Asus 540Hz HD gaming monitor is just silly

Date:
Mon, 16 Jan 2023 17:45:49 +0000

Description:
Asus' ROG Swift Pro PG248QP gaming monitor may be acapable of 540HZ, but who can realistically put it to good use?

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CES one of the worlds biggest annual tech conferences has been home to numerous silly gadgets over the years. Weve seen finger-nibbling robots , ovens that can live stream your cooking, and even an RGB face mask .

But today I want to call your attention to a daft device from CES 2023 , an appliance you might not have realized is even that ridiculous: the Asus ROG Swift Pro PG248QP; its a gaming monitor that boasts an absurdly high max refresh rate of 540Hz.

On the surface, Asus new monitor doesnt seem silly. Having a high refresh
rate is a fantastic feature if a brand wants its display to be ranked on our best gaming monitor list its one of the main factors well judge its tech on.

Thats because boosting your gaming setups refresh rate can give you the edge, especially in multiplayer matches. Thanks to your smoother gameplay and lower input lag youre able to more easily follow your opponents actions and react
to the onscreen information better than if you were using a lower-specced system.

But you dont just need a fast-paced monitor, you also need a gaming setup
that can take advantage of your screens high refresh rates by running games
at a high end. And unless you want your graphics to look like ugly unrecognizable blobs of pixels, you almost certainly dont have a rig that can achieve 540 frames per second (fps) in your favorite games. Who needs a monitor this good?

If youre exclusively a console gamer, you shouldnt even be looking in this monitors general direction, let alone thinking about buying it. The PS5 and Xbox series X top out at 120Hz, a very long way off the 540Hz maximum offered by the Asus ROG Swift Pro PG248QP.

Instead, this display is aimed at PC gamers, but for a lot of you, Asus
latest screen is still not a good fit. Even the Maingear Turbo can't keep up with Asus' speedy monitor. (Image credit: Future)

Lets look at the number one pick in our best gaming laptop guide, the Asus
ROG Zephyrus G15 . It packs an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU, an Nvidia RTX 3070
GPU, and 16GB RAM which is an above-average setup (based on Steam user data
). In our tests for Total War: Three Kingdoms and Metro: Exodus both running with HD resolution and low-quality graphics the laptop was only able to achieve 164 fps and 125 fps respectively.

As for our pick for the best gaming PC that weve tested, the Maingear Turbo , the situation is better but still not good enough. The model we were sent
used an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM to achieve a max of 320 fps in Total War: Warhammer III and 221 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 (both at HD with low-quality graphics settings). Only 60% of what the Swift Pro PG248QP monitor can achieve.

So what if we were to swap in an Nvidia RTX 4090 ? In our tests, we found
that Nvidias best (and most expensive) graphics card boasted frame rates around 55% higher than an RTX 3080Ti. Factoring this into the Maingear Turbos performance youd be looking at grand total of 498 fps for Total War:
Warhammer III and 344 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 still shy of the 540 target. If you don't have an RTX4090, 540fps is a tough target to hit (Image credit: Future)

With the right expertise (and game choice) you can likely push this setup and other similarly powerful PCs over the line. But most of us arent sporting an RTX 4090 - heck, a lot of us dont even have a 3090 (or a 3080 for that matter).

Asus latest monitor is certainly impressive, but based on the rest of the PC space its an absurd item that practically no one has a use for. If you want
to pick it up when it goes on sale so you can say you have the worlds fastest gaming monitor then power to you, but Im telling you now: its probably a
waste of your money.

Those of your that are looking for a more sensible place to start might want to check out our best gaming monitor buying guide and should keep an eye out for monitors that better match the performance that your PC can realistically achieve.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/asus-540hz-hd-gaming-monitor-is-just-silly


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