NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[rusta]

Just a little heads up for ppl using nvidia instant replay, when using instant replay I had to disable the desktop capture option of it to get gsync working, otherwise it disabled mpo capability on the monitor from what I could tell.

(Even tho I think it was working in the past with desktop capture, but I'm not sure and now it wasn't)

[CriticalHit_NL]

After carefully reading all the posts, reviews and pretty much everything available, I'm about to buy this monitor. I'm not an OLED guy, so my point of reference is the typical IPS panel.

I would like to ask you guys that already have the monitor a few questions.

1. How's the panel quality ? I've read a lot of reports about dead / stuck pixels and a lot of RMAs. A lot of them had good panels that started having stuck pixels after a few weeks, which worries me. Also, what about backlight bleed ?

2. Is there coil whine ? I'm kinda sensitive and some people have reported it. If there is, could you check if it dissapears when you turn Pulsar off, or when you reduce the refresh rate to ex: 240 Hz.

3. Is the contrast that "bad" ? I mean i don't care about OLED or miniLED contrast, my previous 1440p monitors have been Dell Ultrasharp U2514H and G2724D and i was totally fine with it.

4. Lastly are the viewing angles good enough for single person desktop usage, based on your experience ?

Any feedback would be much appreciated

1. I'd say pretty good, the matte coating isn't obtrusive or grainy to me, still looks like a mirror when viewed from the side and it deflects light reasonably. I do have a stuck red pixel but I decided to leave it there because RMAing may mean getting a lesser model back and since I had no other showstopping issues I decided against a return even though I had a zero-death-pixel warranty for it. Have not found any additional pixels becoming stuck after almost 3 months of use. Personally I don't really notice any backlight bleed.

2. No coil whine, not with Pulsar, G-sync or HDR/SDR at 360Hz.

3. Contrast is not OLED level but due to 10-bit wide gamut you still get a bit wider color range and thus whites look more white to me than the 8-bit AHVA-IPS panel I have here which almost looks like its slightly more hinting towards a more white-yellowish tint.

With HDR it looks pretty good and gets pretty bright still to the point in nearly blinds me especially if it is pretty much the whole panel going bright but as it's IPS you can't completely negate the typical corners being slightly brighter grey-ish due to the viewing angles causing it when it is dark/black which is on all IPS panels a thing to my knowledge called 'IPS glow'. The good thing is atleast you won't be dealing with VRR-flickering in dark content like some OLEDs suffer from and I believe native G-sync helps aiding in this regard instead of G-sync compatible.

4. I'd say it's fine, I haven't ran into really big showstopping issues in this regard and the display is pretty fabulous when you love vivid colorful games/content, and I use it at both ~1 meter and ~60cm distance depending on what I'm doing. (having a monitor arm is great). I have no obvious glows, uniformity is pretty good, there is no yellow glow spots like I had on my first RMA'd PG279Q which was a semi-broken panel anyway with green stripes going vertical past half the panel if you touched the bezels so I kinda know what those yellow glows can look like.

For IPS, probably one of the best 'gaming oriented' panels you can get right now, not so sure about the actual professional color accuracy like for example EIZO displays, I don't really compare that personally and I change the defaults anyway to personal liking.

[Enc0deGR]

After carefully reading all the posts, reviews and pretty much everything available, I'm about to buy this monitor. I'm not an OLED guy, so my point of reference is the typical IPS panel.

I would like to ask you guys that already have the monitor a few questions.

1. How's the panel quality ? I've read a lot of reports about dead / stuck pixels and a lot of RMAs. A lot of them had good panels that started having stuck pixels after a few weeks, which worries me. Also, what about backlight bleed ?

2. Is there coil whine ? I'm kinda sensitive and some people have reported it. If there is, could you check if it dissapears when you turn Pulsar off, or when you reduce the refresh rate to ex: 240 Hz.

3. Is the contrast that "bad" ? I mean i don't care about OLED or miniLED contrast, my previous 1440p monitors have been Dell Ultrasharp U2514H and G2724D and i was totally fine with it.

