Some exciting VR news coming out of Siggraph this year!

StarVR announced a very impressive new head-mounted display (HMD) named StarVR One, a nod to the film and novel Ready Player One, presumably.

The specs are far superior to first-gen headsets like the Oculus Rift and Vive:

• 210 degrees horizontal FOV, (130 vertical), vs 110 for Rift / Vive / Vive Pro.
• Two OLED panels of 1830×1464 pixels each (3660 x 1464 total) offering 16 pixels-per-degree (ppd)! The Rift and Vive offer 11 ppd at 110 degrees FOV only, so this is a massive improvement in immersion. Full RGB pixel layout (as opposed to pentile). No mention of low-persistence.
• 90 Hz (same as Rift and Vive, but better than prior StarVR offerings limited to 60 Hz)
• Tobii Eye-tracking, with foveated rendering, allowing higher FPS. Also includes auto-IPD adjustments.
• SteamVR 2.0 tracking (as opposed to PhaseSpace in prior commercial models)
• 450 grams (lighter than the Oculus Rift and Vive Pro at 470g and much lighter than the Vive at 550g), with counterweight on the back of the head for balance.
• Corded with no wireless add-on mentioned, unlike Vive Pro. Although third parties could deliver this (e.g. TPCast).
• No price mentioned yet (it won’t be cheap, though), with availability at some point in 2018.

Some comments: I’ve used the StarVR commercial model in a game production setting, and the PhaseSpace tracking was a royal pain to set up. One of the most vexing experiences in my life, actually. I had to use a pin to poke around inside the HMD to get the headset’s LEDs to sync with the server. Yes, it needed a Linux server just for tracking, and a bunch of expensive power-over-ethernet (POE) cameras.

I’m glad they decided to use SteamVR 2.0 because honestly PhaseSpace is not consumer-friendly, at all. I would have preferred a fully-wireless HMD with inside-out tracking, but this headset ticks off nearly all the boxes so I can’t complain too much. This represents massive progress, especially the eye tracking which opens up foveated rendering and all kinds of fun gameplay possibilities too.

When I first tried a 210-degree field-of-view HMD, it was like stepping into another world and gave me goosebumps immediately. Quite superior to the effect offered by the Rift and Vive and adds to the immersion factor considerably. To avoid motion sickness some serious horizontal FOV narrowing or other smarter algorithms will be needed, for games in which the camera accelerates on its own (including rotation).

I hope a third party (TPCast?) comes out with a viable fully wireless solution that works for any headset, because to me, room-scale VR without it makes me feel like I’m on a leash and defeats the purpose of being able to move around freely. It can be dangerous, even. Another issue is the fact that it’s got two video connectors, which is unnecessary with HDMI 2.0 or DP 1.2 – 1.4 for this level of pixel clock (18gbps). This is presumably to keep costs down or potentially for easier SLI compatibility. Unfortunately this means sacrificing one extra port on your graphics card and possibly using DP -> HDMI adapters, which could limit the number of monitors you can plug in to your machine.

For more info, visit www.starvr.com

At this week’s Gamescom conference, AOC announced two new affordable 2560 x 1440 (QHD) curved LCD monitors in their new AGON 3 lineup, in both FreeSync 2 and G-SYNC flavours.

First up, the AG273QCX is a 144hz 27-inch VA panel with FreeSync 2, HDR, and is specced at 4ms GtG with 1ms MPRT via a strobed backlight. It reaches 90% of DCI P3 gamut and 400 nits of peak brightness.

FreeSync 2 enables games to apply tone mapping only once to the panel’s native specs instead of applying it inside the panel a second time, however is an AMD-only feature.

Second is the G-SYNC variant, the AG273QCG, which offers a TN panel and a slightly higher max refresh rate of 165hz, with 1ms GtG and 400 nits peak white, with otherwise similar specs to the FreeSync 2 model.

Common features include AOC Game Color to dial in saturation and shadow detail, AOC Dial Point  which offers an FPS-shooter style cursor, as well as a Flicker-Free back light and a Blue Light mode for reduced eye strain and ergonomics.

These monitors will be available in November and December 2018, for the G-SYNC and FreeSync 2 models, respectively.

