Acer XF250Q Frameskipping + Ghosting

[coldrushy]

Hi all,

I've been lurking for awhile, but wanted to share something for those who search these forums without posting. This is more of an information dump than anything.

I recently purchased 3 Acer XF250Q (240hz) monitors: 1 was brand new from Acer.com and the other 2 were certified refurbished from the Acerrecertified.com. The 2 refurbished monitors looked brand new. The manufacturer date of these 3 monitors were July, August, & October 2019, respectively.

Each monitor had horrendous frameskipping issues and horrible ghosting problems. I attempted to fix the frameskipping issues with CRU and the many documented potential fixes highlighted by the users of this forum. Turning on FreeSync (enabling G-Sync) or down-clocking the refresh rate to around 220-230hz were the only two actions that resulted in a passed frameskipping test.

However, even after passing the frameskipping test, the in-game experience (CS:GO) was just awful -- regardless of the combination of settings used (GSYNC + VSYNC; GSYNC + VSYNC OFF; VSYNC, etc.). My conclusion was that while I was passing the frameskipping test, I was still struggling with overall performance issues (stutters, choppiness, lag, blurriness, ghosting, etc.). I suspect users of this forum could come up with a technical explanation for these performance issues, but for now, I will describe it generically as performance issues.

At this point, I decided that the juice was no longer worth the squeeze -- even if I somehow managed to "fix" the performance issues.

When I called Acer & Acer Recertified to request a refund of the monitors, I told them that the monitor was suffering from horrendous frame skipping. Each entity, without a fight, sent me a pre-paid shipping label to return free of charge. I had to ask for it with Acer.com, but the Re-certified folks didn't even hesitate and preemptively offered to send me the pre-paid shipping labels.

I was really surprised by these interactions. In my experience, getting these companies to pay for return shipping is very difficult. I interpreted this as: Acer is aware of these issues and simply can't fix this issue with this specific model. It's absolutely plausible that both entities just have great customer service -- and that's why I received pre-paid shipping labels -- but, on average, this hasn't been my experience in the past.

Anyway, the purpose of this post, really, is to provide some information for future searchers seeking information on the Acer XF250Q model.

Hope this helps (and thank you to the users on this website who have put in a lot of time to create such a useful website)!

[RealNC]

3 240hz displays at the same time sounds like a tall order. You're asking for a combined total output of 720FPS. It sounds like hiccups and stutters are to be expected.

[coldrushy]

Thank you for your note.Just to clarify, I was not trying to use these together as one screen. And these screens were tested individually.

[coldrushy]

Actually, this raises a new question for me. Does your reply suggest that simply having 3 240hz monitors hooked up to 1 GPU would be resource consuming?

In other words, if I'm only using 1 to play CS:GO, and the other 2 are simply just for desktop work -- should I be disconnecting the other 2 monitors from the GPU while playing CS:GO? Or did you think that i was syncing up 3 monitors and playing CS:GO across all 3?

[Chief Blur Buster]

Actually, this raises a new question for me. Does your reply suggest that simply having 3 240hz monitors hooked up to 1 GPU would be resource consuming?

In other words, if I'm only using 1 to play CS:GO, and the other 2 are simply just for desktop work -- should I be disconnecting the other 2 monitors from the GPU while playing CS:GO? Or did you think that i was syncing up 3 monitors and playing CS:GO across all 3?

It shouldn't be necessary, provided:
(A) CS:GO is running in full-screen exclusive mode
(B) No windows are running on the 2nd and 3rd monitors, or only static windows (no animations, not even a sisngle pixel) such as Windows Notepad

You can test other stuff like videos and browsers and streaming; however, it may add slight amounts of lag to the primary. Your computer may be fast enough that the add-on is a sub-millisecond for many apps.

[coldrushy]

Very interesting and good to know. Thank you both for your replies!

[Chief Blur Buster]

Very interesting and good to know. Thank you both for your replies!

Let us know if Full Screen Exclusive for the primary works to solve your stutter problems (e.g. behave the same as a single monitor).

Even simply minimizing windows (Browser windows) works great. Or copying-pasting walkthroughs from browser to Word (no animated GIFs). That also solves refresh rate interference problems -- to avoid lag/stutter interference on primary -- every single pixel needs to be stationary on the secondaries. Whether it's 60Hz, 144Hz or 240Hz, same-Hz or different-Hz.

Now, if you want to run activity on all 3 -- then you can minimize issues -- the XF250Q has had many reported problems with frameskipping, sorry to hear about that. But as long as all 3 are running the same custom mode (exact same ToastyX numbers, right down to Pixel Clock), all 3 displays should be in sync. There must be no difference in any single number -- a single difference can amplify stutters/etc.