I FIXED IT!!!!!!!!!

[Kanipshun]

I know these posts are a dime a dozen and probably overlooked on this forum BUT I HONESTLY FIXED IT. Yes, I know it's only a day and a half of perfect input and clarity but something I suspected a while back may be the cause. I'm going to describe dome details that lead me to today.
5 years ago I purchased some Dell 2716 144hz monitor and never noticed I had an issue until certain moments I did not. Certain times I would have almost ZERO mouse lag, color quality looked better and deeper, and the aliasing I would notice in most games was completely gone.
Then, the next time I started my PC, I would be back to square 1. I was convinced I had bad DP cables so I tried quite a few of them. I could never hit the sweet spot unless the pc was on for a while (6 hours maybe). I couldn't understand why it was happening. At first I was so naive that I thought it was my mouse pad.
Upgraded CPU and GPU and nothing changed.
About a year and a half ago, I purchased a Dell S2721 DGF. Maybe 165hz would work better? Seemed to work fine for a few days but then the problem was back.
Upgraded CPU and GPU, PSU, MOBO, and case. This didn't seem to help.
I noticed sometimes that changing my windows color profile or changing Nvidia scaling behavior (No scaling, display scaling, gpu scaling), or a ddu and driver install would make things better temporarily and sometimes fix the problem (if the PC was on for several hours). I also noticed that sometimes doing a factory restore on my Monitor and changing colors on the OSD would sometimes fix the problem.
One of the strangest things I noticed was, the color of my windows background would make my mouse feel completely different. If I changed it to white or off-white, it seemed to make my mouse feel smooth. I went back to thinking its a Windows Color Calibration issue. Once again, I noticed changing color profiles or reverting to the default profile would change the way things felt.
I downloaded a program called novideo srgb and I had some good luck with changing the inputs and color profiles, clamping and unclamping.
I was confused and lost all over again. The more I chased the fix, the further I seemed to get from it.
So thanks to Amazon's return policy, I tried a few different monitors thinking that maybe there was just something completely wrong with Dell. I went through around 5 different monitors before I landed on LG 27gp850-b. This monitor for some reason felt different albeit not perfect. I was content that it was better and decided to keep it. For some reason, I kept preferring the colors on my old Dell s2721DGF so I kept swapping them out. For some reason, the LG was suddenly not much smoother and was getting worse.
THEN...
I had a hard crash and was stuck in automatic repair bootloop. I had to install windows fresh from an image on a flash drive. VOILA, it was fixed (or so I thought). It was smooth for a few days until it wasn't again. AT this point I'm ready to give up and just accept the fact that I'm another one of these people that will always have this problem. Yesterday for the hell of it, I downloaded DDU and did a clean driver install.
THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET STRANGE...
Anytime in the past I have done a DDU wipe, with no drivers installed except the IGPU, it would show up in my native resolution 1440p. I could never understand why it wouldnt default to 720 or even 1080.
This driver wipe restarted with my PC in 720p.
Installed the latest driver and everything is perfect. I knew right away though my fingers are still crossed.
I'm still perplexed but I think the reason my new monitor kept getting borked was because I kept using the Dell by swapping them out of using it as a second monitor. For some reason I think the communication between the Dell and windows is causing some sort of hybrid resolution that registers as 1440 but is scaled to do so.
One more thing to note. I'm not sure if this factors in or how it is related but I think it is relevant.
When I turn on my PC with the LG, my MOBO is large.
When I turn on my PC with the Dell, the logo is much smaller????
I will keep everyone posted and of course my fingers are still crossed but I can assure you the Dell monitor is not going anywhere near my PC.
I am sorry, maybe this isn't "The answer" but I assure you that my computer feels completely different than it has ever felt.

[Shade7]

Hey- this sounds a lot like what I'm experiencing, and I also have the same large/small font fluctuations on some boots during the MOBO logo screen.

I have to see how I can fix it with my current monitor (ASUS vg258qm 280hz)

BTW: What did you do different this time that lead to the fix? Still seems like it happened by chance.

This forum has visited the topic of color profiles & input lag before, combing through the older threads rn.

[xShino]

I don't understand the solution.

How can we replicate this? Buying new monitor? Using DDU?

Would appreciate if you could tell us. If you don't know how/why then I guess that's fine too.

[Headglitch123]

Whenever I reinstall windows or my nvidia driver, gaming is completely different, its smooth, sensitivity feels much sharper and faster, causing my aim to perform way better.

But! Its a temporarily effect. So everytime my game feels slow or choppy, i just reinstall windows again to have that good feeling, for a day

One thing that made my system better is a rollback to a previous bios version. My motherboard is a asrock b450m steel legend and on bios version p4.30 my dpc latency was freaking 'high' My boot-time was between 20-30 even with fast boot enabled. Now i'm on p3.30 and dpc latency (and less spikes) is significantly lower. Boot-time decreased to 10-13 with fast boot enabled. Asrock also recommends not to update bios if system if performing well.

However even tho this made my system feel better, this didn't do anything in apex legends (only game i play regularly atm) it did in other games. Apex Legends is so weird, out of knowwhere it feels blazing fast and 2 hours later it feels slow and a microstutter hell.

[netarangi]

Sounds very similar to what I have been through for past few years (including the endless upgrade cycle).

I've ended up at the same theory you have. Something to do with resolution or scaling settings being reverted or set through drivers. On a fresh install things are fine and smooth (or should I say consistent), as soon as drivers install then things go haywire.

I'll have games default me to 1440p even when monitor is set to 4k. I'll need to go settings and change to 1440p, save, swap back to 4k, save.

Games feel like they are slow with tiny input lag, even when the game says its running 144hz..

[ccfan]

Similar issue here. Whenever i hit "reset" on my monitor's OSD (it just sets all colors,brightness levels,aspect ratio scaling etc. to default) while in game, everything feels smoother. I have to do this every time I launch a game even if i don't change the monitor settings from the last reset. Good news is that figuring this out after seeing this thread pretty much solved my issues...the only problem is resetting every time can be a bit annoying. Using a optix mag24c and DVI cable for reference.