In news that should make anyone who hasn’t yet made the jump to 4K bow their heads in shame, AOU has announced a new curved 85-inch TV that not only offers 8K resolution, but a 120hz refresh rate! Quantum dots for wide colour gamut, 1200 nits peak luminance for good HDR10 reproduction, and an improved borderless panel.

We should probably assume that operating at 8K 120hz implies they’re using HDMI 2.1 inputs using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling with DSC compression. Hopefully these panels will have have Freesync 2 and DisplayHDR support too. Let’s hope it has low input lag for gamers. No news on price or affordability.

We shudder to think of rendering a game at that resolution, but VR headsets are starting to push those kinds of pixel counts so it’s good to start saving up pennies for those dual RTX 2080 Tis now.

Hot on the heels of LG’s 8K 88-inch OLED announcement, Samsung is jumping into the 8K TV game and has announced their new Q900R QLED TVs will available late September 2018 in 65-inch, 75-inch, 82-inch and 85-inch versions.

Why upgrade to 8K so soon, you ask, when there is basically no content for it, aside from PC games?

Well, thanks to 8K AI upscaling, if you feed these TVs quality 4K or even 1080p content, you will get a much sharper picture right away, all the time. Hurrah! The future is here, folks, machine learning is changing the TV industry and accelerating progress. So, the chicken vs egg conundrum of 8K displays versus content has been answered: the chicken came first!

Plus…one of the input ports will be HDMI 2.1!

Although, according to some reports, it seems to only be a variant capable of 8K at 30hz, so definitely not the full 48 gbps. I expect raw bandwidth is probably at most 20 gbps or even the HDMI 2.0a’s current 18 gbps, for hardware compatibility, but with DSC 3X compression which could allow native 4:4:4, 4K 120hz in HDR10+, at least. 8K30 being the same number of pixels per second as 4K120, 120hz is a distinct possibility.

No news about other HDMI 2.1 features like variable refresh rates (VRR) aka Freesync 2, but input lag is reported at a low 15ms which is very low for a TV set! This is probably fine for all but the most competitive pro gamers.

Another interesting spec here is the capability to reach 4000 nits, just shy of half HDR10+ and Dolby Vision’s maximum specification of 10,000 nits. We’re getting there. 4000 nits also conveniently matches the spec of Dolby Pulsar’s HDR mastering monitor which many HDR movies were mastered with, so there’s good reason to be confident in being able take advantage of these extra nits right away for a more punchy image, especially combined with dynamic HDR10+.

Note: For those unfamiliar with HDR, high nits really make HDR look better. Typically, 4000 nits is too high for an overall full bright screen. However, it allows tiny bright highlights (e.g. sun glints off a shiny car, or neon lights in a dark city scene) to really pop-out amazingly in an eye-pleasing way. Most HDR displays & content keep average brightness balanced in an eye-pleasing way.

Stay tuned for reviews as these TVs roll out. It’s certainly an exciting time to be a consumer, and if anything, 8K should help reduce the price of 4K TVs even further.

Innolux has announced the development of a prototype 100-inch, 16K TV — that is, 15360 x 8640 pixels,  that’s sure to make home theater projector manufacturers uneasy in the big screen market.

If such a TV comes out in the next year or two at a reasonable price, some analysts have predicted it could hasten the collapse of the home projector market, as TVs deliver much better contrast, lumens, gamut, and allow day-time viewing.

Projectors struggle in such conditions, especially with regards to HDR performance, which requires approximately 13,000 lumens in order to deliver 1000 nits at 120-inches, which is a typical projector screen size. Any TV would completely trounce a projector at the same size, in terms of image quality, even if it were LCD-based. The future of displays are looking bright indeed! And extremely sharp too.

For big-screen gamers who enjoy the occasional 3D game or movie, it’s been a long wait for very low input lag combined with new image quality features such as HDMI 2.0, 1080p 120 Hz and HDR support.

Two models just announced, the ACER G550 and the Optoma HD27HDR models offer features that should excite many out there. They’re both based on TI’s much older 0.65 inch DC3 1080p DMD, which offers around 2000:1 native contrast ratio which is three times better than the more recent 0.47 inch which tops out at around 700:1 but which runs at 240 Hz internally to show simulated 4K via shifting. Other simulated 4K projectors tend to also have at best 50ms input lag which is disappointing, historically. Until these new projectors…

Instead of doing 4K, the older DC3 chip can be used to achieve ultra-low lag. This, for competitive gamers, is a smart tradeoff, since contrast and low-lag matters more than simulated 4K for competition gameplay. The older chip can still achieve low input lag, 10-bit colour (for HDR10 decoding), and 120 Hz quite easily.

