NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[brownvim]

With every other flat panel monitor I've used, you always had to stop moving the camera to reveal the "max level" of detail for any scene. Now it just always exists as your eye naturally tracks.

This is the reason I bought the Acer, I have missed doing this since losing my CRT. Since then I’ve had to train my brain to not look at the whole screen.

High frame rates help with the blur but it wasn’t a proper fix.

You bought the Acer Pulsar?

How is it? Let's hear the juice!

I'm really interested in what each brand's monitor crosshair looks like.

I got MSI cause their dynamic crosshair on their 240hz 27" 4k QD-OLED is FANTASTIC! It's always changing colors depending on surrounding pixel values, so it's essentially a rainbow.

With the MSI Pulsar I get access to the same crosshair shapes, but I can only pick static white, or static red. This was a big dissapointment.

I really hope they add the rainbow dynamic crosshair in a firmware update. I should contact them to request this feature. It's so next-level.

Asus crosshairs from my experience are always too thicc, they obscure too much of my target.

MSI and Alienware ones I've had much better luck with.

No idea what an Acer modern crosshair even looks like.

I'm at work so away from the monitor, can check when i'm back home later.
I remember there being 3 crosshairs, didn't see colour options.
Similar to these crosshairs: https://share.google/dmYU1toPdfWdeHj1Y

I like the monitor but I don't think ill commit to keeping it until they fix the double strobing at lower frame rates. I want good clarity at lower frame rates along with the high. Need that firmware update to see if its usable at lower frame rates.

I got the AOC one for a better price too (£503), just waiting for delivery of it, most likely keep that.

[SirParcival]

Dang, those crosshairs leave something to be desired, although the 3rd one seems fine. You only need one good one.

It's wild to me that NONE of the tech-touber reviews EVER even mention a crosshair, let alone film it.

Lord knows the manufacturer never explicitly shows you what you'll be getting.

So weird that these are obviously aimed at competitive gamers... but there's more e-ink dedicated to the bs AI monitor nonsense they're pushing to have their users cheat in games LOL.

Anyways, I just boxed up and returned my 4k 27" OLED. Never thought I'd see the day, but I'm genuinely happy about this decision.

My only real gripes are:

A) The auto-dimming is too aggressive, would love to have an OSD slider to control how strong it is, or better yet even calibrate what "dark" and "bright" look like for my studio, and then let me set brightness min and max accordingly. That would be the set-and-forget dream

B) Bring back the dynamic color crosshair MSI! You already had the best one in the game! What have you done!

[Chief Blur Buster]

Do you think they will add the option to adjust pulsewidth for non-VRR strobing? This monitor gets very bright with pulsar so it definitely has the headroom and it would be great to have something like 8x motion clarity for 60fps.

I imagine brightness adjustment is possible via pulse-height adjustment.

But I don't think pulse-width adjustment will be provided, as I have been informed by NVIDIA that this would worsen the quality of the Pulsar crosstalk because the Pulsar crosstalk is so heavily tuned for 25% pulsewidth, that it would be massively complicated to allow the pulsewidth to be adjustable without worsening crosstalk.

With Pulsar being better than competition (both ELMB Sync and AIM Stabilizer Sync), it is very complex to tune VRR strobing...

[Chief Blur Buster]

Anyways, I just boxed up and returned my 4k 27" OLED. Never thought I'd see the day, but I'm genuinely happy about this decision.

240Hz OLED is not enough to replace LCD strobing.

You will need at least 480-720Hz to get less motion blur with OLED strobing (e.g. CRT Simulator via ShaderBeam) than with Pulsar for low sub-100fps content. And you need Tandem OLED to brighten BFI.

Now that said, PureXP Ultra is 10% pulsewidth, and it was not until 720Hz OLED that I have seen less motion blur on OLED than PureXP Ultra on my XG2431.

I can get as little as ~8% pulsewidth for 60 Hz on a 720Hz OLED using the squarewave BFI feature built into ShaderBeam (eliminating the phosphor decay mode too). But it also dims to about 1/12th original brightness, so you need to start with maximum Tandem-OLED brightness to compensate. 4K 240Hz OLEDs dont get as bright as Tandem OLED yet.

But, at least for 60fps 60Hz content, that's far better than Pulsars' 25%. ShaderBeam will sometimes erratically flicker. But it's massively better than the BFI feature built into OLED.

- 240Hz = not enough OLED Hz to beat LCD strobing
- 480fps 480Hz = minimum possible to barely exceed an old LCD strobe backlight (480fps 480Hz OLED = slightly lower MPRT than LightBoost 100%)
- 600-720Hz = minimum possible to get 90% motion blur reduction on 60fps content (albiet very dark on non-tandem OLED).

While OLED has perfect blacks for black, it is dark greys that sometimes look grainy. OLED comes with other disadvantages like difficult-to-calibrate blacks on many panels (e.g. black clipping + banding).

For triple digit frame rates and Hz, LCD strobing still beats software-based OLED blur reduction. But for two-digit frame rates, 720Hz OLED with software-based BFI/CRT now beats average LCD strobing in MPRTs. With lots of caveats (reliability of software, brightness, etc).