4. Lastly are the viewing angles good enough for single person desktop usage, based on your experience ?

Any feedback would be much appreciated

1. I'd say pretty good, the matte coating isn't obtrusive or grainy to me, still looks like a mirror when viewed from the side and it deflects light reasonably. I do have a stuck red pixel but I decided to leave it there because RMAing may mean getting a lesser model back and since I had no other showstopping issues I decided against a return even though I had a zero-death-pixel warranty for it. Have not found any additional pixels becoming stuck after almost 3 months of use. Personally I don't really notice any backlight bleed.

2. No coil whine, not with Pulsar, G-sync or HDR/SDR at 360Hz.

3. Contrast is not OLED level but due to 10-bit wide gamut you still get a bit wider color range and thus whites look more white to me than the 8-bit AHVA-IPS panel I have here which almost looks like its slightly more hinting towards a more white-yellowish tint.

With HDR it looks pretty good and gets pretty bright still to the point in nearly blinds me especially if it is pretty much the whole panel going bright but as it's IPS you can't completely negate the typical corners being slightly brighter grey-ish due to the viewing angles causing it when it is dark/black which is on all IPS panels a thing to my knowledge called 'IPS glow'. The good thing is atleast you won't be dealing with VRR-flickering in dark content like some OLEDs suffer from and I believe native G-sync helps aiding in this regard instead of G-sync compatible.

4. I'd say it's fine, I haven't ran into really big showstopping issues in this regard and the display is pretty fabulous when you love vivid colorful games/content, and I use it at both ~1 meter and ~60cm distance depending on what I'm doing. (having a monitor arm is great). I have no obvious glows, uniformity is pretty good, there is no yellow glow spots like I had on my first RMA'd PG279Q which was a semi-broken panel anyway with green stripes going vertical past half the panel if you touched the bezels so I kinda know what those yellow glows can look like.

For IPS, probably one of the best 'gaming oriented' panels you can get right now, not so sure about the actual professional color accuracy like for example EIZO displays, I don't really compare that personally and I change the defaults anyway to personal liking.

Thank you so much for the detailed reply, i do appreciate it and it really helped me a lot !
I guess i'm buying it, praying to the RNG God for a good panel.

[daviddave1]

Ok got the XG27AQNGV since yesterday also bought an RTX3080

My NVIDIA CTRL panel and monitor settings for Apex Legends ( that's a game that is hardcapped at 300 and fluctuates between 230 and 300 fps on 1440P and 1080P)

Nvidia Ctrl Panel settings

Nvidia driver 566.36
Low Latency Mode: Ultra
Gsync on
VSync off
2560x1440 x 360
Color: Override to Reference mode ( using icc profile MSIfanboy uploaded here last week)
Color Dept: 10 bit
Video Color setting Dynamic Range Full (0-255)
Video Image settings: Use the video player setting x 2. Deinterlacing Use inverse Telecine enebaled. RTX video enhancement: Disabled. High Dynamic Range: Inactive.

Monitor settings:
Standard firmware ( micro usb kabel is on the way)
Pulsar on
Pulsar Low FPS 120
Ambiend Apadative Brightness Off
Ambient Adaptive Color Off
Gamevials Racing Mode
Dark Boost Level 3
Aspect Control: 27" Default
Color Temp: 6500K
Display Color Space Wide Gamut
Gamma: 2.2

Apex Legends settings:

Low Latency Mode: Ultra

----

You guys think that once I have the micro-usb cable the firmware update will be beneficial for me ?
Does anyone has some other pointers please?

[BLooDS_inc]

Ok got the XG27AQNGV since yesterday also bought an RTX3080

My NVIDIA CTRL panel and monitor settings for Apex Legends ( that's a game that is hardcapped at 300 and fluctuates between 230 and 300 fps on 1440P and 1080P)

Nvidia Ctrl Panel settings

Nvidia driver 566.36
Low Latency Mode: Ultra
Gsync on
VSync off
2560x1440 x 360
Color: Override to Reference mode ( using icc profile MSIfanboy uploaded here last week)
Color Dept: 10 bit
Video Color setting Dynamic Range Full (0-255)
Video Image settings: Use the video player setting x 2. Deinterlacing Use inverse Telecine enebaled. RTX video enhancement: Disabled. High Dynamic Range: Inactive.