Ultra-Low 8.3ms Lag in a Gaming Projector!

First off, as reported by the excellent french projector blog, “Passion Home Cinema“, the new Acer G550 is a 2200 lumen, 1080p-based 3D projector that supports native 120hz input, and has an amazingly low (for a projector) 8.3ms input lag!

It’s NVidia 3D certified for 3D gaming, which is a big deal for compatibility across many titles.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to support HDR10 decoding nor UHD / 4K downscaling.

Secondly, the new Optoma HD26HDR has a very decent 16ms input lag, 3D support (both DLP Link and IR-based, as the Acer above) but no native 1080p 120hz support, sadly. It is already available to pre-order for $650 USD.

This should deliver solid 60 Hz HDR10 big screen gaming, though since it also uses the older Texas Instruments DC3 chip and has a whopping 3400 lumens to spare, so its HDR quality should be much better than the 4K-shifting DLPs. HDR performance is dependent on the combination of native contrast and lumens, and this is a terrific spec for such a low price, even if it does lack even simulated 4K.

It might be possible for Optoma to add support for 120 Hz via a firmware update at a later date.

Within the next year, I expect to see models using a combination of the features from the above two projectors, plus laser light sources for faster dynamic dimming and wide colour gamut support, which should get us closer towards gaming nirvana.

Lacking 4K is not as big a deal, compared to 8 or 16ms input lag and 120 Hz support, so right now, the Acer G550 seems to be the best and lowest-lag gaming projector available for fast twitch games, and the Optoma if you are keen on playing console or PC games at 60 Hz while in HDR. HDR would at least give you a good image quality boost even on an older video card, and you can then turn on all the eye candy and antialiasing available.

HDR is really a big deal for realism and both PS4 Pro and Xbox One X should be able to run games 1080p at 60 Hz in HDR easily, foregoing 4K for a higher framerate which, to some, is a good tradeoff.

In the ideal world, if they would only combine these two projectors’ specs and give us 1080p 120 Hz with HDR10+ and 8.33ms, using 2000:1 native contrast plus 3400 lumens to do HDR justice. The coming year should be exciting for projector fans, especially with native 4K units coming out (which are very expensive). That said, if you are on a budget, you can’t go wrong by considering either of these worthy gaming projectors. 1080p is still quite awesome even on a projector, and either 120 Hz or HDR10 bring notable image improvements. It’s just too bad they aren’t available at the same time. Yet.

That said, finally some progress is being made in low-lag gaming projectors!

In good news for fans of the cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, LG just added two fresh monitors to its gaming lineup, a couple 34-inch IPS models, the 34GK950F-B (Freesync 2) capable of 144 Hz refresh rate at 3440 x 1440, and the 34GK950G-B (G-Sync) has a slightly lower 120 Hz max refresh rate.

The G-Sync 34GK950G-B offers a 4ms GtG response time, while the Freesync variant has a slightly higher 5ms, while both have 400 nits of peak brightness and achieve DisplayHDR 400 VESA certification, with a typical IPS contrast ratio of 1000:1 and 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour space, which will look great when watching UHD Blu-Rays or Netflix HDR content.

Having more horizontal screen real-estate is convenient for general Windows desktop use, but even better is being able to watch CinemaScope movies without annoying black bars, and the extra field-of-view (FOV) for PC games certainly offers a competitive advantage.

When sitting right in front of a curved screen, you’re right in the middle of the action, plus there are no messy borders that block your view, unlike with multi-monitor configurations.

For those of you considering upgrading from your current 16:9 displays, this handy site is useful for comparing the image sizes offered by various 16:9 vs 21:9 monitors.

Its shows how a 34-inch diagonal,  3440 x 1440 21:9 monitor has the same height and PPI as a 27-inch, 16:9 1440p monitor, but with 33% more horizontal FOV and desktop real-estate.

