Many users of the new 4K to 144 Hz gaming monitors are reporting serious problems in the image quality that their panels represent when they pass their vertical refresh rate, from the 120 Hz they support as standard, to the 144 Hz they announce. the brands. The final reason for this failure is in the post processed.
It is undeniable that the arrival on the market of the 4K gaming monitors at 144 Hz with NVIDIA G-Sync technology had raised many expectations among users who wanted to incorporate this technology to their computers. Moreover, when it was precisely NVIDIA that was behind the development of this technology, as it was able to demonstrate six months ago during the development of the last CES Las Vegas 2018. Therefore, the one that more and the least, expected that the implementation of it It was almost perfect.
However, reality is throwing us back to many users when considering the purchase of one of these monitors. First, because its price is disproportionately high for the screen size on which it is offered (only 27 inches). Then, the panels that are used only give 120 Hz of vertical refresh in a native way, with which the 144 Hz must be achieved by manually overclocking the panel. And, now, the problems of image quality on screen that monitors are showing when they exceed 120 Hz.
The image quality problem of the 4K to 144 Hz gaming monitors is that the DisplayPort 1.4 connector that they mount, both the graphics cards and the monitors themselves, is only capable of providing a bandwidth of 26 Gbits / s, which is Exactly what the 4K resolution needs when it has a refresh rate of 120 Hz. But, in order to reach the 144 Hz, the manufacturers have had to implement the subsampling (YCbCr) which, in the case of these monitors, transmits the of the 4K in gray scale, but the information of the color transit it to resolution 1920 x 2160.
The problem is that the possible solutions to alleviate this problem are realistic. It could use the HDMI 2.1, but still no monitor that use, because its specification was completed last December. On the other hand, you could also use the DSC (Display Stream Compression) with the DisplayPort as compression scheme for the image… if it were not because there are not too many monitors today that support it.
At the moment, the only solution for users of these monitors is not to raise the refresh rate above 120 Hz. Let’s say that, in the end, the users of these monitors will have paid, at the price of gold, for a feature that, if they want to have a good image quality on the screen, they will be forced to deactivate.
Sincerely, we think that the releases by Acer and Asus of these monitors have been too hasty for both brands.