Today we are happy to announce our new monitor partner, AOC. The monitor is one of the most important tools in the arsenal of every gamer, and it has become a subject of increasing scrutiny as esports has grown over the years. I remember the good old days of huge, hulking CRTs and how the gaming industry transitioned to LCDs. The refresh rate is an important factor in both your game responsiveness and your own performance, and LCD refresh rates were fixed at 60 Hz for a long time, which for pro players was really insufficient. Some players even preferred CRTs over LCDs.
In recent years however, high refresh rate gaming monitors have become available, and at 144 Hz, the difference between the CRT and LCD response time is all but gone. 144 Hz has become the gold standard for gaming LCDs—every major tournament is played at this refresh rate and any professional player must have a 144 Hz monitor. The superior response time offered by 144 Hz monitors helps showcase the true skill of players when they are not being held back by technical limits.
Fortunately, tournaments have been upgrading their hardware in order to support the best possible environment for competition. Our players need to be practicing with up-to-date equipment, and we have always prioritized that. For this reason, we conducted a comprehensive review of our potential monitor partner. From the first conversations, both sides were on the same page that a quality monitor is a crucial part of any gaming setup. AOC emphasized that this standard of quality was just as important to them as it was for us. We were sent monitors to test and set some of them up in our bootcamp apartment, and they were tested by our CS:GO team as they prepared for the Major in Cologne.
As CS:GO is the most reaction intense esport out of them all, we felt this would be a great test. Needless to say, AOC's monitors passed with flying colors. Liquid and AOC both value player performance and conditions, and we are proud to add a partner who sees eye to eye with us regarding esports.
- Victor "Nazgul" Goossens
"I had the opportunity to play on an AOC monitor during the bootcamp. It felt really good, and during a scrim on de_train where I played well, I really ran it through its paces. You can often tell the difference between monitors when playing CS:GO, and I was really pleased with how AOC's monitor performed. The monitor's colors were excellent, and it felt really precise. I can't play on anything but 144 Hz monitors after using them because of the responsiveness and lack of input lag. I am looking forward to using AOC's monitors from now on."
On September 17 2016 04:30 FO-nTTaX wrote: most PC monitors are Melee friendly, it's just TVs that add delay. A 144hz certainly doesn't hurt though
I was once told that they play on CRT becuase the game was programmed for 72hz and if you modern display with 60 or 100 hz it doesn't map exactly and you can have at time crucial one frame delay which for some pros is an issue.
I'd love to look into one of those monitors (I have a 1440p setup right now, but it's not a gaming monitor and I've been feeling the response time difference while playing Killer Instinct), but I can't find where the fuck I'm supposed to buy it or even see the price. Their website sucks as a store
I mean I clicked "where to buy" and it takes me to their euro site, which only has an Image Gallery, Driver Downloads, and Productsheet. No price point, no cart, no nothing.
EDIT: Found it on Amazon. Reasonable price point, will consider a purchase once I'm again gainfully employed.
what's the diff between G-sync and Free-sync, there is like $100 difference
G-sync works only with Nvidia graphics cards. Freesync is an open standard which could work with any GPU which implements it, but only works with AMD currently (but Intel plan to implement it).
Gsync is more expensive because it makes use of additional hardware in the monitor, while Freesync relies on making use of existing VESA standards.
Both essentially line up the frames outputted from your graphics card to the refreshing of the monitor, so that your frame and monitor refreshes are always in sync.
On September 17 2016 14:51 digmouse wrote: Sadly AOC still don't have a good IPS Gsync monitor which I'm looking into buying one. But it is not like there are many out there anyway...
IPS gsync sounds like an expensive combination, I'm not sure it's worth it.
On September 17 2016 03:59 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Hmm isn't response time more about the speed of internal image processing in the monitor rather than the refresh rate?
Anyway cool sponsor!
Yeah, they seem to consider refresh rate to be the same as response time.
That said, the monitors I've seen are about 1ms response time so it doesn't really matter anyway.
On September 17 2016 09:12 deth2munkies wrote: I'd love to look into one of those monitors (I have a 1440p setup right now, but it's not a gaming monitor and I've been feeling the response time difference while playing Killer Instinct), but I can't find where the fuck I'm supposed to buy it or even see the price.
I don't really get how it makes any difference in any fighting games which run with fixed 60 FPS
On September 17 2016 09:12 deth2munkies wrote: I'd love to look into one of those monitors (I have a 1440p setup right now, but it's not a gaming monitor and I've been feeling the response time difference while playing Killer Instinct), but I can't find where the fuck I'm supposed to buy it or even see the price.