Dynamic Action Sync (DAS) that bypasses any superfluous processing and keeps input lag to minimal levels, while black frame insertion modes reduce motion blur to 1ms. 

Rounding out the gamer-centric nature of these beasts, Crosshair offers, as expected, a hardware crosshair, and Black Stabilizer boosts low black detail so you’ll see those creepy crawlies in dark games like Doom. RGB LEDs offers lighting for those of you who need the utmost in bling.

Exact input lag figures aren’t available, nor prices yet, but availability is supposed to be “soon”. Stay tuned!

2018 is turning out to be a great year to be a gamer on a budget, or just a bargain-hunter who can’t pass up a good deal on a snazzy new Freesync display.

AOC’s new curved G1 series offers AMD Freesync variable refresh rates in the 30-144 Hz range via three 1080p models: C24G1, C27G1, C32G1, at 24 – 31.5 inches and costing a meager $230, $280, and $300 USD, respectively. Another higher priced model is also 31.5 inches, the CQ32G1, but increases the resolution to 2560×1440 with a  still-affordable $400 price tag.

All offer a snappy 1ms of response time, sRGB gamut, and employ VA panels which delivers a punchy 3000:1 contrast ratio, quite an improvement over typical IPS panels at 1000:1 while avoiding IPS glow. The curved displays also offset the off-angle limitations of VA nicely. Historically, that said, latency of VA panels have been a common question by Blur Busters readers — and we are monitoring for improvements in that department.

Presumably the 1440p CQ32G1 will be the only one requiring HDMI 2.0 inputs and/or DisplayPort 1.3 / 1.4 in order to handle the higher pixel count.

Also note that Freesync can function over DisplayPort or HDMI at this point, including quite possibly 120 Hz modes at 1080p or 1440p from an Xbox One X. Console support is to yet be confirmed.

AOC also includes Flicker-Free technology and Low Frame Rate Compensation (LFC), while skipping on speakers in favour of a 3.5mm headphone jack. The 27-inch model is available online now, with the rest out by the end of 2018.

Philips has gone and jumped into the new 32:9 monitor bandwagon, offering us two new ultra-ultra-wide 49-inch monitors. How about that?

But why, you ask? Well, 32:9 is simpler and cleaner-looking than buying two 16:9 monitors, for work-related scenarios, enabling a bezel-free layout while also saving gamers the expense of a triple-monitor configuration.

Most of the time, say, in an FPS or a racing game, you’re staring to the front anyway. And we care most about games, right? Of course.

First up is the 492P8, with 3840 x 1080 while the 499P9H offers DQHD resolution, which stands for Dual Quad HD, or 5120 x 1440.

These both have VA panels so deliver perhaps 3000:1 – 5000:1 contrast ratio (wait for reviews to find out exact measurements, but a TV-sized panel is more likely to have 5000:1 than not). HDR support isn’t mentioned by SDR quality should be quite decent with these contrast ratios and the steep 1800R curve to avoid off-axis colour shift.

Rounding out the business-centric nature of both of these initial offerings are USB Type-C ports, a pop-up webcam, and a GbE connector.

More gamer-friendly revisions offering AMD FreeSync are also in the works apparently, so stay tuned. Not much is known at this point whether they will support 120 Hz+ officially. However, they are using HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2 which will permit 120 Hz at least on the 492P8.

No official prices are listed yet but availability is expected in early 2019.

We’re really enjoying some nice display options in 2018 in the sub $500 range, with LG’s newest model, the 32UK550, offering us 31.5 inches of 4K, HDR goodness.

While its refresh rate is limited to 60 Hz, it has 40-60 Hz, worth of FreeSync range which is still useful at 4K, and HDR10 with 95% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, a 3000:1 contrast VA panel, and 4 ms GtG response. All of which are terrific specs at this price.

LG’s now-standard features include low input lag modes, Super Resolution+ upscaling tech and Black Stabilizer to boost visibility in dark scenes.

This monitor is flat rather than curved, which makes sense given its 16:9 aspect ratio, plus 3840 x 2160 resolution is a good match for 32 inch monitors, and it has both DisplayPort 1.2 and two HDCP 2.2-compatible HDMI 2.0 inputs.

The 32UK550 should be available as of mid-October in Japan and coming to the rest of the world soon after. Happy times are here for budget-conscious casual gamers.