Monitor settings:
Standard firmware ( micro usb kabel is on the way)
Pulsar on
Pulsar Low FPS 120
Ambiend Apadative Brightness Off
Ambient Adaptive Color Off
Gamevials Racing Mode
Dark Boost Level 3
Aspect Control: 27" Default
Color Temp: 6500K
Display Color Space Wide Gamut
Gamma: 2.2

Apex Legends settings:

Low Latency Mode: Ultra

----

You guys think that once I have the micro-usb cable the firmware update will be beneficial for me ?
Does anyone has some other pointers please?

Update the fw when u can, ull see less bugs with pulsar, especially in low fps drops.
Don't use low latency mode ultra - it badly affects the 1% and 0.1% lows, use just ON, not ultra
Cap your fps under gsync range - if u play Apex and Apex runs under 300fps , use rtss frame cap with front sync edge capframe and set 300, ull see better fps and 1% lows and better framepace, better visual motion than nvcp cap or in-game cap
And i think use the latest drivers, except the very latest 610.47 that, like someone says, bring the gsync fps drop bugs and smooth motion bugs, I'm using the 596+ driver

[daviddave1]

Ok got the XG27AQNGV since yesterday also bought an RTX3080

My NVIDIA CTRL panel and monitor settings for Apex Legends ( that's a game that is hardcapped at 300 and fluctuates between 230 and 300 fps on 1440P and 1080P)

Nvidia Ctrl Panel settings

Nvidia driver 566.36
Low Latency Mode: Ultra
Gsync on
VSync off
2560x1440 x 360
Color: Override to Reference mode ( using icc profile MSIfanboy uploaded here last week)
Color Dept: 10 bit
Video Color setting Dynamic Range Full (0-255)
Video Image settings: Use the video player setting x 2. Deinterlacing Use inverse Telecine enebaled. RTX video enhancement: Disabled. High Dynamic Range: Inactive.

Monitor settings:
Standard firmware ( micro usb kabel is on the way)
Pulsar on
Pulsar Low FPS 120
Ambiend Apadative Brightness Off
Ambient Adaptive Color Off
Gamevials Racing Mode
Dark Boost Level 3
Aspect Control: 27" Default
Color Temp: 6500K
Display Color Space Wide Gamut
Gamma: 2.2

Apex Legends settings:

Low Latency Mode: Ultra

----

You guys think that once I have the micro-usb cable the firmware update will be beneficial for me ?
Does anyone has some other pointers please?

Update the fw when u can, ull see less bugs with pulsar, especially in low fps drops.
Don't use low latency mode ultra - it badly affects the 1% and 0.1% lows, use just ON, not ultra
Cap your fps under gsync range - if u play Apex and Apex runs under 300fps , use rtss frame cap with front sync edge capframe and set 300, ull see better fps and 1% lows and better framepace, better visual motion than nvcp cap or in-game cap
And i think use the latest drivers, except the very latest 610.47 that, like someone says, bring the gsync fps drop bugs and smooth motion bugs, I'm using the 596+ driver

Thank you! Did you try disabling DSC and play with 300hz with ULMB2 enabled but with Pulsar off? Is it worth the hassle in my situation u think? I like the 16:10 resolutions like 2304x1440 1728x1080

[Cr0x]

Ok got the XG27AQNGV since yesterday also bought an RTX3080

My NVIDIA CTRL panel and monitor settings for Apex Legends ( that's a game that is hardcapped at 300 and fluctuates between 230 and 300 fps on 1440P and 1080P)

Nvidia Ctrl Panel settings

Nvidia driver 566.36
Low Latency Mode: Ultra
Gsync on
VSync off
2560x1440 x 360
Color: Override to Reference mode ( using icc profile MSIfanboy uploaded here last week)
Color Dept: 10 bit
Video Color setting Dynamic Range Full (0-255)
Video Image settings: Use the video player setting x 2. Deinterlacing Use inverse Telecine enebaled. RTX video enhancement: Disabled. High Dynamic Range: Inactive.

Monitor settings:
Standard firmware ( micro usb kabel is on the way)
Pulsar on
Pulsar Low FPS 120
Ambiend Apadative Brightness Off
Ambient Adaptive Color Off
Gamevials Racing Mode
Dark Boost Level 3
Aspect Control: 27" Default
Color Temp: 6500K
Display Color Space Wide Gamut
Gamma: 2.2

Apex Legends settings:

Low Latency Mode: Ultra

----

You guys think that once I have the micro-usb cable the firmware update will be beneficial for me ?
Does anyone has some other pointers please?

