ULMB on 100hz Laptop Monitor

Ask about motion blur reduction in gaming monitors. Includes ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur), NVIDIA LightBoost, ASUS ELMB, BenQ/Zowie DyAc, Turbo240, ToastyX Strobelight, etc.
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Re: ULMB on 100hz Laptop Monitor

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 23 May 2017, 16:07

77mas wrote:Does anyone know of any laptops that are capable of ultra low motion blur (ULMB), lightboost, or some other tech from reducing motion blur? If so, does it actually work well??
At this moment, I don't have a list of which laptops have strobe-capable laptop LCDs, but there was at least one that supported LightBoost (but requires a 3D emitter to enable).
77mas wrote:Of the current crop of new 240hz gaming monitors (the ASUS PG258Q, the ACER XB252Q (or XB272), and the BENQ/ZOWIE 240hz) does any meaningfully outperform the others (when properly adjusted) in terms of motion blur performance? I do realize that the ASUS PG258Q and the ACER XB252Q use the same panel and would thus likely be similar. And does the best of these new monitors meaningfully outperform the best of the previous monitors in terms of motion blur performance?
I just posted a long reply in a different thread, which I will re-quote here for convenience. From the Official List of Gaming Monitors and List of GSYNC Monitors, both the XB252Q and XB272 use ULMB:
Chief Blur Buster wrote:Identical Panels
-- Both the PG258Q, the XL2540 and the XL2546 are 240Hz 1ms TN panels.
-- They vary in monitor motherboard/firmware implementations, which affect features such as overdrive, VRR, and blur reduction features.

Motion Blur is Identical in non-strobed non-VRR modes
(VRR being Variable Refresh Rate, aka GSYNC or FreeSync). When running in non-VRR non-strobed modes, they are darn near identical in amount of motion blur. XL2546 is a DyAc model which will have Blur Reduction enabled by default. In non-strobed modes with similar overdrive settings, they're all darn near exactly identical in motion blur (much like identicalness of 144Hz 1ms TN-panel monitors).

GSYNC vs FreeSync
Little is known in quality differences, but reportedly GSYNC at 240Hz is currently performing better than the unoptimized Adaptive-Sync implementation (no variable overdrive currently implemented on this specific model). If VRR is a priority at 240Hz, the cards currently favour GSYNC at this time. If you don't plan to use VRR, then this isn't relevant. For 300+fps VSYNC OFF operation, GSYNC becomes less important, but when you ramp up the detail levels, e.g. games that don't 240fps consistently -- then GSYNC is more advantageous than during 144Hz days -- when you've got mondoo headroom to 240Hz and newer games like Overwatch that can wildly fluctuate 50fps-200fps... Your decision whether or not to use GSYNC/FreeSync should be based on whether you're consistently running framerates below refresh rate. If you are, then it's a setting worth trying.

ULMB versus Blur Reduction versus DyAc
- PG258Q uses ULMB, XL2540 uses unadvertised "Blur Reduction", and XL2546 uses advertised "DyAc". ULMB is easier to set up with minimal strobe crosstalk out of the box, while Blur Reduction/DyAc is much more adjustable. BenQ/Zowie will let you enable strobing at >144Hz at the tradeoff of more strobe crosstalk, but for refreshrate-versus-refreshrate, you can get roughly similar quality (e.g. 144Hz versus 144Hz) after about an hour of calibration (either via Service Menu or via Strobe Utility), or aim for a higher strobed refresh rate instead to reduce lag.
- The new version of Strobe Utility now has experimential support for XL2540 and probably works with XL2546 too.
- All three monitors have strobe length adjustments (very subtle improvement in motion blur, for large tradeoff of brightness -- see LightBoost 10% vs 50% vs 100%).

Blur Reduction Lag
This is complex to answer, but loosely speaking: The higher refresh rate for blur reduction, the lower lag the blur reduction (strobing) will cause. ULMB's 144Hz limit and fixed strobe phase limit -- creates more non-adjustable input lag than BenQ/Zowie. As a result, strobed input lag is much more adjustable, down to less than +2ms added input lag average by strobing at a higher Hz (with somewhat increase strobe crosstalk). If strobed input lag is far more important to you, BenQ/Zowie is hard to beat if you're able to tolerate slightly more strobe crosstalk for lower-lag higher-Hz blur reduction.

Lowest possible strobed lag, while avoiding microstutters
Blur reduction modes can amplify visibility of microstutters. For maximum fluidity you'll want either framerate matching framerate=Hz) or ultrahigh VSYNC OFF (>500fps preferably) to avoid the amplified microstutter effect of blur reduction. Quality is obviously best at VSYNC ON. But that's not a good option competitively. At least, you can turn on/off blur reduction. If you want to competitively play with blur reduction -- aka lowest lag with blur reduction, without the amplified microstutters -- you'll want to use VSYNC OFF and attempt as much overkill amounts of framerate you can get (e.g. 500fps-1000fps, now very easily doable with CS:GO+1080Ti) -- at a higher refresh rate such as 180Hz or 240hz -- and tolerate the increased amounts of strobe crosstalk in exchange for the world's lowest strobed lag.

Links to Amazon:
- ASUS PG258Q
- BenQ Zowie XL2540
- BenQ Zowie XL2546
That said, the dark horse here is the Acer XB272 which is the first 27 inch 240Hz gaming monitor -- a different panel. Time will tell how the 27" panel benchmarks, but generally speaking, motion blur differences are quite similiar (nonstrobed-vs-nonstrobed as well as strobed-vs-strobed). The details will be in other things like color quality, overdrive quality, VRR quality, etc.

Regardless (at least in the case of XL2540) 240Hz monitors do have, on average, significantly better blur reduction performance (higher Hz strobing capability = lower lag strobing). The BenQ/Zowies are generally very friendly to reduced strobe crosstalk with tweaks (such as Large Vertical Totals).
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