re: UPDATE: New build: Monitor choice drive GPU choice or the other way around?

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That's certainly an attractively priced 4K freesync monitor, and worth considering. It's tough finding data online about how well a monitor's scaler works. It's an additional reason I've not made the switch to 4K yet. Most of the games I play would need to be run at a lower resolution, and I don't want to sacrifice image clarity. I'm guessing it will do 1080P more convincingly than 1440P.

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I've seen subjective reports that both last year's U28D and the current U28E in the 590 display 1080p, 1440p and (of course) native 4k - pretty well for general use.

I'm probably leaning that way as it appears to be a solid (albeit, entry) 4k display that should serve more competently through the expected lifecycle than a 1080p - ultrawide or not. Acer has a hot 34 ultrawide freesync coming out that will probably crack $1300 or $1400 and I'm not waiting around for that kind of sticker shock.

28" looks to be the sweet spot for 4k - not crazy about TN, but at this price point, combined with Samsung doing fairly good things with TN lately - I can live with a little off-angle issues for the intended purpose of the monitor.

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The consequences of the narrow adaptive range is that in any instances you experience heavy frame drops, freesync may stop working (best case, you get tearing and stuttering) or freesync may be less effective (worst case, you get flickering).

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One of the things I'm seeing is that - with Freesync you're golden in the range - works as designed and greatly improves output - above the range, it's like it isn't there (no worse off), but below the range - a game that might still be playable - barely in the 36, 38 FPS range, but isn't because of the disconnect between Freesync and the panel.

Now that I'm settling in on this display - if I want 4k and Freesync, I'm somewhere in the Fijis, right? With HBM (1), 4gb cap, probably the R9 Fury X - another maddening choice because, as it sits at ~$650, depending on flavor (and I lean Sapphire or MSI) - it's water cooled (should be no problem in a new case purchased in 2015, right?) and quite expensive - the consensus so far says - "Works adequately, even with 4gb - barely - who knows if the next generation of games will stress the card beyond competent 4k functioning?"

Maddening to drop $650 on a card that very well may be deemed obsolete in 2016.

(Or I can slog along with a 390 for 2 or 3 years, then jump when the HBM2 cards are here with a refinement of the Fiji architecture, right?)

Maddening.