.7 million colors. Brightness is rated at 350cd/m2 with a maximum contrast ratio of 1000:1.

Here are our measurements with the monitor set to 100% brightness.

The color space of the ROG Swift PG278 monitor matches well against that of sRGB. It went slightly beyond the green and red shades, but that is to be expected from most monitors, so there is nothing unusual there.  To add, the ROG Swift PG278 has three predetermined color presets - Normal, Warm and Cool. At Normal, we found that the color temperature was spot on at 6500k. At Warm and Cool, we got measurements of 5800k and 7700k respectively. Hence, for a more neutral-looking experience, it is best to just go with the Normal preset.

The screen also exhibited decent uniformity. Using our SpyderELITE measurement tool, we found the center was the brightest and that the edges lost some intensity - the top left and right corners were hardest hit and deviated by around 18%. This is to be expected for a display of this size and you would be hard pressed to notice in real life.

The ROG Swift PG278 has an ultra-fast response time of just 1ms. To put this to the test, we used PixPerAn and took photos at a very high shutter speed of 1/4000. And for comparison sake, we also ran PixPerAn on our Dell U3011 monitor, which we use for our graphics card testing. The Dell monitor has a longer response time of 7ms and it shows. Looking at the image on the right, the Dell U3011 exhibited more prominent ghosting effect. The ROG Swift PG278 is not free from ghosting effects, but it is considerably less pronounced, with the speech bubble being the most noticeable.

Usage Experience

For developers and gamers, a frame rate of 60fps is the holy grail. This enables the GPU and monitor to operate in synchronization (remember most monitors operate at 60Hz), which is why you often hear game developers talking about trying to achieve a constant frame rate of 60fps and why gamers sometimes deliberately limit and lock their frame rates to 60fps. When GPU frame rates drop below 60fps some stuttering and lag can occur. At this point, only keen gamers might notice, but the problem intensifies as frame rates dip and even more and becomes especially noticeable when it goes below 30fps, because by then, the GPU and monitor will be so out of sync that any stutter becomes glaring.

In our usage, G-Sync goes a long way to alleviating the problem. By dynamically varying the refresh rates from as low as 30Hz to as high as 144Hz to match the GPU, the end result is a smoother gaming experience. In less demanding games where the frame rates are usually high, the tearing issue is gone. And in games which often transition between high and low loads, the action is now now more fluid. In RTS games or games that uses an isometric view, the stuttering effect that you sometimes get from scrolling too quickly is also reduced significantly. As we mentioned in our earlier report on G-Sync, the effects have to be experienced firsthand to be fully appreciated, but suffice to say, G-Sync really works and will allow you to get the best out of your NVIDIA graphics card.

Conclusion

The ASUS ROG Swift RG278 combines cutting-edge monitor technologies in a sleek and attractive design. The light up base might not be to everyone’s tastes, but you cannot argue against its slim design and those thin bezels. The stand is also very well engineered and allows for a good range of adjustments. What we did not like, however, is that it only has a single Mini-DisplayPort input, which makes troublesome for the ROG PG278 to be used with multiple sources.

Our measurements also showed that it performed well up to expectations. Color space was decent, though not the most accurate; and screen brightness uniformity was also good for a display of its size. There are few 27-inch monitors that can boast of a 1ms response time and we found the ROG Swift PG278 to be sufficiently speedy.

And in everyday use, the ROG Swift RG278 did not disappoint. Tearing is gone and that stuttering effect that you sometimes get during intensive scenes or fast-scrolling has been dramatically reduced. Everything just feels and looks more fluid. If your existing setup is struggling with some games or maybe just specific scenes or gaming situations, it will feel as if you had a graphics card upgrade.

Considering its impressive specifications, the ROG RG278 does not currently have a direct competitor in the 27-inch space. Most 27-inch monitors typically use IPS panels and are targeted at professionals who desire accurate color reproduction as opposed to fast response times. Besides, it is also the first 27-inch monitor in the world to incorporate G-Sync technology and is also incorporates some useful features such as GamePlus' permanent crosshair overlay. As such, it is not surprising to find that the ROG Swift PG278 comes with a hefty price tag of S$1,259.

To be sure, it is a lot of money for a 27-inch monitor, especially if you consider that most 27-inch monitors with comparable resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels) typically cost around S$700 to S$800. Additionally, remember also that 4K monitors are now entering the fray and 28-inch 4k monitors from brands like Philips and Samsung are now retailing at just under S$900. Even if these two types of monitors are not directly comparable to the ROG Swift PG278, it is still food for thought, especially since the response times of IPS monitors are steadily falling and are decent enough to be used for gaming.

That said, ASUS’ ROG products have always been about the best of the best, and the ROG Swift PG278 is arguably the best 27-inch QHD gaming monitor in the market right now, especially if your rig is powered by a compatible NVIDIA GPU.

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