Acer XB270HA 27" 1080p 144hz

[freality]

Grats on your purchase, TrickStick. One other difference I forgot to mention is the Philips has static radial cross-hairs you can put on the screen for easier FPS aim. Kinda nice, but not enough for me to keep. In fact, I ran into quite an annoying issue in that it lost the ability to recognize 144Hz, even after installing the specific .ini driver for it (which the Acer didn't require at all). The Philips went back, and I kept the Acer. At least it sounds like the LED backlight hotspotting is absolutely consistent across panels, if nothing else! Yours sounds identical to mine and the Philips, so rest assured, there's not a better 27" 1080p 144Hz G-Sync panel we can get at this point.

I messed about with the ULMB Pulse Width setting on the Philips, and at least for me, it didn't seem to enhance the experience by lowering from 100 (other than to make it dimmer). Not sure if this is just something that only some people can notice, but I am someone who is very sensitive to CRT refresh rates and DLP rainbows, FWIW...a maxed out at 100 ULMB pulse width setting didn't distract me at all.

[xwidghet]

This monitor works...but there are some glaring issues which are unacceptable to me and I'm not sure how no one else has brought them up yet. They also make me wish at least one review site had reviewed it so that I would have known before hand before buying it and being stuck with it.

1. This monitor has a checkboard effect when changing colors. For example if you have a white square moving upwards on a black background, as it moves across black pixels every other pixel will turn the correct color faster making it look like a checkerboard if it's going fast enough. Things that are moving slowly will look like they have a dotted line above/below them as they move. This issue is worse at the top of the screen than it is at the bottom. If you have a black background and move your mouse across the top you see the pattern in it, but at the bottom it looks nearly perfect. I remember reading someone say that this monitor doesn't have this problem..but it clearly does.

This checkerboard effect completely ruins the 3D capability for me because I have to sit very far away for me to not notice it. It's also very noticeable on any flicker effects and 2D scrolling games. You can try to mitigate it by turning down overdrive but the effect is still there and you are unable to change the overdrive setting in 3D and ULMB modes. I fail to understand how a monitor can be made for "gaming", but looks awful if something is moving across the screen.

2. The power LED is very bright and is half covered up sorta-kinda by one of the menu buttons. You can see the LED to the right of the button, but you can also see it across the top of the button so long as you are not pressing it. This does not look very good and is not something I expected to see on a $700 monitor.

3. The top left and bottom right half edges of the screen have blueish backlight bleed.

4. The insides of the bezel are extremely reflective causing you to see small amounts of the screen on them. I almost want to tape a non-reflective material over them to fix it.

5. The mechanism for attaching the monitor to the base didn't seem to work correctly, even after screwing it in as far as it would go there was still a gap. This caused the monitor to wobble 10-20 degrees, but after adding washers to fill the space I was able to fix this problem.

6. Crosstalk in 3D mode is worse for moving objects. If you have a dark object on a light background there is only a small amount of crosstalk which is easily ignored. But once it moves that crosstalk becomes quite dark. On my old AW2310 monitor I could disable overdrive during 3D mode to fix this problem at the cost of having slightly worse crosstalk than it was before with static objects, but overdrive is locked on this monitor during 3D mode as I said before.

[TrickStick]

Thanks for the reply. In terms of adjusting the ulmb pulse maybe the current toggled settings 100 on down may not be that drastic on that panel. I can't confidently say as i have never owned a panel where i was able to toggle that settings. Nonetheless you said your sensitive to it and didn't see much of a difference leads me to believe as such. I think your right with the light bleed it is just an aspect currently we must deal with. I confess im a bit of a stickler to that type of stuff but im giving it the benefit of the due to the fact ulmb coupled with gsysnc is still a new technology and i was able to acquire it @ 500. The other reason i will stay with this is currently, my monitor has no dead pixels at least from the first few looks i had gave it and that is always a big plus in my book as your not granted that and alot of the warranties that come with these monitors require many dead in order to seek a replacement at no charge. It sounds to me the Phillips is some what of a hybrid in terms of features vs the Asus Rog and the Acer. It seems to seat itself some where in the middle outside the obvious difference in resolution on the Asus. All and all Gsync is great however that is also my gripe against this monitor. My eyes can tell my Gsync is on but it sure would have been nice if Acer would have added something physical or tangible on the monitor to let the user know that it indeed is activated and working. Maybe there is or will be a is a program i have yet to come across that will let the user know when its activated. Again thanks again for taking the time to post a comparison on these monitors as if yet your the only one that took the time to do it. Also did you happen to download the color profile for the Acer, if so what were your thoughts?

