System requirements - Building a RetroArch PC

General
#62

Might be a good idea; once seen it can’t be unseen. Even my 10 year old Plasma ruins me for any modern display, only OLED with BFI comes close (about 90% of the motion resolution of the plasma). With BFI the brightness of the OLED is barely better than the plasma, and the only real advantage would be the higher resolution.

Of course, it matters what type of games you play, too. Being able to eye-track an object with perfect clarity makes a huge difference in any kind of twitch gaming. Not so much if you’re playing RPGs, strategy games, etc.

I think that’s not using BFI, so 600 nits would be about right for slotmaks: 50% reduction from scanlines, 66% reduction from slotmasks, leaves you with around 100 nits.

Yes it’s kind of amusing to see them gushing over things that we’ve been doing in Retroarch (mask emulation!) for years, now :slight_smile:

The photos are decent but they’re definitely not using BFI, and I imagine they’re lowering the mask strength a bit.

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#63

By the way @Nesguy, I omitted the LG G3 from my list but I just got a refresher that it was actually the brightest OLED TV of 2023 beating out all other W-OLED and QD-OLED offerings thanks to its use of MLA technology.

This MLA doesn’t seem to be snake oil at all.

I’ve updated my previous post to include its HDR Game Mode Brightness.

Here’s what RTINGS and Stop The Fomo have to say about that and what’s coming in 2024!

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https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/s/bT3b9FLL2U

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#64

So after all that back and forth, here is the monitor I just bought 2 of. It came down to the fact that there are some great discounts for this monitor right now, and anything larger than 27" is just too much for a standard-size desk.

Yes, it’s ultimately still a backlit display, yes it still has a terrible matte finish, but that’s just the state of things right now. Should at least be a significant upgrade over the absolutely horrible 1080p office monitors that currently sit on my desk, and should be very good for the Megatron shader since it’s an HDR1000 display.

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#65

Congratulations! I know you’ll provide us with some real world performance data once you familiarize yourself with them!

I built a system last year with an ASUS TUF Gaming VG289Q 28" 4K matte display. It wasn’t so bad at all even though it was matte.

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Glad you got something that suited your needs as opposed to just your wants.

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#66

All PC parts have arrived! Super psyched, haven’t done a build in a looong time. Here’s what I wound up getting. Got the GPU used on ebay for half the price. Probably complete overkill for Retroarch?

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/KingSlime/saved/#view=3V9WrH

3 Likes
#67

Looks like a great build! I’m happy for you!

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#68

Everything is built and running perfectly! Build was perfectly smooth except I forgot to remove the warning label from the cooler heatsink, had to remove the cooler and re-install it :sweat_smile:. There was also a small moment of panic when I booted up for the first time and there was no signal to the monitor; that’s because I was plugged into the motherboard instead of the GPU. :smiley:

4K, HDR, local dimming and wide color gamut are all such a massive improvement that now my trusty Panasonic Plasma looks somewhat dull in comparison, and I’m afraid I’ll have to spend several thousand dollars upgrading my living room set up :flushed:. Tried out a few games using the Megatron shader and it looks perfect. The local dimming is a bummer with shaders, like @Duimon mentioned, but awesome for modern games. Looked great in Alan Wake 2.

Now on to the negative. Right off the bat, I’m a bit concerned that my two new monitors are showing very different colors; white is NOT the same. However, one is connected with an HDMI cable at 144Hz and the other via DP at 160Hz, because the included DP cables weren’t long enough for both monitors. I’m hoping this difference is just down to different connections. I’m also noticing some pretty bad uniformity on one of them. I’ll probably return and roll the dice again. Also, there is a very slight vignette due to the panel construction. It’s not too bad, but it’s worth noting.

Exciting things happening at CES 2024, but I think we need to take “3000 nits” with a grain of salt. This is probably referring to a 10% window, so it will be a nice boost to HDR but I highly doubt it will be enough for the HDR1000 spec.

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#69

3,000 nits seems like what the panel is actually physically capable of. It’s then up to the TV/Display manufacturers to decide how far they’re willing to push the envelope because there would be pros and cons to running it as bright as possible.

Some constraint might be power supply requirements, energy certifications and regulations, burn-in and image retention prevention/reduction, panel longevity, reliability, eye health.

Remember that MLA is a passive technology so that if improvements are mainly coming from that area then it should apply across the board meaning to all window sizes. Then there are other improvements in the processing which LG Display has claimed have also contributed to significant improvements in brightness.

So I’m more leaning towards optimism with regards to suitability for things like BFI with Megatron while running at high enough levels of HDR brightness.

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#70

Very exciting if true. A 1000 HDR True Black display is pretty much end game, right?

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#71

Yes it is, but if that’s not exciting enough, there’s this:

and this:

Of course time will tell but the future looks brighter than ever!

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