[kyube]

Do you think they will add the option to adjust pulsewidth for non-VRR strobing? This monitor gets very bright with pulsar so it definitely has the headroom and it would be great to have something like 8x motion clarity for 60fps.

I imagine brightness adjustment is possible via pulse-height adjustment.

But I don't think pulse-width adjustment will be provided, as I have been informed by NVIDIA that this would worsen the quality of the Pulsar crosstalk because the Pulsar crosstalk is so heavily tuned for 25% pulsewidth, that it would be massively complicated to allow the pulsewidth to be adjustable without worsening crosstalk.

With Pulsar being better than competition (both ELMB Sync and AIM Stabilizer Sync), it is very complex to tune VRR strobing...

How does offering an option for adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh strobing (ULMB2) affect the functionality of NV Pulsar (variable refresh rate strobing)?
That makes no sense to me, they're completely different modes of operation?
I was also interested in this aspect of the display, hence why I'm replying to this comment.
Currently, none of the 4 models (XG27AQNGV, 272QRF X36, Acer & AOC's model) with Nvidia's Pulsar scaler IC (Mediatek MT9810) offer such adjustabilty within the OSD menu.
The previous generation panels with the old G-SYNC FPGA (e.g.: PG27AQN) do offer such functionality.

Is there a possibility if you could ask Nvidia for a firmware update to allow users adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh rate use?
I wouldn't even mind if they lock it down to specific refresh rate targets such as 120 & 240.

[brownvim]

Dang, those crosshairs leave something to be desired, although the 3rd one seems fine. You only need one good one.

Yeah its just those 3 crosshairs, no colour options.

[passballtotucker]

Do you think they will add the option to adjust pulsewidth for non-VRR strobing? This monitor gets very bright with pulsar so it definitely has the headroom and it would be great to have something like 8x motion clarity for 60fps.

I imagine brightness adjustment is possible via pulse-height adjustment.

But I don't think pulse-width adjustment will be provided, as I have been informed by NVIDIA that this would worsen the quality of the Pulsar crosstalk because the Pulsar crosstalk is so heavily tuned for 25% pulsewidth, that it would be massively complicated to allow the pulsewidth to be adjustable without worsening crosstalk.

With Pulsar being better than competition (both ELMB Sync and AIM Stabilizer Sync), it is very complex to tune VRR strobing...

How does offering an option for adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh strobing (ULMB2) affect the functionality of NV Pulsar (variable refresh rate strobing)?
That makes no sense to me, they're completely different modes of operation?
I was also interested in this aspect of the display, hence why I'm replying to this comment.
Currently, none of the 4 models (XG27AQNGV, 272QRF X36, Acer & AOC's model) with Nvidia's Pulsar scaler IC (Mediatek MT9810) offer such adjustabilty within the OSD menu.
The previous generation panels with the old G-SYNC FPGA (e.g.: PG27AQN) do offer such functionality.

Is there a possibility if you could ask Nvidia for a firmware update to allow users adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh rate use?
I wouldn't even mind if they lock it down to specific refresh rate targets such as 120 & 240.

120 & 240 are great options, but 60 would definitely be needed as well. It needs the most help. Still, I'm looking forward to how 60hz looks with the new firmware update. It should still be way better than normal sample and hold 60hz.

[RonsonPL]

But I don't think pulse-width adjustment will be provided, as I have been informed by NVIDIA that this would worsen the quality of the Pulsar crosstalk because the Pulsar crosstalk is so heavily tuned for 25% pulsewidth, that it would be massively complicated to allow the pulsewidth to be adjustable without worsening crosstalk.

With Pulsar being better than competition (both ELMB Sync and AIM Stabilizer Sync), it is very complex to tune VRR strobing...

Hey Chief

So basically we cannot even hope for shorter pulse time to get motion clarity comparable to XL2411Z with Strobe Utility slider set to 1-1.5ms?


BTW. I got two XL2411Z just in case one stops working, but it's incompatible with newer monitors and games (huge issues with holding certain fps without g-sync) and I'm glad that finally anything shows up on my radar. The rumored 650$+tax price seems way too steep though. This creates conflicting thoughts. I wish it gets very successful and popular. But then it won't get cheaper. Probably only if the market rejects it, it will get cheaper, but then Pulsar will be discarded by Nvidia, so for me I hope it gets cheaper. For the whole gaming world, I hope it will be massively successful, hopefully with higher res monitors too.

I wonder how much improvement in terms of color vibrance and contrast I'd get going from the better of my XL2411Zs to a new Pulsar, if I set my XL2411 to comparable motion quality (ignoring the cross-talk to make the comparison and discussion simpler)

I would also love to know what can we expect in terms of OLED's brightness in 60Hz content at good motion quality (so comparable to XL2411Z at a compromise - so let's say - the pulse time set to 60% of the slider) - I waited so long for something which would be the huge upgrade from XL2411Z. I could wait a bit more if some Tandem OLEDs with CRT beam simulator could get comparable to Pulsar, but I have no idea what to expect. 50cd brightness? 100? 150? 200? Older OLED monitors topped at ~250cd in sample-and-hold mode. Surely Pulsar can achieve that, but I'm totally clueless what to expect from OLEDs in 2026-27.