A couple years back, Razer released its Razer Phone, the world’s first mobile sporting a 120hz display which, despite its success in the market, had a limited release and was difficult to find.

Today they’re at it again with its successor, the Android-based Razer Phone 2, which is now available for pre-order already.

This bad boy’s got a 5.72-inch, 1440p display that features a 120 Hz “Ultramotion” IGZO LCD panel capable of reaching 645 nits of HDR10 brightness and 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour space, plus Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) in the 40 Hz-120 Hz range. Talk about spoiling gamers! Finally, we’re free of the 60hz curse.

The Razer Phone 2 has a snappy Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 8GB of RAM and  64GB of internal data storage, plus MicroSD expansion and the latest Gorilla Glass 5 which should offer terrific scratch-proofing. An IP67 water resistance rating rounds up the main specs, providing a welcome durability boost to protect your investment from the elements. Should survive submersion up to 1 meter.

Obviously, no gamer-focused device would be complete without RGB Lighting, and here Razer Chroma has got you covered. It’s configured via an app and deliver a palette of 16.8 million custom colours of your choice.

For picture taking or video recording, we get two cameras and a choice between 4K 60 and 1080p 60 / 120 frames per second (FPS), through either its 12-megapixel Sony f/1.75 main camera or a 12MP f/2.6 telephoto camera.

Razer also apparently put a lot of development effort to catch up with its competitors with updated panorama stitching software and taking timed pictures.

Another included convenience feature is Qi Wireless Charging and USB-C QuickCharge 4.0 to top up its 4000 mAh battery faster so you can keep gaming for longer sessions.

It’s priced at $799 USD and is available to pre-order from Razer.com now.

As reported here at Blur Busters earlier this year, Asus has been preparing to launch their newest 4K, 144hz powerhouse of a gaming display, the ROG Swift PG27U, also known in North America the PG27UQ.

Well, it’s finally here! And earning terrific reviews over at the trusty Tom’s Hardware Guide. Why is it so awesome? Quick recap:

• 27-inch, 3840 x 2160 resolution, up to 144 Hz refresh rate with G-SYNC.
• 1000-nit HDR10 capability with 90% DCI P3 gamut coverage via Quantum Dots. Gotta have ’em!
• Terrific contrast and viewing angles, thanks to IPS + FALD (384 zones).
• HDMI 2.0 input (for consoles or UHD Bluray players, limited to 60 Hz) as well as DisplayPort 1.4 for 144 Hz*.
• Flicker-free backlight, with ASUS Eye Care, a blue light reduction mode for ergonomics.
• Retail price is roughly 2K USD. Ouch! Better start saving.
• Might as well get an RTX 2080 Ti to power it, you’ll need one to pump these kinds of pixel clocks.

*DisplayPort 1.4 is limited to 98 Hz (without DSC) in 10-bit colour at the full 4:4:4 chroma resolution, which is what one should use for general Windows desktop, but for full-screen games it’s perfectly fine to drop to 4:2:2 and go all the way to 144 Hz. For day-to-day desktop use, 98 Hz is plenty, or one can drop color depth to 8-bit.

The ASUS ROG PG27UQ is now available on Amazon.

In the past, we have written about 120Hz refresh rate support in iPads.

Apple’s new 2018 iPad Pros have arrived, and are powerhouses of graphical process and elegance:

Starting by using high resolution Liquid Retina displays, offering 2388 x 1668 resolution for the 11-inch variant, and 2732 x 2048 for 12.9-inch model, respectively, Apple cut the home button in favour of using Face ID, for unlocking the tablet at a glance, thereby allowing a narrower bezel and resulting in a slicker, streamlined design.

The panels themselves employ Pro Motion variable refresh rate (VRR) technology, with range of 24 to 120 hz, and capable of HDR10 decoding with a DCI-P3 colour space.

The operating system has been updated from IOS 10 to version 12.1, and Apple swapped in an improved processor: the A12X system of chip (SoC) has an 8-core CPU and a 7-core GPU enabling 30% better performance than last year’s iPads.

This is comparable to an Xbox One S, but in a portable form-factor. They also included the Neural Engine machine learning tech which opens up many interesting app features going forward.

