The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

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axaro1
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The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by axaro1 » 17 Aug 2020, 06:23

Due to having every single discussion about this monitor scattered around many different and often unrelated threads I decided to create this thread with the sole purpose of sharing settings and tips for the VG259QM.

- OD120
I'll start by sharing a secret overdrive.

As a premise I want to specify that this secret overdrive, as far as you might erroneously tell by the name, doesn't scale linearly in terms of overshoot, it actually provides less overshoot than OD80 and OD100, this is extremely good at 280hz, at this refresh rate OD60 provides no overshoot with the downside of slow dark transitions and OD80 has no ghosting but suffers from noticeable overshoot.

Now take the best from OD60 and OD80 and you'll get OD120, it is something in between these two overdrives, the perfect sweet spot, there is no ghosting regardless of the speed of the ufo(I generally test at 1440pps to make sure that fast transitions are inside the 240hz window) and the amount of overshoot is noticeably lower than with OD80.

OD120 is achievable by entering the service menu ( press the power button and hold menu (5-way), then press menu again and it will pop up on top left, there will be a small "F" for the service menu, click on it)

Image

Now go UP with the 5-way joystick (If you scroll down it will change GameVisual Mode to sRGB->9300k->....) and click on OD Strong Weak, if it's ON by default set it to OFF and back to ON.

OD Strong Weak OFF = OD0
OD Strong Weak ON = OD120

Image
Notice the buggy overdrive bar :lol:
Image


The firmware used for this guide is MCM104, newer products are shipped with MCM105, there are reports of early batches running MCM103, none knows the actual difference between these 3 firmwares and not a single firmware has been publicly released by Asus as of 17/08/2020

It was interesting to see the values changing when setting different PreEmphasis and Voltage Swing levels, altough I don't see any practical benefit in using these two settings unless you are using a cheap or long Displayport cable

- 240hz 10bit trick
As stated in many reviews the VG259QM is natively an 8 bit panel but it can display 10 bit (8bit + FRC) at 240hz with a simple trick.
1)Open CRU
2a)f you are currently running your monitor at 240hz click on your Detailed Resolution and set the Timings to Automatic - LCD Reduced.
2b)If you are currently running your monitor at 280hz you have to click on Extension Blocks, click on the 239.XXX Detailed Resolution and set it to LCD Reduced.
You cannot run 10bit at 280hz but you can switch Windows refresh rate to 240hz (without the need to disable Overclocking in the OSD) to automatically switch from 280hz 8 bit to 240hz 10 bit.
3) Reboot or run restart/restart64 which are contained in the CRU pack.

I don't have an Nvidia GPU so I don't know if you have to manually enable 10 bit after this, if you have an AMD card open the Radeon Software -> Display-> Color Depth and make sure that it's 10bit (if you want to use it for games go into Games -> Global Graphics -> Advanced -> ENABLE 10 bit Pixel Format.

Now you can watch 10 bit x265 content with no banding at all without having to rely on dithering that is just an ugly workaround to make 8 bit look slightly better.
I highly recommend using something like MPC-HC/MPC-BE + MadVR to make good use of high bitdepth processing, trust me, you'll stop downloading x264 after this trick! :lol:

- For Amd GPU owners...
The native Freesync range of this monitor is limited to 48-240, you need to manually set it to 48-280 with CRU to make it work above 240hz.
This monitor is still not Freesync certified to this day, the 144hz version of this exact same monitor, the VG259Q, is Freesync certified.

Keep the thread civil with constructive informations and feel free to share everything, from 280hz windows/game implementation to more technical informations.

EDIT
This edit is a duplicate of my comment which I put in the main post to make it easier for users to get the info without scrolling pages

Rtings tested OD120:

Update 08/28/2020: There's a hidden overdrive setting of '120'. It can be accessed through the service menu, as described here. Despite the name, it's actually between the 60 and 80 settings, but we don't recommend it, as there's too much overshoot.


They tested at 280hz and the % inside the 3.57ms window is actually 100%, the amount of overshoot is just 8.6%(which is inflated by a single bad transition from 0 to 20) , which is actually quite good and barely noticeable both ingame and during motion testings.

