Sapphire 7900 XT & AOC Q24G2A – A Perfect Upgrade for Competitive Gaming?

Sapphire RX 7900 XT Performance with New Monitor

So clearly, I need a new monitor for this! I chose the AOC 24″ Q24G2A IPS, as it comes with a superbly fast 165Hz refresh rate, great colour reproduction on its IPS panel, and a nice upgrade in the resolution to 2560 x 1400 (2K).

So that’s nearly 3x the refresh rate, a fraction of the input latency, and double the resolution, and it comes in at a very reasonable £250. There’s a Full HD version for £150 too, if you’re on an even tighter budget after upgrading your GPU, but I think both are very reasonably priced.

Increasing the resolution does mean more work for the GPU, but if you look at the gaming photos on my older monitor, you’ll notice GPU usage was quite low. Even at 1440, the RX 7900 XT is pushing up to 150 FPS in Fortnite.

I did see lows of 95 FPS, but honestly, it didn’t matter, as the screen also has FreeSync Premium, and that means that no matter what seemed to happen to my FPS there was no screen tearing, resulting in a much smoother gaming experience. The bump in resolution and colour reproduction is pretty apparent too, this monitor may be a little smaller than the old one, but it really pops!

Valorant took a big performance hit, dropping from 400+ to a mere 300+ FPS, which is still hilariously fast, and means that input latency is extremely swift. Sure, this monitor can only display 165 of those frames a second, but honestly, that’s more than enough, and gameplay felt incredibly smooth compared to the old monitor.

CS:GO is very much focused on input latency, and people game at ultra-low settings and resolutions, and hundreds of FPS, even on 60Hz monitors, just to cut down on input latency. At nearly 400 FPS with max graphics, and a 1ms response time on the monitor, as well as the higher refresh rate and sync, this is as smooth as you could hope for, and means I only have myself to blame for being so utterly hopeless at it.

Apex was much the same, and I love that going up to 2540 x 1440 didn’t require any compromise in the maximum graphics settings in all my games to still enjoy high refresh rates. There’s still not really anything maxing out the GPU utilisation either, so even if I went to an ultrawide monitor, higher refresh rate or even 4K, I think I’d still be pretty good. However, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, 2560 x 1440 is enough resolution, and anything around 144-170Hz is all the frames you need for a great gaming experience.

Seriously though, the difference in colours between the two monitors, the extra resolution, and Freesync Premium results in a bit of a night and day difference in image quality. Remember what it looked like before?

Compared to how it looks now? Not a bad upgrade at all!