Apple also replaced the Lighting port with a standard USB-C port that allows for easier connectivity to monitors and other external devices, and lets you to charge your iPhone with it.

No 3.5mm headphone outputs are to be found, but a dongle can be purchased for under ten dollars, and most people use wireless headsets these days anyway.

The Apple Pencil is no longer charged via Lightning Port, either, but through wireless charging.

In terms of cameras, this year’s version uses new sensors but are otherwise similar to 2017’s front and rear facing setup. It sadly lacks the new RGB-D (depth) sensors available on the new iPhone Xs.

Prices for the 11″ version vary between $799 USD for 64gb and $1549 1TB of storage, while the 12.9″ version starts at $999 going up to $1749.

These new iPads are available for purchase as of Nov. 7th, 2018, on apple.com.

Dell’s got gamers on a budget in mind with a pair of affordable Freesync monitors: the S2419HGF and S2719DGF.

The S2419HGF is a 24-inch 1080p unit with 40-144 Hz VRR range, while the S2719DGF is a 27-inch 1440p QHD display able to go slightly faster at 155 Hz when overclocked. Both have 1ms GTG response time, flicker-free LED backlights for ergonomics, sRGB colour space, and are standard dynamic range (SDR) via 8-bit TN panels.

Dell provides a standard VESA mount, 90 degree rotation mode, and two HDMI inputs — one HDMI 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0 / HDCP 2.2, so you can run an Xbox One at 120 Hz on them, presumably — as well as the usual DP 1.2 port which is more than enough to handle these resolution and refresh rates.

The TN panels used here are apparently quite good, even comparable to IPS, which, combined with the fact that the 27-inch model is reasonably priced, makes it a good value.

Tom’s

Today, the monitor lists have been updated for Black Friday 2018:

• List of G-SYNC Monitors — Updated
• List of FreeSync Monitors — Updated

For those bargain-hunting for a brand new gaming monitor — today begins the lucky Holiday shopping season. Feel free to share any incredible finds via the Blur Busters Forums!

Blur Busters readers! Iiyama has just released its first 27-inch, 144 Hz 1440p (WQHD) gamer display under their G-Master Silver Crow branding, named the GB2760QSU.

Despite its name, it’s indeed a FreeSync display, with a VRR range of 50 – 144 Hz. It uses a TN panel with 1000:1 contrast ratio, and at that size offers 109 PPI. It is SDR-focused and uses 6-bit+FRC TN panel. Its current price hovers around 500$ USD on Amazon.

It features an adjustable stand capable of vertical orientation, VESA wall mounting, and DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI and DVI-D for older systems, as well as USB 3.0 bug and built-in stereo speakers (2W) plus headphone jacks.

Although we expect most gamers will be using headphones or a separate sound system it can still be nice to view the occasional YouTube clip in a pinch, while keeping a clean desk.

Wrapping up its feature list are special black level adjustment  (for dark games to keep things clear), and various modes like FPS and strategy which can be helpful.

Good news for HDR fans, Asus has added a revision to its ROG monitor line, the new XG32VQR.

It’s a 32-inch WQHD (2560 x 1440) curved display, with a 144 Hz refresh rate, HDR10 support via DisplayHDR 400 specification, and DCI-P3 gamut coverage of 94%. It has two HDMI 2.0 inputs and one DisplayPort 1.2 input, and a headphone jack.

Its 1800R curve should help mitigate any off-angle viewing issues due to its VA panel, which should offer decent (3000:1 or more) native contrast that helps with HDR rendition even without FALD.

It’s also Freesync 2 capable, for better tone mapping (in-game only instead of in-game and in-display) and lower latency. Its VRR range, release date and final retail price is unknown as of yet.

It’s expected to be slightly more expensive than the older non-HDR version, the XG32VQ, costing around $630 USD on Amazon right now.

On top of the usual gamer-centric tone mapping modes that let you tweak the HDR response curves, there’s a low-light compensation filter called “Shadow Boost” that improves near-black detail, low-blue-light modes, and a flicker-free backlight (DC-based, presumably, or very high frequency PWM) to reduce eyestrain.

As a high-end gamer, it’s always fun buying the latest and greatest graphics card, if you have the itch to do so — and finished saving up for one!

NVIDIA recently released their Turing cards, with the moniker RTX.

