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.

[Shrimper]

I've had the AOC version of pulsar monitor for ~2months now, recently the screen has began to exhibit an issue where it goes black for like ~0.5s every 20s sometimes. It can happen for a while, and then stops happening for quite some time, anyone has had similar phenomenon?
The monitor does not get "disconnected" when that happens.

It didnt happen at all when I got the monitor but only started somewhat recently, I wonder if some driver update or setting might affect that? I'm on the latest 1.1.8 firmware too.

Now I've swapped the dp monitor i had with the one that came with the aoc (but i think the previous one was also quite high-rated one).

Anyone got any tips what to test or check ?

I just assume the cable went bad if it doesn't happen on another cable.
At best you could try a different GPU port, or even a driver rollback.

I don't see this happen on a 5090, and I'm using a 1.4 HBR3 qualified 3 meter passive cable with 10-bit/360hz/hdr/pulsar etc.

Ty for reply. It is weird, it somehow only ever happens when i play some games in fullscreen/borderless fullscreen; like overwatch. It never happens on normal desktop (and not when i alt-tab like happens with dsc). Also it..somehow (very oddly) seems to be tied to how my display scaling (e.g. is it display vs gpu scaling) is setup, or my 2nd display (like sometimes fiddling with those settings makes it stop occuring again). Different cable didnt eliminate it from happening.

I would suspect if it was actual connectivity issue windows would "lose" the display also etc but that doesnt happen. Oh well, its weird and i cant find a reliable way to reproduce it really. It can literally go on for days without happening and then out of the blue, it happens "once every 5 minutes" for an hour or so and then again stops happening.

[kyube]

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.

The 120Hz ULMB2 mode does have such performance as per Nvidia data (it's ~0,65 ms pulse on @ PW=25)... after I've nagged tremendously on the forums here
See here for the interpolated curve

It's only the 60 Hz mode which isn't as good as a CRT.
Though, to be fair to Nvidia, you need extreme levels of voltage boosting to get to that level.
For ~1 ms pulse on time @ 60 Hz
1500cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~90cd/m²
2000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~120cd/m²
3000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~180cd/m²

For ~0,5 ms pulse on time @ 60 Hz, you'd need 3% duty cycle:
1500cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~45cd/m²
2000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~60cd/m²
3000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~90cd/m²
4000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cylce = ~120cd/m²

As you can see, requires quite a lot of brightness

PG27AQN & other ULMB1/2 monitors are probably the closest thing to CRTs (in +120Hz range) on the market due to Nvidia allowing very low duty cycle's at higher refresh rates.
XL2566K is also a strong contender due to the ability to use Blurbusters Utility on anything between 100–360 Hz and having good voltage boosting.
M27P6 is also great in terms of 27" 4K displays (which is a market that's mostly dead due to the abundance of KSF and manifacturers unwilling to push higher voltage boosting)

The 60–100Hz region is where most models struggle... Arguably, this region should stay dead due to flicker becoming uncomfortable in it.

[t2na]

The 60–100Hz region is where most models struggle... Arguably, this region should stay dead due to flicker becoming uncomfortable in it.

Completely agree with this, it's a the shame at the moment with console's sitting more consistently at the 60fps mark than the 120fps mark. Hopefully with the newer generation of consoles moving to some form of vcache support on the CPU side we'll see higher fps because ULMB2 on these Pulsar monitors at 120fps is genuinely so enjoyable to use.

I've been playing Ghost of Yotei recently on the Pro and at 60hz ULMB2 the motion clarity is really great - but it's almost 'ruined' because every time I pull up the map the flicker almost sends me to another dimension. It's fine outside of that but the map is really a struggle to use with the flicker.

The game does have an 'uncapped' FPS mode - but it runs between 75-90fps so ULMB2 at 120hz would never work.

I know consoles consoles consoles... but I do still prefer playing all my single player/story titles on a console for some reason and every FPS game on PC!

[hammelgammler]

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.

The 120Hz ULMB2 mode does have such performance as per Nvidia data (it's ~0,65 ms pulse on @ PW=25)... after I've nagged tremendously on the forums here
See here for the interpolated curve

It's only the 60 Hz mode which isn't as good as a CRT.
Though, to be fair to Nvidia, you need extreme levels of voltage boosting to get to that level.
For ~1 ms pulse on time @ 60 Hz
1500cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~90cd/m²
2000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~120cd/m²
3000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 6% duty cycle = ~180cd/m²

For ~0,5 ms pulse on time @ 60 Hz, you'd need 3% duty cycle:
1500cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~45cd/m²
2000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~60cd/m²
3000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cycle = ~90cd/m²
4000cd/m² voltage boosting @ 3% duty cylce = ~120cd/m²

As you can see, requires quite a lot of brightness

PG27AQN & other ULMB1/2 monitors are probably the closest thing to CRTs (in +120Hz range) on the market due to Nvidia allowing very low duty cycle's at higher refresh rates.
XL2566K is also a strong contender due to the ability to use Blurbusters Utility on anything between 100–360 Hz and having good voltage boosting.
M27P6 is also great in terms of 27" 4K displays (which is a market that's mostly dead due to the abundance of KSF and manifacturers unwilling to push higher voltage boosting)

The 60–100Hz region is where most models struggle... Arguably, this region should stay dead due to flicker becoming uncomfortable in it.

