NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[MSIfanboy]

so nvidia handles all the updates for these monitors? asus version doesnt have sharpness slider, it doesnt even have dynamic crosshair like my other asus (not that it was that good) just strange missing features other asus monitors have

input lag seems really low at 360hz
60hz ulmb2 seems really laggy, input lag wise
its bright, but doesnt seem 500 nits bright

the 60hz ulmb2 mode, i wish they somehow made that clarity at 144hz or 240hz, i would take a brightness hit for how 60hz ulmb2 looks at around 30 level

[BLooDS_inc]

so nvidia handles all the updates for these monitors? asus version doesnt have sharpness slider, it doesnt even have dynamic crosshair like my other asus (not that it was that good) just strange missing features other asus monitors have

input lag seems really low at 360hz
60hz ulmb2 seems really laggy, input lag wise
its bright, but doesnt seem 500 nits bright

the 60hz ulmb2 mode, i wish they somehow made that clarity at 144hz or 240hz, i would take a brightness hit for how 60hz ulmb2 looks at around 30 level

I'm miss the sharpness slider with the MSI monitor version too, idk, how they don't care about this, i have this sharpness in the zowie xl2735, like about ~8 years ago and now I don't get it on a new monitor that come in a 2026, so shame lol

[MSIfanboy]

vg259qm = sharpness slider
pg27aqn = no sharpness slider
pg248qp = no sharpeness slider
XG248QSG = sharpeness slider
xg27aqngv = no sharpness slider

random

[brownvim]

the 60hz ulmb2 mode, i wish they somehow made that clarity at 144hz or 240hz, i would take a brightness hit for how 60hz ulmb2 looks at around 30 level

It looks like we are going to get it at 120hz, upcoming firmware 1.1.7 says this:

improved 120 Hz ULMB2 quality (Global Flash instead of Rolling Scan)

So I expect it to behave like the 60hz mode with the pulse width adjustment actually doing something.

[t2na]

Brother, your comments change with the wind. One week there's a monitor that you think is the next coming of Christ, the next that same monitor is a disgrace to even exist.

I think we'd all feel a lot more confident in your comments if you owned half the monitors you spoke about. Proof is in the pudding!

Guess you haven't read anything I've written or don't know how easy it is to extrapolate strobing behaviors based on data.

I've read plenty of what you've written. Some of it I have found incredibly valuable and very much worth the time to read, others I have found are less about extrapolating data and providing findings based on that and more about your individual take on something.

I wouldn't find that much of a problem if you had first hand experience with the panels, I do understand that there is a level of information you can get from data alone - but it does start to lose it's worth when it seems to be a consistent factor.

Either way, we're all here for the same goal!

[MSIfanboy]

the 60hz ulmb2 mode, i wish they somehow made that clarity at 144hz or 240hz, i would take a brightness hit for how 60hz ulmb2 looks at around 30 level

It looks like we are going to get it at 120hz, upcoming firmware 1.1.7 says this:

improved 120 Hz ULMB2 quality (Global Flash instead of Rolling Scan)

So I expect it to behave like the 60hz mode with the pulse width adjustment actually doing something.

The ulmb2 60hz mode is clear top to bottom, it seems to be using rolling scan (not pulsar vrr) from what I can see, I think even ulmb2 uses the 10 zones, why wouldn't it

[liquidshadowfox]

the 60hz ulmb2 mode, i wish they somehow made that clarity at 144hz or 240hz, i would take a brightness hit for how 60hz ulmb2 looks at around 30 level

It looks like we are going to get it at 120hz, upcoming firmware 1.1.7 says this:

improved 120 Hz ULMB2 quality (Global Flash instead of Rolling Scan)

So I expect it to behave like the 60hz mode with the pulse width adjustment actually doing something.

The ulmb2 60hz mode is clear top to bottom, it seems to be using rolling scan (not pulsar vrr) from what I can see, I think even ulmb2 uses the 10 zones, why wouldn't it

At the moment it looks like rolling scan does fix the crosstalk problem somewhat but it reduces motion clarity as it introduces a weird "light diffusion" response time from the rolling scan pulse. Its more noticeable to me at higher refresh rates where the frame time windows are much smaller but it does take care of the crosstalk from higher refresh rates so it's nvidia's best middle ground effort for this.
Reason nvidia is enabling it for 60 hz and 120 hz ulmb is because this panel is fast enough in Grey to Grey response times that using a global flash doesnt introduce crosstalk and the light diffusion response time stays consistent across the screen because it flashes all 10 zones at once vs sequentially where the light diffusion from one zone might leak into a subsequent zone and ruin motion clarity as a result.

