If I wasn't holding out for a monitor using one of the 31.5" 5k panels that LG leaked they were working on a year ago I'd buy this.
Also, multiple video inputs? Is this using a 2nd generation GSync controller (the original ones only had a single DP input) or is Acer routing the HDMI through a different hardware path to the panel itself?
Depends on your usage I guess - 5k good for games (as 4x 2560x1440 res) but for productivity 4K at 32" is a sweet spot as you can run at 1:1 without scaling (I just about manage this on a 27" 4K, so I think it would be very comfortable on a 32" panel.).
135/140 DPI at 1:1 is a bit too small for me at a screen distance reasonable for a multi-display setup. If I only had 1 screen I could probably put it close enough to work; but then I'd need to do too much turning to look at the ones on either side of it. I can use the screen on my XPS13 laptop at that distance/effective resolution; but need the bump in sharpness from running a high DPI screen at 2:1 to compensate for the limitations of my eyes.
For gaming, I'm hoping that two of nVidia or AMDs next gen cards will be able to let me play at native 5k with everything except AA cranked up (and high DPI makes AA much less important). Their claim of 2x as fast current cards makes it seem reasonable, since 2 current gen cards do 4k reasonably well and 5k is slightly less than 2x as many pixels to push.
Not really so good for games, it's hard to feed a 4K screen, let alone 5K. Current-gen graphics aren't powerful enough even with multi-GPU configurations.
Both Nvidia's Pascal and AMD's Artic Island will both have 16GB and more HBM2 memory, which is plenty of VRAM for 4K gaming. Both companies are touting their next-gen GPUs will be the first 'true' single GPU 4K gaming solution able to maintain over 60FPS even when graphics settings are turned up. Both next-gen GPU cards are targeted for release by this fall...W00T!
Saw this at MicroCenter last week and seriously debated picking one up. Less so for gaming and more for productivity, but it'd be nice to have the specs on board when I do game. I'm still getting by with my old 26" Samsung w/ 1920x1200 resolution. I'm also guessing that we'll start seeing 120Hz+ 4k sets once Displayport 1.3 makes its way into our GPUs, so I'm holding off till then.
Same here... every time a new gaming monitor is released, I look for DisplayPort 1.3 and 120Hz 4k, and every time I'm disappointed.
It's too bad that they seem to want to hold off until the video cards that support it are on the market rather than releasing something that's future-proof today because I would really like a new monitor.
I wonder if manufacturers will just skip 1.3 since 1.4 seems to use data compression to enable new features like 8K and 120Hz 4k with HDR rather than requiring more actual bandwidth.
The hardware world doesn't move that quickly, unfortunately. AMD's Polaris and NVIDIA's Pascal should be shipping in the next few months, which means the chips have been in house for a while, taped out long ago, and designed over a year ago. This entire generation will likely all be DisplayPort 1.3, proper 18 Gbps HDMI 2.0a, and finally-working HDCP 2.2 (not that any software can use it yet, but nice to have if that changes).
DP 1.4 also servers a different purpose that you didn't list - overhead reduction! This is what allows for much greater 'true' bandwidth in accordance with the DP 1.4 specification. The problem with DP 1.2 is the overhead traffic that congests the channels and steals potential bandwidth. DP 1.3 reduces that overhead by 50%, and thus is able to support 4K @ 120Hz (albeit without HDR, which would break the bandwidth threshold of DP 1.3). So, I will hold up a beer with you and say that I will wait until the cows come home and DP 1.4 is finally released...say in 2018...maybe...lol
Yeah I don't see why they couldn't put out 4k 120hz, and then just let people run it at 1080p 144hz if their hardware can't push the high framerate at 4k.
Probably because there are literally no GPU's with DP 1.3 currently available, which would be needed for 4k/120, so the target market for folks that can actually utilize that is zero. I'm sure the cost of the internal display controllers / LCD display / design / testing to support 4K/120 is not insignificant - monitor is already at the high end of the price spectrum for gaming, and I imagine they saw no need to jack up the price further to enable a feature set no one can currently use. 1080p144 is a bit different, but then you would still need to source a 4K panel with pixels that can transition in 6.94 ms or less to provide that feature. Not sure if there are any panels available that can currently do that.
I'd be interested in seeing 27" and larger IPS GSYNC monitors reviewed from an angle of both gaming and general use. A GSYNC monitor that can handle both gaming and photo/video editing.
I used to have one PC for everything but when I got my first Asus GSYNC monitor I had to build a separate machine just for gaming (didn't want to deal with dual monitor weirdness) because that monitor was completely unusable for anything but gaming. The colors and viewing angles were unacceptable for even hobby-level image editing.
Was your Asus monitor a TN panel? They're awful for everything except refresh rate and race to the bottom prices. An IPS Gysnc monitor should be fine for dual use since the underlying panel is much better quality.
Yes, it was TN. I couldn't wait, I got one as soon as they came out. I don't know about the race to the bottom, it was $800:) For games it didn't matter though, it was pretty awesome. I know that IPS are now available but I'd still like to see a professional review.
