Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

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Falkentyne
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Falkentyne » 17 Feb 2017, 13:43

Up to 1 frame higher input lag, but you need to test this in TestUFO Alien invasion first (use Chrome).

http://www.testufo.com/#test=photo&phot ... &height=-1

Now set the Area to "000" and change it to 100 and then back.
What you want to watch for is the CROSSTALK To move up and down, however theres something more important you also need to look for:
Look for the position of the UFO, or the red vertical bars (this is easier to look for--the red vertical bars) to SHIFT to the RIGHT or the LEFT One pixel, above or below the crosstalk.

if the UFO's shift one pixel to the RIGHT, that is 1 frame LOWER input lag, and you want to make that "frame" the primary frame. (on the older Z series monitors, that would be at Area=100). THIS MIGHT be different on the XL2540 so you have to test it.

If the UFO's shift one pixel to the LEFT, that is 1 frame HIGHER Input lag. Or rather "up to" one frame.

LTHB
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by LTHB » 17 Feb 2017, 17:42

I can confirm that it works the same than on the older Z series, with Area 100 the crosstalk is on the left of the ufo and with Area 0 it's on the right

It even seems that with Area 100 i even have a very faint crosstalk on the right of the ufo (only on the first ufo line), so the next frame is starting to be drawn when the backlight flashes on.

Madpacket
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Madpacket » 18 Feb 2017, 14:50

Wait so to be 100% clear here. The XL2450 acts like older BenQ monitors WRT strobing?

Therefore what Chief is saying about only a 2ms penalty is the about the best we can expect?

If so that's awesome.

Falkentyne
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Falkentyne » 18 Feb 2017, 16:10

VT tweaks work, so yes.
(It's also been tested on the XL2735. The scaler 2796BF supports it, 2796B doesn't).
But there is no single strobe override for refresh rates lower than 100hz. 85hz and everything lower will double strobe, making blur reduction on consoles useless.

RPGWiZaRD
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Joined: 16 Jan 2017, 15:57

Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by RPGWiZaRD » 19 Feb 2017, 11:09

Can someone quickly comment if the Blur Reduction sticks when turned on at the service menu or if it at least sticks if not turning off monitor and only letting it go to sleep (that's okay for me as I never turn off my comp anyway). I didn't quite get it from here if only the factory menu (hold 4+5 when powering on) is the one where settings doesn't stick or if that's also case for the service menu (holding 4 when power on)

The attractiveness on this monitor for me would be getting blur reduction to work nicely at 180Hz or so. I'm more interested in the ASUS but there's currently some amazing deals on the Zowie up here so which is hard to ignore. I'm thinking 180-200Hz strobing vs GSYNC 240Hz isn't such a bad tradeoff at all. :) The motion smoothness would be quite a lot better with 180-200Hz strobing if I understood it correctly vs 240Hz and without strobing.

Besides I don't quite have the computer to get above 180 fps in most games anyway.

Trip
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Trip » 19 Feb 2017, 14:54

RPGWiZaRD wrote:Can someone quickly comment if the Blur Reduction sticks when turned on at the service menu or if it at least sticks if not turning off monitor and only letting it go to sleep (that's okay for me as I never turn off my comp anyway). I didn't quite get it from here if only the factory menu (hold 4+5 when powering on) is the one where settings doesn't stick or if that's also case for the service menu (holding 4 when power on)

The attractiveness on this monitor for me would be getting blur reduction to work nicely at 180Hz or so. I'm more interested in the ASUS but there's currently some amazing deals on the Zowie up here so which is hard to ignore. I'm thinking 180-200Hz strobing vs GSYNC 240Hz isn't such a bad tradeoff at all. :) The motion smoothness would be quite a lot better with 180-200Hz strobing if I understood it correctly vs 240Hz and without strobing.

Besides I don't quite have the computer to get above 180 fps in most games anyway.
Blur reduction and all of the settings located in the service menu stick even if you plug the cord. It will only turn off after a factory reset or if you choose to turn it off yourself. The factory menu overdrive tweaking wont stick after turning it on and off again but sleep mode will make it stick. Tbh at this refresh rate and in fast paced games you dont even want gsync 99% of the time its nice for casual single player games like dark souls, skyrim, the witcher etc etc preferably with a higher quality panel like those 1440p ips panels with 144hz. But if you play cs, quake, overwatch or tf2 competitive then the 2540 is way better. Blur reduction is a nice addition for games with lots of movement and at 240hz I think its worth the input latency trade off if you can deal with the crosstalk at the top and bottom of the screen if set correctly. The motion smoothness at 200hz with blur reduction is better then 240hz without it. But with this monitor you could even go for 240hz + blur reduction the only drawback is that the bottom and top will have considerable crosstalk and the middle will be clear and very responsive. If you use a lower custom frequency like 200hz and max vertical total its a lot better across the whole screen. The 2540 does require some tweaking to get motion blur reduction to work nicely though. Its not a click and go solution like the asus is but its not rocket science either and you have a little bit more flexibility.