[xwidghet]

If you open the monitor menu and go to the information tab you can see the current resolution, refresh rate, and mode (ULMB, Normal, Nvidia G-Sync).

[TrickStick]

Xwidgeht, thanks for the remedy regarding the status of gysnc on or off. I didn't have time to look into it so thanks again. In regards to the other issues this monitor has i don't notice the checkered effect you referenced, however i did not actively look for it. My biggest issue with this monitor is just the light bleed it seems that most all these new gsync monitors have it. At least from what i have gathered going to numerous monitor forums. Phillips/Acer/Asus ROG users have reported this. Not to say that its ok however i guess if you want to be an early adopter sometimes its the prices out side the monetary price. The nice thing i guess for me is i mainly play FPS games so my eyes are generally looking at the middle region of the monitor which doesn't have the light bleed however you can spot it if you look in the right hand corner. I was frustrated a bit by this but like i had referenced before in my last post no dead pixels i was happy about it should not be something you cross your fingers for but you know how that works im sure. I obviously don't want neither but i will take edge light bleed over dead pixels any day. Too bad to hear about the 3d i have a second benq monitor i use for 3d, so that doesn't concern me too much. Also you said 700 for this monitor? I bought mine for 500, for 500 considering you get gsync even with its problems i would say its still worth it considering too that the other monitors that currently offer gsync per the vendors seem to have similar struggles as well or at least according to other users.

[TrickStick]

Xwidgeht, So i tried looking at my status in the information part of the screen as you said while playing game. Am i doing something wrong because it says normal while playing a game. I own 2 gtx 680's sli, made sure gsync was checked on in both locations of the setting in the nvidia control panel. Is there anything else i need to be doing? I also made sure the monitor was set to 144hz in windows and nvidia settings. If anybody could help that would be great.

[xwidghet]

The game needs to be running in full-screen exclusive mode, and I've had g-sync refuse to turn on when running a non-gsync monitor at the same time. Overlays which support changing opengl/directx settings, such as MSI Afterburner, may break it as well.

[TrickStick]

xwidghet, thanks for getting back so quickly. Ok i will check those out as yes i had a second monitor connected (benq xl2420tx via dual link dvi), since i have disconnected it but nothing else to rest it. I do also have an overlay (using msi afterburner). First i will try resting the monitor,i guessing that is what i have to do but my question is what did or how did you rest yours? If this doesn't work then i will know to also shutdown afterburner. And if for some reason i can't get it i will post again not expecting you to post back but i may as well keep a paper trail so to speak for others in case they run into these issues,you have been awesome so far thanks again.

[TrickStick]

Ok i figured i would give an update...I GOT IT TO WORK,which is awesome however im not sure i can isolate exactly what did it to activate it. Since i last posted i followed Xwidget advice and unplugged and re plugged in both the power cable and display port on the monitor. I unplugged my second ben q monitor from my gpu and i also shut down msi afterburner and disabled and then re enabled SLI. Now a few things im gonna try to turn back on the msi afterburner overlay and see if it will play nice with gsync. Also the other thing i did and this is the main reason i wanted to post this is i went to the nvidia forms and searched for a while all the issues gsync users have been having and came across something that has not been mentioned on here or at least from what i have seen. Im a dedicated physx user (gtx 650) and people on the nvidia forms had been saying that physx either doesn't play right with gsync or is not integrated properly through the current driver iterations at this time. Since i have diabled the gtx 650 physx card through windows device manager (its still seated on my pci e lane) but disabled and im not sure which was the remedy here as now i need to go back and find out which one of these actually did the trick. My guess is due to all the feed back and out of all the changes listed i made the biggest change was dumping that gtx 650 physx currently. Again im just assuming im gonna do more testing later to pin point it and then post. Lastly i herd that sli users using gsync had reported poor performance and stuttering i can say i have never seen a game run so smooth in my life so needless to say im not suffering with those current issues and my games (compatible ones) run smoother then a babies butt.

For reference here is my rig setup
i74770k oced 4.4ghz
2 gtx 680 sli evga
1 gtx 650 physx pny (disabled currently for gsync)
8 gig ripjaw x 1866 ddr 3
z87 ROG hero maximus vi mobo
Acer XB270h
Benq XL2420tx (currently not plugged into main gpu with gsync monitor)

[Lok]

Hello,

1st of all i'm sorry for my english but it's not my native language. I hope You may help me.

Just bought and received today this model at home and would like to know what's the best settings to get the most from the monitor, best colors, etc...

I would like to know also where are the drivers from this monitor. There were no cd in the box, i downloaded the icc profile from acer support website but it seems there are no specific monitor driver to download and install.

Thank you for your support.