PS. I can't even find words to express my gratitude for what you achieved by talking to Nvidia. It's really, truly greatly appreciated!

[MPRT|GTFO]

Do you think they will add the option to adjust pulsewidth for non-VRR strobing? This monitor gets very bright with pulsar so it definitely has the headroom and it would be great to have something like 8x motion clarity for 60fps.

I imagine brightness adjustment is possible via pulse-height adjustment.

But I don't think pulse-width adjustment will be provided, as I have been informed by NVIDIA that this would worsen the quality of the Pulsar crosstalk because the Pulsar crosstalk is so heavily tuned for 25% pulsewidth, that it would be massively complicated to allow the pulsewidth to be adjustable without worsening crosstalk.

With Pulsar being better than competition (both ELMB Sync and AIM Stabilizer Sync), it is very complex to tune VRR strobing...

How does offering an option for adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh strobing (ULMB2) affect the functionality of NV Pulsar (variable refresh rate strobing)?
That makes no sense to me, they're completely different modes of operation?
I was also interested in this aspect of the display, hence why I'm replying to this comment.
Currently, none of the 4 models (XG27AQNGV, 272QRF X36, Acer & AOC's model) with Nvidia's Pulsar scaler IC (Mediatek MT9810) offer such adjustabilty within the OSD menu.
The previous generation panels with the old G-SYNC FPGA (e.g.: PG27AQN) do offer such functionality.

Is there a possibility if you could ask Nvidia for a firmware update to allow users adjusting the pulse width during fixed refresh rate use?
I wouldn't even mind if they lock it down to specific refresh rate targets such as 120 & 240.

It looks like some people here keep reverting to thinking of the VRR-on mode (like maybe assuming that everyone posting here probably mostly cares about VRR use cases) even when guys explicitly say "non-VRR strobing" So there's still no answer to that question here or in the article comments. I'd assume these monitor makers will choose the lazy way again.

To me the scanning backlight is actually the more interesting aspect than the VRR support, because of its many potential benefits (as Chief Blur Buster mentioned, beyond the reduced flicker). It is especially good for the cases where the frame rate is always above the refresh rate. In those cases turning off any sync modes and FPS caps is often better for more consistent and a little lower average latency, for reducing geometric skew (turning it into a sawtooth pattern instead), and tear lines are very hard and rare to even notice anyway. Tear lines only ever became a boogeyman once LCDs started being passed off for something appropriate for gaming and moving pictures. Yeah, of course people would notice tear lines when they're the only freaking sharp thing on a moving picture blurred by persistence and pixel response. And then, of course people would be irritated even more with global strobing, where tear lines become just a manifestation of a nasty timing error: frame fragments representing different moments in time are shown at the same moment in time. That's potentially an even bigger problem. The whole LCD evolution was a tale of "if you think the problems they create are bad, wait til you see their solutions" all along. So, now that we've done a full circle back to frame transport, scanout and illumination all being done in the same scanning manner, guess what, there will barely be any positive sides to capping frame rates or enabling VRR for the cases where the frame rate stays above the refresh rate. And those cases are many, and increasing.

So there will be a big and wide usefulness to a future display (not these, apparently) which may or may not even have VRR support at all, but which combines rolling illumination of some type (either LCD scanning backlight like Pulsar, or a return to rolling scan self-emissive, like some OLEDs already have) and low persistence/MPRT below 0.3ms (actually time spent anywhere near peak luminance, which is what causes the worst of motion blur with fast motion), like a CRT. But with some substantial improvement over all CRT monitors for once, like higher resolution and size, unlike those small TN panels.

[SirParcival]

Chief! Thanks for the wonderful breakdown!

After seeing it in person, I can 100% agree with your mini table. I held off on Dyac cause I don't like TN and evolved past 1080p 15 years ago, and any BFI implementation I've ever used I couldn't deal with cutting the brightness so much. It was never worth the trade. And now with pulsar the trade is somehow in my favor? It gets brighter with pulsar on?

Wondering if you could comment on the physics of how brightness is measured, and how it's powered. I'm a pleb, but I'm seeing 500 nits on a 100% white screen with 25% duty cycle. To me that says this panel is capable of hitting 2000 nits. Not capable, it IS hitting those numbers. No wonder it gets so hot, and has so much room for ventilation.

I also fully agree that 25% is here to stay, just thinking about the physics of what's happening, you'd need 4000 nit strobes to do 1/8th duty. Not to mention balancing the mission critical compensation pulses would be much much harder with so much time between main pulses. And apparently that's the secret sauce, so I can't see them futzing with it. And those just increase perceived blur anyways so... the hunt for brighter LEDs that won't melt something monitor-sized continues! All that heat has to go somewhere, unless they do large passive heatsinks like GPUs lol.

Also, long time listener, first time poster.... I never knew you were from Tdot/Hammertown dude! I grew up in the center of the universe, and my family's all from the armpit. Small world!