RPGWiZaRD
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by RPGWiZaRD » 19 Feb 2017, 15:40

Trip wrote:Blur reduction and all of the settings located in the service menu stick even if you plug the cord. It will only turn off after a factory reset or if you choose to turn it off yourself. The factory menu overdrive tweaking wont stick after turning it on and off again but sleep mode will make it stick. Tbh at this refresh rate and in fast paced games you dont even want gsync 99% of the time its nice for casual single player games like dark souls, skyrim, the witcher etc etc preferably with a higher quality panel like those 1440p ips panels with 144hz. But if you play cs, quake, overwatch or tf2 competitive then the 2540 is way better. Blur reduction is a nice addition for games with lots of movement and at 240hz I think its worth the input latency trade off if you can deal with the crosstalk at the top and bottom of the screen if set correctly. The motion smoothness at 200hz with blur reduction is better then 240hz without it. But with this monitor you could even go for 240hz + blur reduction the only drawback is that the bottom and top will have considerable crosstalk and the middle will be clear and very responsive. If you use a lower custom frequency like 200hz and max vertical total its a lot better across the whole screen. The 2540 does require some tweaking to get motion blur reduction to work nicely though. Its not a click and go solution like the asus is but its not rocket science either and you have a little bit more flexibility.
Thanks for the response, well I'm not going to use it only for games like CS, Quake, Overwatch and I don't have the beefiest GPU out there (GTX 970 right now but intending to get GTX 1070 if needed).

But I'm in for a 24"/1080p 144Hz(+) and what I can see this panel is still the best out there right now at this form factor, the 240Hz ability I see more as an added bonus that satisfies the thought that while I couldn't get an IPS panel at this setting, at least I can enjoy better motion smoothness than I'd be able to with IPS and possibly less BLB/glow issues. Don't get me wrong though, I love motion smoothness, I sticked to CRT until end of 2009 because of this but reality is I'm not into only fast paced FPS games and I don't have the beefiest computer (i5-4670K @ 4.3GHz and GTX 970 but will upgrade to Ryzen or Kaby Lake when Ryzen launches as I'm doing video encoding daily and likely a GTX 1070 upgrade soon'ish).

With a lot of games I'm going to be in like 80 - 200 fps range which is why I think GSYNC would be a nice feature to have. I'm also quite allergic to crosstalk so that's not something I want to notice as I've been used to zero crosstalk with my current monitor Viewsonic VX2268wm 120Hz (although lack of OD makes it response wise a bit out of date probably). I'd much rather go for 180Hz perfect without noticeable crosstalk, even 160Hz'ish or so perhaps (which is still better than 120 ULMB that other than these 240Hz panels are maximum capable of). I'm not the competitive fps gamer guy who goes all out on performance, I rather go a good middleroad with very little crosstalk (or image quality sacrifice). What about contrast ratios at 160~180Hz blur reduction, would you think it's still possibly to achieve ~850:1 or so which is the goal I'd minimum like to have. My current monitor measures around 730:1 only so would hoping to at least enjoy a little bit better contrast ratio on my new monitor.

As long as it's capable to produce a good result (crosstalk wise) using Blur Reduction at 160~180Hz or so range I'm interested. The lower refresh rate setting might even be more suitable for my specs as well.

But since it currently is offered for only 394 € compared to 530 € normally I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and give it a go, not much to lose here, will sell it onwards otherwise if I don't enjoy it enough and pick up an ASUS if so. :)
Last edited by RPGWiZaRD on 19 Feb 2017, 15:51, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 19 Feb 2017, 15:46

Madpacket wrote:Wait so to be 100% clear here. The XL2450 acts like older BenQ monitors WRT strobing?

Therefore what Chief is saying about only a 2ms penalty is the about the best we can expect?

If so that's awesome.
This will be the case assuming if we're successfully able to use strobing with a double-sized Vertical Total (e.g. VT2160 for a 1080p signal) AND strobe phase adjusted to be 50% earlier (to keep up with the accelerated refresh cycle). The double-sized Vertical Total makes the graphics card transmit a 120Hz refresh cycle twice as fast over the video cable (1/240sec) to the screen.

Double VT (VT2160p+) combined with strobing, combined with early strobe phase (brought 50% earlier), will halve the strobing input lag penalty to approximately ~2ms. (OK, well, ~3ms if you add the 1ms GtG on top of it, but pixels become visible enough for the beginning of the 100-to-200ms human reaction time window, after around 25%-50% of the GtG, so 2.25ms would effectively round off to 2ms :D ).

