Acer and ASUS unveiled their prototype 27” 4K 144 Hz displays, featuring NVIDIA’s G-Sync HDR technology, at last year’s CES, with promises to release them sometime later in 2017. Both monitors relied on a reference design developed by NVIDIA and had similar specifications, albeit with some minor differences. Eventually, both companies had to delay commercial launches of their new products to 2018, missing the important holiday sales season. This week at GDC, NVIDIA has stated that it is confident that the G-Sync HDR-compatible displays will hit the market this April. 

Both the Acer Predator X27 and the ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ are implementations of NVIDIA’s reference design for G-Sync HDR displays: they offer a 3840×2160 resolution, a 144 Hz refresh rate, a 1000-nits brightness, a direct LED backlighting system with 384 zones, and feature a quantum dot film to enable HDR10 and coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The monitors announced last year were to be based on AU Optronics’ M270QAN02.2 AHVA panel, which was the only one to support the combination of features that NVIDIA wanted for G-Sync HDR displays.

Neither Acer, nor ASUS, disclosed the reasons why they had to delay their ultra-premium gaming monitors from late 2017 to 2018, but given a rather unique feature-set of both displays, a lot of possibilities come to mind: starting from a panel delay by AUO to reference design changes by NVIDIA.

At GDC, NVIDIA has said that G-Sync HDR-supporting displays will finally ship in Q1, but noted that by Q1 it means its fiscal quarter, not calendar quarter. NVIDIA’s Q1 FY2019 (2019 because NV's fiscal year is one year ahead) ends on April 29, 2018, so it is logical to assume that the monitors will ship next month. What remains to be seen is the pricing as well as the final set of features and technologies.

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Source: NVIDIA

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  • RaistlinZ - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link

    No 32" version?
  • quiksilvr - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link

    It will come in time. 4K at anything higher than 120Hz is insane already.
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link

    32" versions are roughly a quarter behind at last estimate.
  • evilpaul666 - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link

    How long until we get a single GPU that can drive one?

    Also, how well does HDR actually work in Windows? It's nice having new tech, but Nvidia's 3D Vision still doesn't work very well and I don't think they're supporting it anymore.

    And how about with mixed multi-monitor setups? I'd kind of like to get one if it's not $2,000, but getting two might be overdoing it (on my wallet).
  • Sttm - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link

    Well as its Nvidia's own HDR tech, I'd hope as well as Gsync itself.
  • Spunjji - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link

    On that note, is activating Gsync still weirdly awkward and arcane or is that sorted now? Last time I tried (~18 months) it was a headache making sure all your control panel settings were set correctly.
  • Umer - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link

    It really was never much of an issue back then either, you enable it only once and disable V-Sync from in-game and you're good to go.

    However, around the time frame of what you mentioned, NVIDIA would reset G-Sync's settings each time with its driver update, but that doesn't happen anymore so it's really all good. I haven't had to check or adjust my G-Sync settings in over a year now, I think.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link

    at >120 hz max quality on most AAA titles probably 2 or 3 years. HardOCP managed to get its hands on a Titan V and it managed ~60hz on the more GPU intensive half of the games they tested; some of the less GPU intensive ones got above 100hz but appeared to be CPU bound.

    Combined with new titles having steadily higher GPU demands we'll probably need at least 2 generations of newer cards to max out 4k on an xx80/xx80Ti level card.
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link

    >HardOCP managed to get its hands on a Titan V

    How about our testing? https://www.anandtech.com/show/12170/nvidia-titan-...
  • DanNeely - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link

    That was 4 months ago, [H]'s article's only a few days old. Guess which one was fresh in my memory and which one I'd forgotten about. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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