90% of the people running this monitor at 280hz already used OD80 because it was way clearer than OD60, the average overshoot of OD80 is 19.3% which is 2x more than OD120 and it affects 46% of transitions compared to 30% of OD120, but with 2 to 5 times higher overshoot levels in each transition.

Overall OD120 is the best overdrive at 280hz but OD80 is still viable at this refresh rate.

With OD120 if you crank up the shadow boost, this will get rid of most of the color inversion artifacts in transitions from RED/GREEN/BLUE on a bright background and you will definitely see the benefits of 1.9ms AVG G2G.
With OD80 at 280hz there's a faint 1 pixel wide corona on the left side of the Ufo on the 1st and 2nd strip which surprisingly doesn't increase in length even if you increase the speed from 960pps to 1440pps, on the third strip the corona is 2 pixels wide but at the same time it's less noticeable due to the white corona being difficult to differentiate from the light blue background.
Changing the color of the Ufo background results in lower artifacts compared to the standard Cyan background, it's really interesting to see how the blue background is completely unaffected by overshoot or motion blur with OD80.

- Manipulating Shadow Boost to decrease overshoot with OD120

You can actually enable shadow boost to speed up this single transition (I recommend level 2), try it yourself with an ufotest!
Level 2 is enough, going higher is pointless unless you use Shadow Boost to have a competitive advantage, I used Frog Pursuit's traffic light to confirm that LvL2 completely deny color inversion due to overshoot, making OD120 with Shadow Boost LVL2 both ghosting free and overshoot free, this is the perfect overdrive tweak.

So how does it work?

By increasing Shadow Boost it's like if you are shifting Start(%) and End(%).

By looking at the response time table of OD120 you can see that 0 to 20, which is the worst transition, with some degree of black equalizing provided by Shadow Boost will behave more like 10 to 30 or even 20 to 40, and it ends up noticeably reducing artifacts without worsening overdrive performance.


OD120

Image

Now compare it with OD80
Image

These are my final settings, I will not change them anymore since I found the sweetspot:

-280hz
-Adaptive Sync OFF (It truly comes down to personal preference, I find that at 280hz tearing is very very hard to notice, much less than at 240hz)
-OD120
-Shadow boost LVL2 (up to 3, keep it off for content consumption)
-FPS Mode (saturation 47) (or alternatively Racing Mode with RTings icm profile if you care about color accuracy)
-Brightness 70-90 during the day, 45-60 when it's dark.
-Contrast 80
-VividPixel lvl 0 (or 25/50 depending on personal preference)

If you want to double check that your monitor is running at 10 bit open the OSD -> System Setup -> Information -> Color Depth, it should be set to 10 bps.


This is as good as it can get on this monitor, an average of 2.6ms of Rise/Fall with no overshoot at 280hz is peak performance for high refresh rate IPS panels

ELMB-Sync UFOTEST
VG259QM 280hz ELMB-Sync ON (Adaptive Sync OFF) - Reference Ufotests Results
VG259QM 280hz ELMB-Sync ON (Adaptive Sync OFF) - Reference Ufotests Results
Immagine 2022-01-13 122851.png (232.05 KiB) Viewed 127281 times
ELMB-Sync with Shadow Boost 3, slightly better results
ELMB-Sync with Shadow Boost 3, slightly better results
Screenshot_20220113-124147.jpg (192.58 KiB) Viewed 127275 times
Last edited by axaro1 on 05 Dec 2023, 16:30, edited 29 times in total.

Max_hz
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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by Max_hz » 17 Aug 2020, 09:26

Thanks, nice find! I wil try it in game and looks how this "OD 120" feels, at ufotest for me it looks like between OD 60 and OD 80.
Must be a bug in the FW nevertheless it could be very useful, will report later.
Good idea to make a exclusive thread for the VG259QM, btw I have FW MCM104 also.
In use: Asus VG259QM IPS 240-280hz - Hanns-G HS233 TN 120hz
Used before: LG 24LG600 TN 144hz - HP Omen X 25f TN 240hz - ViewSonic XG2402 TN 144hz - Asus VG259Q IPS 144hz

milojr21
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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by milojr21 » 17 Aug 2020, 09:58

hmm interesting here is my service menu on my VG279QM which 1200D seems to work but I haven't actually tested it yet
Last edited by milojr21 on 28 Sep 2020, 11:42, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by DukeDice929 » 17 Aug 2020, 14:56

VG259QM with MCM105 firmware. This OD 120 thing works! Awesome! Definitely will try it in games.
Curious why Asus didn't implement it by default. :?
My bad English :0

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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 17 Aug 2020, 15:11

I've found that the OD Gain range often needs to be wider for higher refresh rates. Some monitors have such a narrow OD Gain range, and others have wider OD Gain ranges.