Well damn, given that I play with perfect frametimes anyways (no VRR flicker), I might just as well could always use the fixed 120Hz ULMB2. I think 0.65ms MPRT should be better than a CRT, especially because there are no phosphor trails.

My FW900 has 85 nits @ 6500K, so I might get along with 50 nits in a pitch black room. That would at least mitigate the IPS downsides a bit. Are there any MPRT results at PW=10%? Shouldn’t that be like 0.3ms MPRT and equivalent to around 3000Hz OLED?

Maybe I should rather wait for the second generation of pulse monitors, but 0.3ms MPRT just sounds amazing. There are quite a few non-HDR games, which I would rather play with 120Hz 0.3ms MPRT than with my Samsung S95F @ 165Hz. For HDR it’s a different story, that is amazing on it. Given that TVs always seem to lag a few generations of monitors behind in terms of refresh rate, I think it will take some years until we finally have 500Hz TVs, which would still be a lot worse.

The ideal combination seems to be (for me):

- HDR: OLED TV (e.g. Samsung S95F 55”)
- SDR: Pulse/strobing monitor @ lowest MPRT (60Hz/120Hz) OR FW900 @ 96Hz / W900 @ 60Hz
- Sony W900 for pixel art games (e.g. 640x360 @ 160Hz)

Are there any news yet for anything mini-LED strobed monitors? Or any TVs which have adjustable pulse width and are comparable to the 60Hz/120Hz ULMB2 monitors?

[kyube]

Well damn, given that I play with perfect frametimes anyways (no VRR flicker), I might just as well could always use the fixed 120Hz ULMB2. I think 0.65ms MPRT should be better than a CRT, especially because there are no phosphor trails.

It all depends on the speed at which your game is moving at & especially the colors themselves (though, less problematic on ULMB2@120 Hz due to the panel's G2G RT being fast enough)
For some people who play slower-paced games, even 1 ms pulse on time is sufficient. It'd make ~1000 px/s have ≤1px of blur.

Are there any MPRT results at PW=10%? Shouldn’t that be like 0.3ms MPRT and equivalent to around 3000Hz OLED?
Maybe I should rather wait for the second generation of pulse monitors, but 0.3ms MPRT just sounds amazing. There are quite a few non-HDR games, which I would rather play with 120Hz 0.3ms MPRT than with my Samsung S95F @ 165Hz. For HDR it’s a different story, that is amazing on it. Given that TVs always seem to lag a few generations of monitors behind in terms of refresh rate, I think it will take some years until we finally have 500Hz TVs, which would still be a lot worse.

No data other than my interpolated curve, which I've linked to in my post above.
Next generation Pulsar models seem to be 32" 5K MiniLEDs, as per TFTCentral. See link below.

Are there any news yet for anything mini-LED strobed monitors? Or any TVs which have adjustable pulse width and are comparable to the 60Hz/120Hz ULMB2 monitors?

See here
I keep this semi-updated.
Be aware that most of the time, local dimming & strobing don't work together.
Titan Army models seem to be the exception though. DyDS has a LD-based mode as a separate toggle.
Comes with a hefty latency penalty though...

I haven't explored the TV market, as I personally dislike large size displays (>42") & the fact majority of them (on RTINGS) still use PWM as their main mode of operation...

I can tell you that the 32–34" segment is even worse off in terms of backlight strobing implementations.
Prevalence of KSF WLED backlights, inappropriate duty cycle choices, insufficient voltage boosting, mediocre OD tuning & slow panels are the major issues which plague this segment.

[edgintheledge]

Are there any MPRT results at PW=10%? Shouldn’t that be like 0.3ms MPRT and equivalent to around 3000Hz OLED?

My picture earlier in the thread isn't perfectly scientific given it was done by hand through video at an absurdly fast 5760px/sec, but it should give an idea of what you can expect with the 120hz mode
120hz PW10

[MSIfanboy]

I have several monitors, obviously running max hz and strobing is ideal, but I have now just gone back to using max refresh rate, if I can get close 300fps, the visual clarity is fine, the 500-610hz just makes aiming in fps games so much nicer and lower latency, despite not even hitting that refresh rate

The pulsar 120hz ulmb2 is really clear, but the mouse feels delayed, and obviously not look as smooth, so you sure have a clear image in motion, but a more delayed input , maybe its more amazing in other types of games

I'm looking forward to a 1000hz monitor with pulsar, than I will get the best of both worlds I assume