I didn’t expect one of the main highlights of my time in and around Gamescom to be gaming monitors—I thought it might be handhelds or keyboards—but the presence of so many high refresh rate panels changed that pretty sharpish. Left, right, up, down, forwards and backwards: there they were, those incredibly snappy panels.
During an Asus event just before the Gamescom gates swung open, it seemed like the most attention was surrounding a new OLED, and I was drawn to this monitor too, but not because of its new tandem OLED tech nor its Glossy TrueBlack surface. I was primarily drawn to it because it can hit 540 Hz at 1440p.
I didn't get to actually try out the monitor in games, unfortunately, but I did get to try the ridiculously fast ROG Strix XG248QSG Ace. Asus announced this back in May as the world's first 610 Hz gaming monitor. It does, of course, feature a TN panel, but Asus claims it's a "Super TN panel", which as far as I can tell basically means it looks better than your average TN.
Whether it's the "Super" tech or just TN improvements in general, I can say I was pretty impressed with the visuals on the monitor. Our Jacob Ridley got to see the panel earlier in the year at Computex and found it to have some obvious yellowing to the white colours, but I didn't notice any of that given I was looking at a very yellow map (Mirage) on Counter-Strike 2. In fact, it didn't seem massively worse than the IPS panel I use day-to-day.
And it was when I played that game that I really became impressed. For context, I'm someone who used to be big into Counter-Strike and other competitive shooters (Quake, Overwatch, so on), and although I was a late adopter, having a high refresh rate and low response time always took priority over vibrancy and overall visuals.
While I'm more of a casual gamer now, playing Counter-Strike at 610 Hz made me realise what I'd been missing out on those years ago when playing at 'just' 120 Hz and 144 Hz. I could definitely tell the difference. There were a few sub-300 Hz monitors around me, and I made sure to try those out, too, and I could certainly tell the 610 Hz apart from the rest. It made the TN monitor the highlight out of all the other mere 240 Hz OLED peasants that surrounded me.
Whether I'd be able to tell the new 540 Hz OLED apart from this 610 Hz is, of course, a different question, as is the question of how much the placebo effect has to play in all of this. And, of course, there's the fact that 600+ fps, even at 1080p, will be the reserve of Counter-Strike, Overwatch 2, and probably just a couple other games. But I suppose those are exactly the kinds of titles this monitor is aimed at.
All that being said, when OLEDs are starting to come in at 540 Hz at QHD resolution, however much I enjoyed using the 610 Hz TN, it makes the argument for 1080p 600+ fps TN panels—"Super" or not—harder to swallow. OLED is just so legitimately shiny.
Whatever the best option is, I'm just glad there are so many high refresh rate panels these days. And a little bit resentful that I didn't get to use them back in my Counter-Strike heyday. Maybe that would've been the one to solidify me at Supreme or heck, even get me to Global.
Yeah, I'm sure refresh rate was what was holding me back. That must have been it.