Yeah, 21:9 is such a big step up for productive tasks once you get the screen tall enough. 16:9 is just a tiny bit too narrow to give a good experience with two adjacent windows. By the time you get to 1400 pixels and above, the height doesn't feel nearly constraining enough of individual windows contents to be worth giving up room for more windows side by side.
The NEC PA322UHD-bk does. But it is 3000, for professional editting, and has a response time of about 24FPS... an awesome monitor for "anything" but gaming IMO.
BTW, 4K gaming is nice, but it requires a GTX980 SLI (1405/7600) 4790K setup for GTAV (VH detail) and even then you hit about 45FPS in some sections, and minor Frame "bumps"... So you end up wondering if FPS at 90 ~ 120 Hz (2560x1440) is better than 45~ 60 4k. (I have both the acer xh270hu, and the 4k xb280hk )
Contrast is the main determiner of resolution. Tom's Hardware has posted a review showing that the 35" non-IPS Acer predator is the best gaming image quality they've seen on any monitor other than OLED. To understand why contrast is more important than color or viewing angle, learn about optical transfer function, the main determiner of resolution. Also, humans are bad at telling colors apart.
Waaaaaayyyy too much money for a "60Hz only" 4K IPS panel. The same non G-Sync variant of this monitor is the Acer B326HK and it costs $600 used off of Amazon. I would be willing to pay $1200+ easily if the XB321HK had a 120Hz capable panel utilizing a DP 1.3 port. 120Hz 4K panels will be out later this fall/winter, so I'm just going to be patient and wait thank you very much ;-)
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DanNeely - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
If I wasn't holding out for a monitor using one of the 31.5" 5k panels that LG leaked they were working on a year ago I'd buy this.Also, multiple video inputs? Is this using a 2nd generation GSync controller (the original ones only had a single DP input) or is Acer routing the HDMI through a different hardware path to the panel itself?
dontlistentome - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
Depends on your usage I guess - 5k good for games (as 4x 2560x1440 res) but for productivity 4K at 32" is a sweet spot as you can run at 1:1 without scaling (I just about manage this on a 27" 4K, so I think it would be very comfortable on a 32" panel.).Still want 16:10 though...
DanNeely - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
135/140 DPI at 1:1 is a bit too small for me at a screen distance reasonable for a multi-display setup. If I only had 1 screen I could probably put it close enough to work; but then I'd need to do too much turning to look at the ones on either side of it. I can use the screen on my XPS13 laptop at that distance/effective resolution; but need the bump in sharpness from running a high DPI screen at 2:1 to compensate for the limitations of my eyes.For gaming, I'm hoping that two of nVidia or AMDs next gen cards will be able to let me play at native 5k with everything except AA cranked up (and high DPI makes AA much less important). Their claim of 2x as fast current cards makes it seem reasonable, since 2 current gen cards do 4k reasonably well and 5k is slightly less than 2x as many pixels to push.
Flunk - Tuesday, March 8, 2016 - link
Not really so good for games, it's hard to feed a 4K screen, let alone 5K. Current-gen graphics aren't powerful enough even with multi-GPU configurations.Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Both Nvidia's Pascal and AMD's Artic Island will both have 16GB and more HBM2 memory, which is plenty of VRAM for 4K gaming. Both companies are touting their next-gen GPUs will be the first 'true' single GPU 4K gaming solution able to maintain over 60FPS even when graphics settings are turned up. Both next-gen GPU cards are targeted for release by this fall...W00T!Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-hbm2-16gb-1-tbs-...mutatio - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Saw this at MicroCenter last week and seriously debated picking one up. Less so for gaming and more for productivity, but it'd be nice to have the specs on board when I do game. I'm still getting by with my old 26" Samsung w/ 1920x1200 resolution. I'm also guessing that we'll start seeing 120Hz+ 4k sets once Displayport 1.3 makes its way into our GPUs, so I'm holding off till then.shonferg - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Same here... every time a new gaming monitor is released, I look for DisplayPort 1.3 and 120Hz 4k, and every time I'm disappointed.It's too bad that they seem to want to hold off until the video cards that support it are on the market rather than releasing something that's future-proof today because I would really like a new monitor.
shonferg - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
And now it seems VESA has just ratified DisplayPort 1.4 today, before any device (that I know of) has released support for 1.3:http://www.vesa.org/featured-articles/vesa-publish...