Well, move over, the RTX Titan is here!

It’s got a whopping 24 GB of VRAM and that’s gonna cost you big time — $2,499! This is clearly not a casual-gamer card.

It’s more suitable to machine learning research or offline rendering tasks, with similar specs to the professional Quadro RTX 6000 and 8000 cards, but is a fraction of the Quadro 6000’s price at $6,300 USD.

Also important for some is the fact that it only takes two slots, meaning you can double down with two cards to SLI it without wasting your other PCI Express slots. Benefiting from multiple cards in machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and Tensorflow is also not an out of the box affair, so buyer beware.

In fact, I almost regret purchasing my 2.75-slot Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti, and wish I had known the RTX Titan would be available so soon, but we’ll see if SLI ever takes off for gaming.

I think SLI makes perfect sense for automatic stereo VR, for example, especially if it can be enabled on any game via a driver setting without any code changes necessary. We’ll see if this rumoured feature ever materializes.

Despite some mixed feedback relating to their cost / performance benefits compared to Pascal, those of us who crave the latest eye candy are drooling over Turing and RTX, due to the benefits of ray tracing easily visible in supporting games like Battlefield.

In addition to that, its machine-learning based anti-aliasing, DLSS, brings significant performance and visual quality improvements over Pascal, around 40-60 % on top of the base performance gains, depending on the game of course.

This GPU also supports G-SYNC, in addition to other Supported NVIDIA GPUs for G-SYNC. And this is a perfect GPU to drive a 4K 144 Hz G-SYNC HDR monitor as well!

There are surely going to be games which can use more than the 11GB of VRAM that the RTX 2080 Tis can muster, via high-res graphics packs, especially useful for higher res VR headsets and large open world games, but that is rather niche. Let’s let games take full advantage of 11GB on the 2080 Tis first.

But if you want the best of the best, in a two-slot card, RTX Titan makes a lot more sense than Quadro, considering it’s less than half the price of the Quadro 6000 and offers the same amount of VRAM and CUDA cores.

Fantastic news for budget shoppers this Christmas — Monoprice has a sale on their new 240Hz monitor at under a dollar per Hertz at a mere 224 greenbacks.

This price level of less than $1/Hz is unheard of in the gaming monitor industry. The Monoprice monitor uses an AUO Optronics FreeSync compatible panel, and is AMD FreeSync certified. Initial favorable user reviews appear to show that this is a real good deal.

The Monoprice MP 25″ Zero-G Gaming Monitor features:

• 240 Hz refresh rate
• AMD FreeSync
• 1ms GtG response time
• 25 inch 1920×1080 panel, 1ms GtG

If that wasn’t enough, use coupon code AMAZON10 at checkout via Monoprice using AmazonPay, and this cheap 240 Hz monitor price falls to $214.95!

Earlier in the year, we shared some exciting news about Japan-OLED (JOLED) starting production on new PC monitors using OLED technology.

Consumers have been used to having gorgeous OLED black levels in their smartphones and high-end TVs for years now, but PC monitors using OLED instead of LCD has been slow-coming, perhaps due to fears of burn-in or simply high cost. It’s quite possible those fears are over-blown and avoidable (through anti-burn-in tech like pixel-orbiting), but a still a concern for some.

The most interesting option is the 22-inch 1080p eSports OLED gaming monitor. It is branded “Burning Core” after the eSports gaming crew. Reportedly, this will be a high-Hz OLED of 120Hz or more. No mention is made of low-persistence modes but it’s a distinct possibility.

Also interesting is a 27-inch 4K version, although common opinion holds that 4K resolution desktop monitors are ideally 32-inches.

The first commercial monitor using these new OLED panels is the PQ22UC 4K 22-inch monitor by Asus, supposedly “coming soon”.

There are several other very high PPI options here, including 12-inch 1080p displays meant for installation in cars or perhaps tablets.

Full, 100% DCI P3 gamut coverage and terrific HDR presentation is of course expected, something LCDs struggle with due to their low native contrast, which can be offset by the use of full-array local dimming (FALD) but that tends to add to the price significantly.

Thanks to oled-info.com for the news, with a full gallery of upcoming OLED displays. And to mello/Patty in the Blur Busters Forums for bringing this up!