Update the fw when u can, ull see less bugs with pulsar, especially in low fps drops.
Don't use low latency mode ultra - it badly affects the 1% and 0.1% lows, use just ON, not ultra
Cap your fps under gsync range - if u play Apex and Apex runs under 300fps , use rtss frame cap with front sync edge capframe and set 300, ull see better fps and 1% lows and better framepace, better visual motion than nvcp cap or in-game cap
And i think use the latest drivers, except the very latest 610.47 that, like someone says, bring the gsync fps drop bugs and smooth motion bugs, I'm using the 596+ driver

Thank you! Did you try disabling DSC and play with 300hz with ULMB2 enabled but with Pulsar off? Is it worth the hassle in my situation u think? I like the 16:10 resolutions like 2304x1440 1728x1080

How to disable DSC? Im also playng cs2 on 2304x1440 sinc 7 days.

[daviddave1]

"Anyway I believe this update is definitely a must-install to see the full potential these monitors have to offer in motion clarity.
Firmware in the OSD still reports MCM102 but maybe that is a separate thing to Pulsar internally but I don't know for sure."

I performed a reinstallation this morning because I wasn't entirely sure if it had been applied correctly with FW 1.1.6, and I've noticed that it now correctly displays the FW version on the monitor's OSD: MCM103(V1.1.6).

Interesting, thanks.
I know the update did apply successfully since the 120-180 range is working fine now, was just curious why the firmware version sticked.
Maybe they did an inbetween fix, but not too bothered by it.

As I alluded to, with older drivers, i.e. the 57x and 58x branch, 360 Hz 10 bit color gives me black screen in fullscreen mode.

Switching to 240 Hz 8 bit color (no DSC), there is no issue.

Interesting. Could it be that with 10bit color and 360 Hz, even RTX50 cards have to use multiple pipelines and run into the same problems as RTX40 cards with 360 Hz 8bit?
In this case... DSC is (again) not the actual problem.

You could try to disable the tiling via registry. With 8-bit color the 360 Hz mode should still be available. With 10-bit it could be gone.

RTX 50-series cards do not share the same limitation as DP 1.4 videocards did with DSC, that means even with DP1.4 monitor and cable you can use DSR / DLDSR (or custom resolution) and not have the same black screen issues as RTX 40-series and older experience.

You can also use 10-bit with VRR/Pulsar with HDR no problem. With DSR 'hacked' to 8K resolution you even get to keep the 360Hz output, I think at 16K it may be 60Hz but that is an exceptionally high resolution not workable in many games.

It runs on all RTX-50 series cards on a single display pipeline even though DSC is still active to compress the image to send it through to the display but the GPU side is well capable enough to handle all the bandwidth required.

So whatever issues you experience on DP 1.4 videocards may disappear using a newer videocard.

You can also see some more in depth explanations here to have an idea what each combination offers:
https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/loads ... nd-updates

To circle back a little bit to my previous question: which driver would you recommend for the firmware 1.1.6 and an 5090 GPU?

I would probably advice to still install the latest one, unless you're experiencing issues you didn't on previous ones which can at times be a bit of a mixed bag between GPU architectures, though recently they have implemented some security updates for the drivers in May so I would still make sure to have atleast that version or newer installed for security.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers ... --may-2026

I did have to install the 610.47 driver completely clean because I had issues with GTA V Enhanced not booting due to some strange underlying driver issue which may have been a result of doing multiple GPU driver upgrades in a row without a clean install which caused below crash errors in the launcher error logs:

[DISPLAY] [23800] [gamelaunch] Game exited with code 0xc0000005 (3221225477)

So what I did was wipe 610.47 completely including leftover folders, registry and physx + legacy physx.

Then I reinstalled the previous driver, re-imported my driver profiles with Nvidia App override bypass so I can control DLSS overrides in any game without Nvidia App resetting the driver profiles for those particular games.

The game functioned again afterwards with all my programs open + RTSS overlay.
After that I installed the 610.47 driver over it and install Legacy PhysX without doing a clean install and things are fine again.