Ideally, I want to see manufacturers implement OD Gain from 0 to 100 in 1 increments (brightness slider style), rather than steps of 20 (like ASUS AMA) or worse (only 2 or 3 overdrive settings).

Blur Busters is a fan of monitors with at least 100 overdrive levels, because:
--> Some users prefer no overdrive at all (vision gets distracted by coronas, slowing them down)
--> Some users want super-excess blatant overdrive (BenQ AMA Premium) because it's like a tracer-bullet assist feature
--> Freezing homes (artic) will slow pixel response, requiring slightly higher overdrive
--> Hot homes (tropics) will speed pixel response, requiring slightly less overdrive
--> Some users have a preference to faster pixel response with slight coronas
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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by RLCSContender* » 17 Aug 2020, 16:01

I need to see a UFO pursuit ghosting test. If it has overshoot, then its a solid pass. Overshoot coronas are annoying as hell. I would rather have ghosting than overshoot. Ghosting at 240hz isn't even as bad as ghosting on 144hz. Less persistence(motion blur) mitigate any form of ghosting at 240hz and above.

Based off my tests, ghosting is very forgiveable thanks to MPRT. Also ghosting generally blends in with the background.

However ANY form of inverse ghosting is not good. especially of you play fast paced games. Jve ran thousands of tests and knverse gjosting is among the most annoying motion artifacts

But yes, OD 60 is around 3.6-3.8 g2g and due to the 1200:1 contrast ratio of the 24.5" ips OU optronics monitors, blacks slightly have slower transitionz. The vg259qm OD 60 isn't as well tuned as the msi mag251rx on OD fast, or aw2521hfl on OD fast. The vg259qm slightly has more asymmetrical blur.

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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by Romiyo » 18 Aug 2020, 00:01

axaro1 wrote:
17 Aug 2020, 06:23

  • OD120
    I'll start by sharing a secret overdrive.

    As a premise I want to specify that this secret overdrive doesn't scale linearly in terms of overshoot, it actually provides less overshoot than OD80 and OD100, this is extremely good at 240hz, at this refresh rate OD60 provides no overshoot but slow dark transitions and OD80 has no ghosting but noticeable overshoot.

    Now take the best from OD60 and OD80 and you'll get OD120, it is something in between these two overdrives, the perfect sweet spot, there is no ghosting regardless of the speed of the ufo(I generally test at 1440pps to make sure that fast transitions are inside the 240hz window) and the amount of overshoot is noticeably lower than with OD80.
Does this secret overdrive work well with 280hz? How come 240hz is always mentioned with this monitor when everyone knows it can overclock to 280hz? Is there some issue with 280hz that I havent heard about?

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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by axaro1 » 18 Aug 2020, 04:03

Romiyo wrote:
18 Aug 2020, 00:01
Does this secret overdrive work well with 280hz? How come 240hz is always mentioned with this monitor when everyone knows it can overclock to 280hz? Is there some issue with 280hz that I havent heard about?
OD80 still has some minor overshoot at 280hz, OD120 is overshoot free with very very minor ghosting in dark transitions.
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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by PixelDuck87 » 18 Aug 2020, 07:17

Rtings got early access review up for VG259QM https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/ ... ng-vg259qm. Anyone got insiders membership with them?

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Re: The Official *Asus VG259QM* Owners Thread (+ Secret Overdrive)

Post by Alpha » 18 Aug 2020, 09:44

PixelDuck87 wrote:
18 Aug 2020, 07:17
Rtings got early access review up for VG259QM https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/ ... ng-vg259qm. Anyone got insiders membership with them?
Was curious to hear if there were any differences with the 27 variant.

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