I wonder if manufacturers will just skip 1.3 since 1.4 seems to use data compression to enable new features like 8K and 120Hz 4k with HDR rather than requiring more actual bandwidth.
torchedguitar - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
The hardware world doesn't move that quickly, unfortunately. AMD's Polaris and NVIDIA's Pascal should be shipping in the next few months, which means the chips have been in house for a while, taped out long ago, and designed over a year ago. This entire generation will likely all be DisplayPort 1.3, proper 18 Gbps HDMI 2.0a, and finally-working HDCP 2.2 (not that any software can use it yet, but nice to have if that changes).kitty4427 - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link
I'm commenting from the future. Nvidia has released their Pascal GPUs and they in fact use DisplayPort 1.4.Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
DP 1.4 also servers a different purpose that you didn't list - overhead reduction! This is what allows for much greater 'true' bandwidth in accordance with the DP 1.4 specification. The problem with DP 1.2 is the overhead traffic that congests the channels and steals potential bandwidth. DP 1.3 reduces that overhead by 50%, and thus is able to support 4K @ 120Hz (albeit without HDR, which would break the bandwidth threshold of DP 1.3). So, I will hold up a beer with you and say that I will wait until the cows come home and DP 1.4 is finally released...say in 2018...maybe...lolSttm - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Yeah I don't see why they couldn't put out 4k 120hz, and then just let people run it at 1080p 144hz if their hardware can't push the high framerate at 4k.HammerStrike - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
Probably because there are literally no GPU's with DP 1.3 currently available, which would be needed for 4k/120, so the target market for folks that can actually utilize that is zero. I'm sure the cost of the internal display controllers / LCD display / design / testing to support 4K/120 is not insignificant - monitor is already at the high end of the price spectrum for gaming, and I imagine they saw no need to jack up the price further to enable a feature set no one can currently use. 1080p144 is a bit different, but then you would still need to source a 4K panel with pixels that can transition in 6.94 ms or less to provide that feature. Not sure if there are any panels available that can currently do that.Zak - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
I'd be interested in seeing 27" and larger IPS GSYNC monitors reviewed from an angle of both gaming and general use. A GSYNC monitor that can handle both gaming and photo/video editing.I used to have one PC for everything but when I got my first Asus GSYNC monitor I had to build a separate machine just for gaming (didn't want to deal with dual monitor weirdness) because that monitor was completely unusable for anything but gaming. The colors and viewing angles were unacceptable for even hobby-level image editing.
DanNeely - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Was your Asus monitor a TN panel? They're awful for everything except refresh rate and race to the bottom prices. An IPS Gysnc monitor should be fine for dual use since the underlying panel is much better quality.Zak - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Yes, it was TN. I couldn't wait, I got one as soon as they came out. I don't know about the race to the bottom, it was $800:) For games it didn't matter though, it was pretty awesome. I know that IPS are now available but I'd still like to see a professional review.Major_Kusanagi - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Damn, this almost makes me regret buying the Samsung S34E790C back in Sept, but I have to remember that I got it for $585,jasonelmore - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link
Whats the maximum Refresh Rate? that's like the first question i'd have after finding out it's 4k and IPSmadwolfa - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
60 Hzjasonelmore - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
ah ok.. yeah nothing new then.. why they didnt use DP 1.3 is beyond me.. It's been out forever.. 1.4 just got released today.Landiepete - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
I absolutely positively hate these 16/9 affairs, at any res. Doubly so for anything remotely productive.Anato - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
M2, before I got 32" 2560x1440. Now I don't mind "lost" 160pixel at height.xthetenth - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
Yeah, 21:9 is such a big step up for productive tasks once you get the screen tall enough. 16:9 is just a tiny bit too narrow to give a good experience with two adjacent windows. By the time you get to 1400 pixels and above, the height doesn't feel nearly constraining enough of individual windows contents to be worth giving up room for more windows side by side.xchaotic - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
Will this do 120Hz at 1080p?surfnaround - Thursday, March 3, 2016 - link
The NEC PA322UHD-bk does. But it is 3000, for professional editting, and has a response time of about 24FPS...an awesome monitor for "anything" but gaming IMO.
BTW, 4K gaming is nice, but it requires a GTX980 SLI (1405/7600) 4790K setup for GTAV (VH detail) and even then you hit about 45FPS in some sections, and minor Frame "bumps"...
So you end up wondering if FPS at 90 ~ 120 Hz (2560x1440) is better than 45~ 60 4k.
(I have both the acer xh270hu, and the 4k xb280hk )
IPityTheFowl - Thursday, March 3, 2016 - link
60hz at 4k? C-C-C-Combo Breaker! Too bad, it was so close to being my next monitor.madskills42001 - Sunday, March 6, 2016 - link
Contrast is the main determiner of resolution. Tom's Hardware has posted a review showing that the 35" non-IPS Acer predator is the best gaming image quality they've seen on any monitor other than OLED. To understand why contrast is more important than color or viewing angle, learn about optical transfer function, the main determiner of resolution. Also, humans are bad at telling colors apart.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_transfer_fun...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/acer-predator-...
Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Waaaaaayyyy too much money for a "60Hz only" 4K IPS panel. The same non G-Sync variant of this monitor is the Acer B326HK and it costs $600 used off of Amazon. I would be willing to pay $1200+ easily if the XB321HK had a 120Hz capable panel utilizing a DP 1.3 port. 120Hz 4K panels will be out later this fall/winter, so I'm just going to be patient and wait thank you very much ;-)