Noteworthy, I had some stuttering issues on the Pulsar display in DOOM TDA with the previous few drivers on 3x/4x MFG mode, but that looks to be solved now in 610.47 with maybe the only leftover 'issue' being if you switch from a Legacy native FPGA G-sync monitor to the Pulsar display that 4x MFG may still exhibit some frametime stutters until you retoggle the MFG settings ingame.

Sometimes MFG behaves differently on the old G-sync monitor versus the Pulsar monitor even on different multiplier modes, but the recent updates in the drivers regarding multi-monitor with MFG and V-sync fixes may have contributed to this improved stability.

Only RTX-Remix games like Portal and Half-Life 2 still seem to stutter on 4x MFG mode (2/3x is smooth) making the motion feel like half the smoothness on 4x mode despite higher FPS even on DLSS Ultra Performance on a RTX 5090 which is a bit questionable why this happens when games like Cyberpunk 2077 have zero stutter doing even 6x MFG.

The 610.47 driver has not yet fixed the Stand-by -> wake up for G-sync on the PG279Q essentially deactivating it when woken up but that is to be fixed in the future, Pulsar does not show this problem.

But in short I would probably still go for 610.47, albeit a clean install and re-import your driver profiles if required through Nvidia Inspector.

I have a RTX 3080 its not possible right to make custom resolutions and have Pulsar enabled on 360hz 1440P 8 bit? is 240hz max?

[liquidshadowfox]

"Anyway I believe this update is definitely a must-install to see the full potential these monitors have to offer in motion clarity.
Firmware in the OSD still reports MCM102 but maybe that is a separate thing to Pulsar internally but I don't know for sure."

I performed a reinstallation this morning because I wasn't entirely sure if it had been applied correctly with FW 1.1.6, and I've noticed that it now correctly displays the FW version on the monitor's OSD: MCM103(V1.1.6).

Interesting, thanks.
I know the update did apply successfully since the 120-180 range is working fine now, was just curious why the firmware version sticked.
Maybe they did an inbetween fix, but not too bothered by it.

As I alluded to, with older drivers, i.e. the 57x and 58x branch, 360 Hz 10 bit color gives me black screen in fullscreen mode.

Switching to 240 Hz 8 bit color (no DSC), there is no issue.

Interesting. Could it be that with 10bit color and 360 Hz, even RTX50 cards have to use multiple pipelines and run into the same problems as RTX40 cards with 360 Hz 8bit?
In this case... DSC is (again) not the actual problem.

You could try to disable the tiling via registry. With 8-bit color the 360 Hz mode should still be available. With 10-bit it could be gone.

RTX 50-series cards do not share the same limitation as DP 1.4 videocards did with DSC, that means even with DP1.4 monitor and cable you can use DSR / DLDSR (or custom resolution) and not have the same black screen issues as RTX 40-series and older experience.

You can also use 10-bit with VRR/Pulsar with HDR no problem. With DSR 'hacked' to 8K resolution you even get to keep the 360Hz output, I think at 16K it may be 60Hz but that is an exceptionally high resolution not workable in many games.

It runs on all RTX-50 series cards on a single display pipeline even though DSC is still active to compress the image to send it through to the display but the GPU side is well capable enough to handle all the bandwidth required.

So whatever issues you experience on DP 1.4 videocards may disappear using a newer videocard.

You can also see some more in depth explanations here to have an idea what each combination offers:
https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/loads ... nd-updates

To circle back a little bit to my previous question: which driver would you recommend for the firmware 1.1.6 and an 5090 GPU?

I would probably advice to still install the latest one, unless you're experiencing issues you didn't on previous ones which can at times be a bit of a mixed bag between GPU architectures, though recently they have implemented some security updates for the drivers in May so I would still make sure to have atleast that version or newer installed for security.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers ... --may-2026

I did have to install the 610.47 driver completely clean because I had issues with GTA V Enhanced not booting due to some strange underlying driver issue which may have been a result of doing multiple GPU driver upgrades in a row without a clean install which caused below crash errors in the launcher error logs:

[DISPLAY] [23800] [gamelaunch] Game exited with code 0xc0000005 (3221225477)

So what I did was wipe 610.47 completely including leftover folders, registry and physx + legacy physx.

Then I reinstalled the previous driver, re-imported my driver profiles with Nvidia App override bypass so I can control DLSS overrides in any game without Nvidia App resetting the driver profiles for those particular games.