I think the ideal ultra-low-latency-strobing-VSYNC-ON setup is the following:
  1. One of the 240Hz monitors that supports double-size vertical totals (VT2160p+) via Custom Resolution Utilities
  2. Run at 120Hz (in order to enable strobing blur-reduction at 120Hz)
  3. Adjust strobe phase to flash 1/240sec earlier. In theory, ghosting is not affected much because the frame delivery has already finished in 1/2 the time.
    In theory, the monitor should already automatically set optimal strobe phase, while reducing lag, during ULMB + Large Vertical Totals.
    You might have a *tiny* amount of strobe crosstalk along the bottom edge of the refresh cycle, but that's OK.
  4. Use one of the low-latency framerate limiters, such as in-game Source Engine fps_max and set it slightly lower than Hz.
    Set the frame cap fractionally lower than refresh rate (e.g. fps_max 119.9 combined with 120.0Hz VSYNC ON) for the lowest lag. Please note, actual refresh rate of monitor may not be exactly 120.0Hz, so make sure to verify the fractional refresh rate in the Custom resolution Utility, and then set the fps_max accordingly.
= In theory, only ~2ms more lag than VSYNC OFF.

Real world might be bigger than that because of other ineffiencies (drivers, game engine, frame rate capping inefficiencies, etc). But if the rendering chain is pulled off perfectly enough, the latency penalty is shrunk to an amount small enough that it is very useful to competitive players that like the blur reduction features. It can eliminate most (even if not all) of the VSYNC ON latency penalty. Some experimentation will be needed, but this would be the closest we've achieved to a dream "VSYNC ON" setup.

Caveat on Monitor Overriding Behaviours on Large Vertical Totals
LightBoots and ULMB already does internal scan-acceleration logic to artificially create large blanking interval pauses between refresh cycles (to let LCD GtG transitions settle before flashing the backlight). Whatever logic the monitor uses in ULMB, must be designed to adapt correctly with Large Vertical Totals, in order to get latency-reducing benefits of Large Vertical Totals. Even if scan-acceleration is already being done with ULMB, the fact that large Vertical Totals cause quicker delivery of refresh cycles to the monitor, should allow ULMB to begin the scanout sooner (or even in real-time, if it calculates predicted LCD scanout is going to be equal or sloewr than the large-VT-accelerated frame delivery speed over video cable). There's a BIG caveat; the monitor LCD panel scanout must be accelerated to keep up with the larger Vertical Total. (The top-to-bottom refresh scanning effect you see in high speed video at http://www.blurbusters.com/lightboost/video ...) i.e. the screen should "wipe" top-to-bottom in 1/240sec during a 120Hz refresh cycle. Otherwise, this lag-reducing trick won't work. Not all monitors will adapt to a faster panel top-to-bottom refresh during the Large Vertical Total trick (the BENQ XL2420Z and XL2720Z have lower lag during VT1350 than default VT).
NOTE: Remember not to increase Vertical Back Porch too much because that will increase lag in increments of 1/(Vertical Total)th of 1/(refresh rate)th of a second, for every count added to Vertical Back Porch. The transmission of a refresh cycle from computer to display over the cable, begins with the Verticdal Back Porch (since Vertical Back Porch is equivalent to the first week of the "date calendar" metaphor of Custom Resolution signal timings, of the sequential delivery of pixels over a video cable between a graphics card and a computer monitor.

Note: If you have a DisplayPort connection, it's possible for a graphics card to deliver the frame to the monitor at full DisplayPort bandwidth, regardless of the actually used refresh rate. GSYNC apparently does this; each frame is delivered at the same speed as the maximum refresh rate the monitor supports, regardless of the current refresh rate running.
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Trip
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by Trip » 19 Feb 2017, 18:53

RPGWiZaRD wrote:As long as it's capable to produce a good result (crosstalk wise) using Blur Reduction at 160~180Hz or so range I'm interested. The lower refresh rate setting might even be more suitable for my specs as well.
That particular range does not cope well with increasing vertical total for some strange reason. At 150hz you can put it as high as the bandwidth cap of the pixel clock is (600mhz). At 190hz you can also go to the bandwidth cap. But for some reason if you go to around 180hz it does not want to increase the vt. So yeah just keep that in mind. But I think at 200hz and a decent area setting crosstalk is still not very bothersome you can see it in test ufo but in game you dont notice it as much because you look at the middle anyway.

The cut off point is around 182 hz and you can get a vt of 1582 at that setting. If you use area 100 and intensity 15 practically the whole screen is free of cross talk.

eveneveneven
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Re: Presenting the ZOWIE XL2540 240Hz

Post by eveneveneven » 20 Feb 2017, 04:42

Greetings!

I keep reading that the V1 firmware has a bug, then someone suggests that this is not the case?

I've been asking stores if they can confirm what firmware they have in stock and none can confirm they have V2. One of the stores responded that there were no bugs in V1, but I'd rather hear it here :)

Should I wait until I can find an upgraded one, or is V1 safe for blur reduction?

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