You know esports has hit the mainstream when portions of CES 2020 are devoted to products for the esports crowd. Nvidia has pulled the curtains back on the ASUS ROG Swift 360, a 24.5-inch monitor with a 360Hz refresh rate.
At 1080p.
That has to be a bit awkward heading into a tradeshow that will be dominated by 8K televisions. Check out this 1080p monitor with a price tag rivaling said 8K tv. It’s also a tacit admission that current generation RTX cards would melt under at higher refresh rates that are currently capped between 120 and 240Hz. Why, hello Ampere.
Nvidia was kind enough to push a marketing video with a professional CS: GO player, and it’s all praise for the higher refresh rate.
Yeah, it’s impressive. But can you imagine the GPU horsepower it will take to get this towards 4K? Pricing details aren’t available as the release date is set for the back half of 2020. General guess? Expensive. It’s Nvidia. Why would it be reasonable?
I’d expect we will see this paired with Nvidia’s forthcoming Ampere GPU architecture. There is something to be said that the announcement is paired with CS: GO, and not a more graphically intense game. Locking a game at 360fps is not going to be easy, even at 1080p. 1440? 4K? I look forward to coolers full of ice water and the Youtube streams attempting it.
Luckily, Asus isn’t holding back in the 4K, 144Hz models at CES. There are at least three, which will be on the show floor at various sizes. Expect a lot of mini-LED, HDR, true 10-bit, etc. to be tossed around as we kick off 2020 with ways to destroy a checking account. Thanks Nvidia.
4K at 144Hz is damn demanding if you’re high frame rates on something other than Minecraft. We will have the peripherals, but can Nvidia deliver the GPUs to handle it? What about AMD’s supposed ‘Nvidia killers’ in the Navi 21 and 23?
We are peering a bit into the future, but the arrival of 360Hz refresh rates is here. Along with the esports arms race.