NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[mawi]

Game genre and latency doesn't matter. What matters is target framerate vs. achievable framerate. Even on 9800X3D in many Unreal Engine games released in past 2 years, you will not even sustain 100fps. The worst offender - Borderlands 4 - even on 9800X3D+5090 in 900p res won't allow you to play at 120+fps on higher detail levels.

Thats not what I have said. I just said you will have a more consistent 1% and 0.1% lows if you sacrifice some more PCL. So I would not exclude mid-range PCs from having clear pulsar picture, they just cannot have both. motion clarity and low PCL.

[hammelgammler]

Given the very good motion clarity of the pulsar monitors and that they don’t have phosphor trail artifacts (which I find a bit annoying), would you say pulsar monitors would be an upgrade?

I will never get rid of the W900, simply for 640x360 games, which look amazing on it, but mainly speaking from a motion clarity perspective, is it better than CRTs? Pulsar could at least be a very nice replacement for the FW900, given the higher resolution/hz, brightness and no phosphor trails.

To be able to answer this question, we have to set a few expectations by answering the following questions:
1.) What are the options (alternatives) for 60 Hz backlight strobing?
2.) What's the fastest pixel speed you see in games you play? (most important metric)
3.) What brightness are you comfortable with?

In regards to the 1st question:
Your options are limited to models found in this list maintained by Chief:
- Viewsonic XG2431
- BenQ MBR models (XL2411P and earlier)
- Asus XG27AQNGV / Acer XB273UF5 / Asus AG276QSG2

In regards to the 2nd question, we have the following data:
A CRT is able to have clear eye-tracked motion beyond 3000px/s, as seen here
The brightness it targets is usually ~100cd/m², where any refresh rate is able to achieve aforementioned eye-tracked clarity
The pulse curve is sinusoidal, hence a bit easier on the eyes (anecdotally).
CRTs have a SVM value of ~0,72 when @ 120 Hz, which is under the "perceptible" threshold of 1
LCDs with global scan, in comparison, has SVM values around 1,19-1,5

The Viewsonic XG2431 scales as follows:



The XG2431 only gets competitive with the XG27AQNGV around PW=Ultra (still worse), which gets you ~53cd/m² of brightness
This already disqualifies the XG2431 for the 60Hz use-case, as not having at least a ≤1 ms pulse on-time is a dealbreaker to me.
Thankfully, Nvidia has opted to use much higher voltage boosting compared to the XG2431's amplitude, hence comfortably beating the Viewsonic in regards to overall brightness.

The XG27AQNGV, as per Nvidia's data, PW=25 @ 60Hz is 1,37 ms MPRT.
This implies a duty cycle of ~8,22%, leading to a effective motion clarity of ~730 Hz.
As per TFTCentral data, PW=10 targets ~50cd/m²
This would imply a ~0,5 ms pulse on time (effective motion clarity of ~2000 Hz) on the lowest possible setting (Take this data with a grain of salt, as it's based on interpolation without hands-on data.)
Take a look at DisplayNinja's UFOs at 1920px/s to get a feel for how it performs.

CRTs, in comparison, are able to achieve +4000 px/s (<0,25 ms pulse on time) of effective motion clarity (as per input lag testing data by qsxcv and Ashun from ApertureGrille)

This means that:
This would be perfectly clear on a CRT
This would be "perfectly clear" (≤1px of blur) on the XG27AQNGV @ PW=25
This should be "perfectly clear" (≤1px of blur) on the XG27AQNGV @ PW=10
Anything faster (speaking of PW=25) on the XG27AQNGV would start blurring akin to this simulation

We have no data for the BenQ models and their capabilities. My personal theory is that it sits between the Viewsonic and the Pulsar panels.

What does this mean?
For a purely 60 Hz strobing perspective, which I personally hate with all my might due to the severe sample rate reduction & thus increased eye strain (regardless of CRT or LCD Backlight strobing), the XG27AQNGV beats the XG2431 (& likely the BenQ) and is the closest thing to a CRT replacement we've had in 3 decades.
That's how bad the market is

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the detailed response!

Well I guess I will keep using my CRTs then for now.
Good that we can get even better motion clarity now, but 100 nits is indeed my target brightness. But good that we have close modern options now!

Edit: I really thought the Pulsar monitors at least have “a lot” better motion clarity (@ 60 Hz and 120 Hz) than CRTs, as I often read they only have around 1000 Hz effective motion clarity.

[OpenEye]

TIP for Pulsar users: For excellent mouselook blur busting in your Pulsar/CRT/BFI/framegen in CP 2077, raise your mouse DPI to at least 3200dpi and use extremely low mouse in-game sensitivity and extremely low Control Panel mouse arrow sensitivity.

Mouselook jitter is especially visible on a strobed low-motion-blur display.

This is an underrated tip. Most esports often use 800dpi, especially since some old engines behaved better at 800dpi, and many used it as a handshake filter of sorts. But many are migrating away from that. And 800dpi does not take full take advantage of Pulsar blur busting during mouselook due to jitters adding back blurfog. 100 jitters/second at 300fps = extra blur fog. Fix your mouse jitters!

Thanks for this tip. I am yet to test this, but I was originally using 1600 dpi. Once home, I will give 3200dpi a run on Overwatch.