Anyone have any G-Sync impressions to share?

Pretty simple question really. G-Sync tech has been around for a bit, but I know very little about how it actually looks and feels in motion. I'm semi-planning to get a few upgrades for my PC, mainly finally getting an SSD when I choose to upgrade to Win 10 (planning on doing a complete reinstall of Windows, so I'll dump the OS onto the SSD), and with that I'm thinking about getting a new monitor. How is the G-Sync tech, and is it worth the current increased price point to get a monitor with it?

Edit: Whoops, I could have sworn that I was in the PC forum when I posted this. Thanks MB.

Edit 2: Guess a follow-up question would be about what kind of framerates you would have to hit to see a significant difference. I usually play at 60-75 FPS.

I think pretty much every account I've read of someone buying a G-Sync (+144hz) monitor has been overwhelmingly positive.

I have an Asus ROG Swift PG278Q and absolutely adore it. I'm not sure I see a difference between 60 and 70, but above 70-80 FPS and it starts becoming apparent. It's so nice not having to worry about tearing, and everything is so smooth and seamless I don't think I can ever go back to a regular monitor again, let alone a 60hz one. The benefits of GSync even come into play when running lower frame rates, such as with GTA V. There's no way I could run that game at 144 FPS, but being able to crank everything up and getting as high a frame rate as possible without worrying about tearing is so sweet.

I'm driving it with two 780 Ti cards. Totally worth the price of admission. I've heard that the newer Acer Predator XB270HU is even better, the world's first 144hz IPS GSync monitor, but I haven't seen one in person yet. If it's that much better looking and I can get a good price for my ROG Swift, I may sell it and go with the Acer. I would invest in a serious GPU first before going with one of these high end monitors, though.

Regarding your question though...I still think an SSD is the single best upgrade one can make to their PC for overall speed, noise reduction, and usability. Absolutely get one as soon as you can, you won't believe you went without one for so long.

Moved this to the PC forum for you. Good luck dude.

@mb:

What do you have to dump onto an SSD to see an improvement in performance? Is just putting the OS install there enough to see performance improvements across the board, or do you actually need to place game files there as well? I'm planning on only getting a 120GB model, so placing all my games there isn't really an option (maybe just one or two that I really like).

The lack of tearing or stuttering really does sound great, especially for a game like GTAV. Super difficult to meddle around with the settings in that game, as obviously the wide range of environments and draw distances make the FPS jump up and down a hell of a lot. I'll check out that ASUS monitor you have, thanks for the recommendation.

Installing your OS on your SSD will improve stuff like boot times (mine is power button to desktop in under 15 seconds) and any kind of OS or file navigation, provided it's hitting that SSD and not another data harddrive. To see load time improvement for games, you'll need to install them on the SSD as well, otherwise it's still reading the data from the same drive it's already on in your current setup. I keep a few games I always come back to (Dota, Diablo, Hearthstone, etc.) on the SSD and install the rest to my HDD. If you wanted to micromanage and you generally only play one or two games at a time, you could totally install them on your SSD and then uninstall them when you're done to see improved performance there.

@adequatelyprepared: Definitely your OS, and I put almost all of my normally used programs on there as well. Essentially, anything that I have starting up with Windows or that I use on a regular basis goes on the SSD. You'll see a big difference if you have your OS and utilities on an SSD, plus I like the fact that it makes my PC virtually silent. The speed at which you can install, copy, and move files on SSDs is phenomenal. Boot times are crazy fast on SSDs also, I can get my gaming PC to boot to Windows desktop in under 15 seconds, ready to go.

What I do is use Stefan Jones' SteamTool to move games back and forth from my HDDs to my SSD depending on what I'm playing. It only takes a minute or two to move games back and forth, and it's easy and safe. Basically, SteamTool is a GUI for symlinks so you don't have to type them in manually. This way you don't have to delete a game and reinstall it just to move it between drives, which is a big deal for many people who have restrictive bandwidth caps on their home internet connections.

Some games benefit from being on an SSD more than others, but I have found that more often than not, games do fine when running off of one of my WD Black HDDs. Sometimes the difference is barely noticeable. I tend to keep whatever game(s) I am currently playing the most on my SSD, and then keep the rest installed on my platter drives if there is any chance I am going to go back to playing them anytime soon. I tend to by default install games on my HDDs, and then if I notice that load times are particularly long or the game is having difficulty streaming in data and I'm seeing a lot of pop-in, I move it over to the SSD to check for an improvement.

I would definitely suggest going for more than 120 GB if you can, though. On one of my machines I have a fresh, fully updated installation of Windows 8.1 Pro N and not much else on a 180 GB Corsair Force SSD, and there is only 120 GB free space remaining. That means on your proposed 120, you would end up with around 60 GB of free space...that may not even be enough to install one game to, and definitely not enough for something like GTA V. I suggest saving up and getting a 256 GB SSD if at all possible, it will be a big quality of life improvement over a 120. It would still be really nice to have an SSD for your system drive and most commonly used utilities, but with the size of games these days you'll be constantly worrying about what you can and can't install on it. You can get a Samsung 256 GB EVO SSD for under $100 now, I have several of these drives and they are fantastic. That probably isn't too much more expensive than the 120 GB drive you were considering, and you'll be able to do so much more with it.

@mb:

Thanks a lot for the advice MB. I live in Australia, so our prices are a bit different that yours, but looking at my main parts sellers, it's easily worth it to forgo the 128GB models and just go straight to the 256GB (about $100 for a 128GB, only $50 more for a 256GB). That Steam tool seems incredibly useful.

@adequatelyprepared: No problem dude...yeah, I can't recommend an SSD enough! You will love it. SSDs are so important to a good build that I wouldn't even build a new PC without one, even if it was just for the OS.

@mb: I thought the other benefit of GSync was when you get dips below 60 the game still looks smooth - what's your experience in this regard?

@bollard: It's smoother, but I guess to me one of the big benefits of Gsync is that I don't notice frame rate drops as much as I did on a regular monitor. It's hard to answer that question because I rarely run any games below 60 FPS anyway.