I don't really get how it makes any difference in any fighting games which run with fixed 60 FPS
It's the response time on the monitor, mine's 16ms which is...about 1 frame, while this monitor has a 1ms response time. It can be the difference between being able to reaction-break some stuff and not. It wasn't really something I was looking at when I bought it, but it turned out to be relevant. The only problem with this one is that it's 1080 where my current one is 1440, but the cheapest 1440 monitors with low response time are stupid expensive.
One thing I'm kinda worried about if i Invest in such a product, like, it seems like its one of those things where you're permanently spoiled by that high high quality picture, that you can't play on anything less for the rest of your days, which sucks for me because I travel a lot.
I used to joke around when pros were getting to the point they demanded 144hz and 60 was UNPLAYABLE, that I'd refuse to attend LANs as a spectator unless the monitors the spectators watch the games thru were also up to those standards. I feel like that's becoming less and less a joke.
AoC is NOT the best monitor brand out there but as a price/performance ratio is actually decent.
In terms of the Hz talk, input lag is much more important than refresh rate. I dont want to make a wall of text about it, but to generalize a lot, its the time it takes for the monitor to "read" the signal coming from your graphics card and transform it to a format of display.
Total lag in your system is:
1. The time it takes for your keyboard/mouse to register the action (usually 1-2 ms when corded).
2. The time it takes for your USB to process the request for an action interruption in the CPU to record the action (PS/2 does not have this problem, it always interrupts and goes in first). No way of knowing how long, too many variables (all hardware and software can affect this). Usually its about 10 ms.
3. The time it takes for the CPU to process the action and send it to the OS, and then the OS to record the action and send it to the GPU (5-12 ms).
4. The time it takes for the GPU to record the change (5 ms, probably less).
5. The time it takes for the signal to travel the cable (0.01 ms).
6. The time it takes for the monitor to process the signal (this thing can go from 3 ms to 145 ms, most monitors are in the 10 to 40 range).
7. The time it takes for the monitor to make a pixel response to the image sent (anywhere from 2 ms to 18 ms).
So, if you want absolute minimal latency/lag in your actions, the biggest factor by far is going to be the monitors input lag and pixel response time. It can actually make all the other elements unimportant. (Well, except the ps2/usb, and only if you are using USB for one device and ps/2 for another because at very high apms, your actions might be recorded in incorrect order. I had this happen to me in Broodwar).
AoC is not the best in input lag but it has some decent models that are good enough to consider.
By the way, as a side note, the normal reaction time of a human is normally at 250ms. High reflex people (like pilots and gamers) can have 200 ms reaction time. VERY good gamers can get into the 180-170 ms reaction time area.
Finally, remmeber that 16ms is 1 frame at 60 hz/fps. So if you have a monitor with input lag under 16ms, you should never notice a difference if it goes lower than 16ms. But once you hit 32ms delay, thats two frames. That is certainly noticeable by gamers (but not by normal pc users).
However I agree that if you have the hardware to support a 144hz monitor with low input lag and great pixel response time, with your PC (and get higher than 60 fps in the game ofc) then the benefits are very nice, mostly in terms of fluent gaming.
Even if you disregard the few milliseconds you save by going with 144hz, the difference in fluidity is very noticeable. The competitive advantage in most games may be minimal, I don't know, but the quality of life bump is extremely satisfying. I play Overwatch these days and one of the characters, tracer, requires that you track your target very precisely. It feels a lot easier with 144hz/144fps, everything is more fluid and it feels like I can predict enemy movement better.
Unlike the others, I can go back and play on 60hz just fine, but I find it uncomfortable and feels choppy until you get used to it again. But although maybe it's entirely my fault, I personally feel like I lose a competitive edge when I play on 60hz.
On September 17 2016 03:59 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Hmm isn't response time more about the speed of internal image processing in the monitor rather than the refresh rate?
Anyway cool sponsor!
Yeah, they seem to consider refresh rate to be the same as response time.
That said, the monitors I've seen are about 1ms response time so it doesn't really matter anyway.
No, extra frequency effectively translates into better response time. 144 Hz allows one image every 6.9 ms, 60 Hz allows one image every 16.7 ms. Boom, 10ms potential cut-off in your response time.
Edit: And for fast competitive gamers with a 200ms reaction time, that means a 5% improvement on that. Not life-changing, but definitely not insignificant.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42425448/20160924_010930.jpg)
