CES—one of the largest annual tech conferences in the world—has been home to many ridiculous gadgets over the years. We’ve seen finger-snapping robots, ovens that can live stream cooking, and even an RGB face mask.
But today I want to bring to your attention an absurd device from CES 2023, one you probably didn’t even realize was ridiculous: the Asus ROG Swift Pro PG248QP; It is a gaming monitor that has a maximum refresh rate of 540Hz.
On the surface, Asus’ new monitor doesn’t look ridiculous. Having a high refresh rate is a great advantage – if a brand wants its monitor to rank on our list of best gaming monitors, this is one of the main factors we will judge its technology on.
It is because boosting the refresh rate of your gaming setting can give you an edge especially in multiplayer matches. With your smoother gameplay and lower input lag, you can follow your opponents’ actions more easily and interact with on-screen information better than if you were on a lower-spec system.
But you don’t just need a fast-paced monitor, you also need a gaming setup that can take advantage of your monitor’s high refresh rates by running games at their highest level. And unless you want your graphics to look like ugly pixels beyond recognition, you almost certainly don’t have a machine that can achieve 540 frames per second (fps) in your favorite games.
Who needs to monitor this goodness?
If you’re a console gamer exclusively, you shouldn’t look in the general direction of this monitor, let alone consider buying it. The PS5 and Xbox series X top out at 120Hz, a long way from the 540Hz maximum offered by the Asus ROG Swift Pro PG248QP.
Rather, this monitor is aimed at PC gamers, but for many of you, the latest monitor from Asus is still a no-brainer.
Let’s take a look at the number one pick in our best gaming laptop guide, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15. It has an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU, Nvidia RTX 3070 GPU, 16GB RAM which is an above average setup (based on Steam user data (Opens in a new tab)). In our tests of Total War: Three Kingdoms and Metro: Exodus—both running at high resolutions and low-quality graphics—the laptop was only able to achieve 164fps and 125fps, respectively.
As for our pick for the best gaming PC we’ve tested, the Maingear Turbo, it’s better but still not enough. The model we submitted used an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM to achieve a maximum of 320fps in Total War: Warhammer III and 221fps in Cyberpunk 2077 (both in HD at Low settings). graphics). Just 60% of what the Swift Pro PG248QP monitor can achieve.
So what if we swap the Nvidia RTX 4090? In our tests, we found that Nvidia’s best (and most expensive) graphics card boasted about 55% higher frame rates than the RTX 3080Ti. Factoring this into Maingear Turbo’s performance, you’re looking at a total of 498 fps for Total War: Warhammer III and 344 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 – still just shy of the target of 540.
With the right experience (and game choice), you can probably push this setup and other similarly powerful PCs across the line. But most of us don’t use an RTX 4090 – well, many of us don’t even have a 3090 (or 3080 for that matter).
Asus’ latest monitor is certainly impressive, but based on the rest of the PC space, it’s a silly item that practically no one uses. If you want to get it when it goes on sale you can say you have the fastest gaming monitor in the world then the power is for you, but I’m telling you now: it’s probably a waste of your money.
Those looking for a more logical place to start may want to check out our best gaming monitor buying guide and should keep an eye out for which monitors are the best match for the performance your computer can realistically achieve.