I think an interesting approach for nvdia to take (or attempt) is finding out where's the point of diminishing returns with global flash (can we use it up to 144, 165, 180 or even 200 hz without introducing crosstalk and taking advantage of variable independent overdrive?) And then introduce a gsync pulsar extreme mode where you get a reduce VRR range pulsar (say 75 hz - 180 hz) with reduced brightness due to lower duty cycle below 25% (say 12.5% 8x clarity improvement, 16.666% or even 20% 5x motion clarity improvement). I understand they want to keep things as flicker free as possible but currently this product is dancing a fine line between
1. Is it actually worth the price tag over a competing product without gsync + strobing that's IPS when some people claim the clarity improvement isn't as good as their current top end IPS (this can partly be due to customers not understanding the perfect conditions gsync pulsar needs to work and badly optimized games with bad frame times but theres no watermark or debug options in nvidia control panel yet to show you that your fps isn't ideal in pacing)
2. People who play competitive esports rather play with gsync disabled and fixed strobing for lowest input lag with nvidia fast sync or use a really high refresh oled (and give up gsync because of possible vrr flicker which some folks may or may not get depending on how good their frame pacing is)
3. Fixed strobe implementations that offer better motion clarity improvements with little to no crosstalk (like dyac 2, ULMB 2 monitors that are cheaper, mini LED monitors with rollscan that have less light diffusion issues)

I love this product and will continue to use it, i just hope they continue to improve and update it because in its current state it's a mixed bag for regular customers that dont understand the mechanics or science behind it and it's not something easy to really explain to potential customers over videos or pictures like you can high fps vs low fps.

[Anonymous703819]

i feel like i have been scammed, i just got the asus version, its not much difference vs old pg27aqn, (its like i bought the same monitor again lol) but, the 60hz ulmb2 mode is absolutely insane, the flicker is insane too lol

Should've read my comments

Brother, your comments change with the wind. One week there's a monitor that you think is the next coming of Christ, the next that same monitor is a disgrace to even exist.

I think we'd all feel a lot more confident in your comments if you owned half the monitors you spoke about. Proof is in the pudding!

Can't agree more than this.
Mistakes and confusion happen to everyone, we just need to own up to them.

[The Empyrean]

Is it problematic to let Pulsar run all the time even when not playing games? I would prefer to turn it off when not playing because I like browsing and non gaming at ultra low nits personally, but Pulsar's lowest brightness is a bit too high for me and it's really annoying to have to use the joystick on the XG27AQNGV every time to access the OSD. I'm kind of baffled we don't have an Asus or Nvidia software solution to change those settings.

Also is it possible to ask for lower Pulsar brightness somewhere? Clearly they don't think it's a problem with ULMB2 on the same monitor so I don't see why we shouldn't be able to have lower brightness with Pulsar on.

[edgintheledge]

1. Is it actually worth the price tag over a competing product without gsync + strobing that's IPS when some people claim the clarity improvement isn't as good as their current top end IPS (this can partly be due to customers not understanding the perfect conditions gsync pulsar needs to work and badly optimized games with bad frame times but theres no watermark or debug options in nvidia control panel yet to show you that your fps isn't ideal in pacing)

I can say that I feel I have a decently good understanding of how this monitor works, but I would really love a "debug overlay" of some sort cause it still feels like a crapshoot on what the actual clarity to your eyes will be like. I have to test on a game by game scenario on what looks best regardless of what the actual frametime graphs, cpu/gpu utilization, and the 1% or even 0.1% lows show. Some games look great locked ingame only at specific fps ranges. Some games don't seem to care at all and seem to "just work" at any framerate. Some games (notably Minecraft with heavy shaders) can have a frametime graph fluctuating more than other games, yet still look fine.

I've also been comparing Windows 11 vs Arch Linux and it adds even more variables where some games randomly look best with specific combinations of OS and capped fps range. Even on Linux, the display backend (Wayland vs X11) also has differences in what you get.

In one game I tested (with 1.1.6 monitor firmware)...

• Win11 at 120fps looks great, but 120 is the exact limit. Any higher and it looks barely better than unstrobed despite all the headroom.
• On Arch w/ Wayland, the image looks generally clearer across different ingame fps caps (as in less double image/compensation pulse) but the VRR delivery seems to have a subtle hitch every couple of seconds that would normally be hidden by unstrobed display persistence (Using Proton-ge Wayland flag).
• Arch w/ X11 looks worse at 120 but looks significantly better than all the other options in the 144-180fps range.
• All options look about the same once you go 200-324fps and still generally look worse than X11@180fps

I should probably also mention that Pulsar isn't even supposed to function on Linux. For whatever reason the monitor shows as "G-SYNC Unvalidated" and won't allow you to use pulsar. I found a workaround on the nvidia forum where booting Windows, enabling pulsar, then booting Linux let's you enable it. I don't think it's exactly intended though... (Nvidia pls)

Although external caps generally get rid of all this guessing and make everything work as you'd expect that kinda negates the point of pulsar for me.