FG2421 massive ghosting issue

[mmmu]

Hey, I know talking about FG2421 is probably like beating a dead horse, but I bought one of these bad boys use - supposed to be a good panel, well - I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. I mean it is fine for the regular issues, the bleed and crosshatching is negligible. I was pretty satisfied when I set it up because it looked pretty nice indeed. Then I fired up some games. Holy shit.

I've never seen ghosting this bad, I see noticeable trailing on everything that's different color than the pixels next to it. I guess there's nothing that could be done to reduce this since there's no overdrive settings or anything. I guess I finally have to bury the dreams of owning this monitor - even if I'm stuck with this used one now.

I quickly grabbed a shitty photo of the testufo with my phone just because you can see it's horrible even with that photo. It actually looks worse than the picture shows. You can actually see the trail of the ufo coming behind it for several centimeters, even somewhat visible on the photo. Warmup time doesn't do a thing, it looks just the same after 5 minutes of use as it does after 5 hours. Motion clarity huh. Yeah.

Edit: Studying it in testufo's big invasion mode you can easily see the problem is much more severe on the left side of the monitor and the ghosting is way less as the ufos reach the right side.

Edit: It's actually looking similar to Chief's picture of the cold FG2421 a few years back (the trailing is very similar on my monitor):

Cold and warm pursuit camera images of the Eizo FG2421.
Photos are of 960 pixels/second object at http://www.testufo.com/ghosting using a sideways-moving camera following motion, 1/30second exposure capturing 4 refresh cycles.

EIZO FG2421 ghosting, when cold:



EIZO FG2421 ghosting, after warming up for 30 minutes:



As you can see, there is still some ghosting (mostly due to the faint double-strobe), but much less than when cold.

Edit: Warmup issue

[Glide]

That blue ghosting is normal for that type of panel (Sharp UV²A) when it's cold.
I have a Sony TV using one of those panels and it does the same thing.

However it should definitely go away after the screen has been on for 30+ minutes unless the room you're in is very cold.
As for the other ghosting, that's typical for any VA panel.
VA LCDs have terrible response times for many color transitions - 10x that of IPS panels or TN.

[mmmu]

Yeah, I guess. Kind of figured a 120hz screen - VA or not - would look better in motion than my U2312HM. Sure the Dell is more blurry, but I'd take that blur any day over the smeary image the FG2421 leaves behind. Ghosting seems to bother me way more than blur (and I hate blur). Guess it comes down to preference then.

Edit: Warmup issue, fixed after monitor is properly warmed

[Chief Blur Buster]

During the winter, the blue trailing suddenly disappears (like "click") after about 20-30 minutes after turning on the monitor. I'm not sure what the blue trailing is, but I wonder if it's a electronically thermosistor-controlled overdrive algorithm change. (since the blue trailing often suddenly disappears after warm up, where the panel feels warm to touch, not cool to touch).

People have different sensitivities to motion blur. Some people here even get more headaches from motion blur than flicker/ghosting issues, and prefer it greatly.

I personally was happy with the amount after it fully warmed up, but sensitivity varies greatly. It is by all means, not the best performer of Blur Reduction being a VA panel, but I've also seen much worse even on a TN panel.

If the blue-colored trailing stays stuck permanently, even in Turbo240 mode, after fully warmed up, then perhaps there is a problem. Try leaving your monitor on (and disable the sleep/screensaver of your computer too!) for a few hours, as a diagnostic test, with brightness set to maximum (warms up faster), and then check for the blue trailing again. It is something that only shows up during warm-up for most FG2421 users, and it takes up to 30 minutes for it disappear in winter. It sometimes disappears almost immediately in the summer.

How old is your FG2421?

P.S. Once the blue-colored trailing is out of the way (hopefully), then to get maximum enjoyment out of motion blur reduction in games -- you want a framerate matching refreshrate -- combined with a good 1000Hz+ mouse, since the mouse can become the microstutter weak link (if your mouse isn't good enough, mouse turn left/right looks more micro-stuttery than keyboard strafe left/right). Blur reduction amplifies the visibility of microstutters, so microstutter control is more important to see/enjoy the benefits of blur reduction features in monitors.

[mmmu]

Hey Chief, thanks for your reply. The blue trail ghosting is definitely less after keeping monitor @ 100% brightness, especially at Turbo240. My room isn't the warmest, so maybe it needs a lot of warmup time. Some games, like Overwatch, look real smooth @ 120fps with Turbo120 on now.

Oh, I've been wondering for a long time, if a game is too demanding and you wont reach anywhere near 120fps, say you're hitting 50, is it better to put monitor on 60hz or still keep it at 120hz?

This FG2421 looks to be one of the earliest manufactured. Not sure how long they even kept these in production, but this one is from Sept 2013. Looks like it's been ran 6900 hours by the previous owner.
About the mouse - I'm running a Logitech G402 @ 1000hz polling rate, should be mighty fine.

[Chief Blur Buster]

If your framerate varies a lot, use the highest refresh rate but non-strobed. (It generally looks better without Turbo240)

If you can match 120fps @ 120Hz most of the time for a particular game, definitely keep Turbo240 on. Blur reduction shines a beautiful song for smooth framerate-refreshrate matched motion.

Smearing is similar to ghosting, and could be various overdrive artifacts such as coronas. See LCD Overdrive Artifacts as one example. Many LCDs use various tricks to speed up very slow pixel transitions, and it creates side effects like coronas, smearing, ghosting, etc. So instead of a bigger motion blur, you see a little bit less motion blur plus odd behaviour like wrong colors. Sometimes you can adjust this as an overdrive setting in a panel, but not always, and it's often a pick-your-poison setting in many LCD computer monitors.

Everybody's sensitivity is also different. Some users instantly notice motion blur, while others instantly notice poor colors, etc.

[mmmu]

Cheers Chief. Yeah, monitor's are such tricky business. Pros and cons all around, and I guess what one sees and feels on a monitor varies wildly from person to person. One person can't stand something while other doesn't even notice it and vice versa. Crazy business.