The game functioned again afterwards with all my programs open + RTSS overlay.
After that I installed the 610.47 driver over it and install Legacy PhysX without doing a clean install and things are fine again.

Noteworthy, I had some stuttering issues on the Pulsar display in DOOM TDA with the previous few drivers on 3x/4x MFG mode, but that looks to be solved now in 610.47 with maybe the only leftover 'issue' being if you switch from a Legacy native FPGA G-sync monitor to the Pulsar display that 4x MFG may still exhibit some frametime stutters until you retoggle the MFG settings ingame.

Sometimes MFG behaves differently on the old G-sync monitor versus the Pulsar monitor even on different multiplier modes, but the recent updates in the drivers regarding multi-monitor with MFG and V-sync fixes may have contributed to this improved stability.

Only RTX-Remix games like Portal and Half-Life 2 still seem to stutter on 4x MFG mode (2/3x is smooth) making the motion feel like half the smoothness on 4x mode despite higher FPS even on DLSS Ultra Performance on a RTX 5090 which is a bit questionable why this happens when games like Cyberpunk 2077 have zero stutter doing even 6x MFG.

The 610.47 driver has not yet fixed the Stand-by -> wake up for G-sync on the PG279Q essentially deactivating it when woken up but that is to be fixed in the future, Pulsar does not show this problem.

But in short I would probably still go for 610.47, albeit a clean install and re-import your driver profiles if required through Nvidia Inspector.

I have a RTX 3080 its not possible right to make custom resolutions and have Pulsar enabled on 360hz 1440P 8 bit? is 240hz max?

I mean by default you can run the monitor at 360 hz 8 bit color on a 3080 BUT some users have reported some black out issues due to being forced to run DSC to hit that refresh, resolution and color depth combination. Try it and see, worst case you can definitely run it at 240 hz and still have a similar experience. Pulsar doesn't work as well at higher fps than it does at lower frame rates ironically I normally play below 200 fps and everything looks incredibly clear compared to even my OLED monitor next to me.

[BLooDS_inc]

Ok got the XG27AQNGV since yesterday also bought an RTX3080

My NVIDIA CTRL panel and monitor settings for Apex Legends ( that's a game that is hardcapped at 300 and fluctuates between 230 and 300 fps on 1440P and 1080P)

Nvidia Ctrl Panel settings

Nvidia driver 566.36
Low Latency Mode: Ultra
Gsync on
VSync off
2560x1440 x 360
Color: Override to Reference mode ( using icc profile MSIfanboy uploaded here last week)
Color Dept: 10 bit
Video Color setting Dynamic Range Full (0-255)
Video Image settings: Use the video player setting x 2. Deinterlacing Use inverse Telecine enebaled. RTX video enhancement: Disabled. High Dynamic Range: Inactive.

Monitor settings:
Standard firmware ( micro usb kabel is on the way)
Pulsar on
Pulsar Low FPS 120
Ambiend Apadative Brightness Off
Ambient Adaptive Color Off
Gamevials Racing Mode
Dark Boost Level 3
Aspect Control: 27" Default
Color Temp: 6500K
Display Color Space Wide Gamut
Gamma: 2.2

Apex Legends settings:

Low Latency Mode: Ultra

----

You guys think that once I have the micro-usb cable the firmware update will be beneficial for me ?
Does anyone has some other pointers please?

Update the fw when u can, ull see less bugs with pulsar, especially in low fps drops.
Don't use low latency mode ultra - it badly affects the 1% and 0.1% lows, use just ON, not ultra
Cap your fps under gsync range - if u play Apex and Apex runs under 300fps , use rtss frame cap with front sync edge capframe and set 300, ull see better fps and 1% lows and better framepace, better visual motion than nvcp cap or in-game cap
And i think use the latest drivers, except the very latest 610.47 that, like someone says, bring the gsync fps drop bugs and smooth motion bugs, I'm using the 596+ driver

Thank you! Did you try disabling DSC and play with 300hz with ULMB2 enabled but with Pulsar off? Is it worth the hassle in my situation u think? I like the 16:10 resolutions like 2304x1440 1728x1080

pulsar will be better anyway, mb just 60hz ulmb2 mode for 60fps is worth it with new fw