~200fps gaming - oled or pulsar?

[wez4prez]

Hello.

My workhorse Acer XB273UGX is starting to show too many dead/red/bright pixels and new is fun right?

I have been happy with this display for years even if I know there is some smearing going on around dark objects. Its not a huge deal, but the pixels bother me more.

I was initially set on an oled display because the contrast and responsiveness but then I watched the Monitor Unboxed review and the multiplayer section and heard about Pulsar which sounded very interesting but I dont know if its fits my user case.

I play mostly shooters and while I have a very good PC there is still games I have to use frame gen to achieve 200+ fps which is a place I want to be, its just so much more fluid and less trailing blur. Its a mix of fast pace and scanning the entire screen for movements in far distance. Think of games like Warzone, Wardogs, Arc Raiders.

Im not using any kind of fps caps or even G-sync, I just set max fps at display cap and let it do its thing and ideally thats how I want to roll in the future.

Im looking at 27” 1440p monitors, Pulsar and Oleds for the same price and wonders what your experience is in this fps range and said type of games.

Ideally I think motion clarity is king. I still think a 120hz crt with CS1.6 was the benchmark on how good it can look.

Is Pulsar that big of a deal if Im gaming at 150-250 fps or will an oled be almost as good, or do they even surpass in areas where ”scanning your screen for pixel movements” be better on an oled?

I know there is BFI on the newest Asus oled but I think its outside of budget and I like bright monitors, even in that budget brightness takes a big hit with BFI.

VRR flickers is also a concern but since I dont even use any sync as it is, Im not sure if I should be worried about it or not.

Thanks

[RealNC]

If VRR is important to you, Pulsar. For me, VRR is unusable on OLED. Meaning the only way to get smooth motion with acceptable latency is exact capping at 1/2 refresh rate. For example 90FPS at 180Hz, or 120FPS at 240Hz. And this only works with accurate FPS limiters, which are Special K and RTSS. And of course if the FPS cap can't be maintained and the game drops from that, it won't be smooth anymore.

DLSS frame generation is also quite useless without VRR. It will never be smooth. You will get constant hiccups, unless you use full vsync, which means input lag will skyrocket (Reflex doesn't help because you're hitting full vsync.)

So keep that in mind if you go OLED.

[kyube]

Ideally I think motion clarity is king. I still think a 120hz crt with CS1.6 was the benchmark on how good it can look.

Is Pulsar that big of a deal if Im gaming at 150-250 fps or will an oled be almost as good, or do they even surpass in areas where ”scanning your screen for pixel movements” be better on an oled?

1.) Pulsar (VRR+Strobing) is not anywhere near CRT levels of clarity, regardless of FPS you're targetting. Maybe if you play very slow games, but even this is a stretch.
Pulsar can achieve somewhere between 1,25 – 2ms pulse on-time in the designated FPS range (500-800Hz effective motion clarity), while OLED is stuck to FPS=Hz (1/2 to 1/4 the value that Pulsar can achieve)
See this curve by Nvidia to understand more
A CRT is able to achieve +3000Hz effective motion clarity, in comparison.
Check out the large Pulsar thread for my posts, you'll be able to read a bit more in regards to how the panels stack up comparatively.

2.) From a purely eye-tracked motion clarity perspetive, Pulsar comfortably beats OLED because impulsed displays always have a lead in regards to that.

3.) The fixed refresh rate strobing mode (ULMB2) is much better IMO, if clarity-first is your use-case.

4.) VRR flicker on OLED is highly dependant on the game & panel type (QD vs WOLED) in question.
e.g.: CS2, Apex & OW don't lead to visible flicker with a QD-OLED panel AFAIK (anecdotal evidence, not my hands-on experience)

[nuninho1980]

Pulsar can achieve somewhere between 1,25 – 2ms pulse on-time in the designated FPS range (500-800Hz effective motion clarity)

!??! But, after tested my Acer XB273U F5, we need to decrease pulse width to between 25 and 35 for 120Hz with ULMB 2 for get between ~0.35ms and ~0.5ms MPRT, respectively.

[wez4prez]

Thanks for the replies, sounds like Pulsar is the only great option.

Ideally I think motion clarity is king. I still think a 120hz crt with CS1.6 was the benchmark on how good it can look.

Is Pulsar that big of a deal if Im gaming at 150-250 fps or will an oled be almost as good, or do they even surpass in areas where ”scanning your screen for pixel movements” be better on an oled?

1.) Pulsar (VRR+Strobing) is not anywhere near CRT levels of clarity, regardless of FPS you're targetting. Maybe if you play very slow games, but even this is a stretch.
Pulsar can achieve somewhere between 1,25 – 2ms pulse on-time in the designated FPS range (500-800Hz effective motion clarity), while OLED is stuck to FPS=Hz (1/2 to 1/4 the value that Pulsar can achieve)
See this curve by Nvidia to understand more
A CRT is able to achieve +3000Hz effective motion clarity, in comparison.
Check out the large Pulsar thread for my posts, you'll be able to read a bit more in regards to how the panels stack up comparatively.

2.) From a purely eye-tracked motion clarity perspetive, Pulsar comfortably beats OLED because impulsed displays always have a lead in regards to that.

3.) The fixed refresh rate strobing mode (ULMB2) is much better IMO, if clarity-first is your use-case.

4.) VRR flicker on OLED is highly dependant on the game & panel type (QD vs WOLED) in question.
e.g.: CS2, Apex & OW don't lead to visible flicker with a QD-OLED panel AFAIK (anecdotal evidence, not my hands-on experience)

I think any would be an upgrade really.

The way my monitor works today is that OC 270hz isnt compatible with G-sync and VRB lowers the brightness considerably which means I dont use it.

I just cap my fps at 270 and plays the game. I would suspect a oled to be an improvement over this in regards to clarity but to get a jump it sounds like I need Pulsar and G-sync together. VRR probably wouldnt be an issue as the monitor just outputs 360hz or whatever all the time. It creates problem in itself but not worse than anything I see today, right?

On the UFO tests Ive seen it seems like for oled to match Pulsar you need the BFI and that both breaks the bank and has similar issue as my current panel which cuts brightness in half.

[nuninho1980]

G-SYNC Pulsar may be more motion blur than ULMB 2 because Pulsar doesn't have pulse width changer.

[kyube]

The way my monitor works today is that OC 270hz isnt compatible with G-sync and VRB lowers the brightness considerably which means I dont use it.

This already tells me that +90% of models on the market don't fit your "CRT clarity" constraint.
Fixed refresh rate strobing, due to rampant market practice of insufficient voltage boosting, implicitly means lower than max brightness (50-200 cd/m² range is where it's "optimal", generally)
You might want to mention what brightness value you're comfortable with.
This will help in finding you a good model you're comfortable with.
Pulsar is currently tuned to be "brightness-first".

I just cap my fps at 270 and plays the game. I would suspect a oled to be an improvement over this in regards to clarity but to get a jump it sounds like I need Pulsar and G-sync together. VRR probably wouldnt be an issue as the monitor just outputs 360hz or whatever all the time. It creates problem in itself but not worse than anything I see today, right?

If you're using your ACER in the fixed refresh rate (sample & hold) mode, then OLED will bring a improvement in specific G2G RT transitions & thus clear up the overall image, yes.
How much of an improvement you'll see? That I cannot tell.
To be able to push the eye-tracked motion clarity further than what the limited sample rate of 270FPS allows you to, you require some form of backlight strobing (either fixed refresh rate such as VRB, ULMB2 OR variable refresh rate ones such as Pulsar)
Tearing management makes this a bit more complicated in the former path (S&H)

On the UFO tests Ive seen it seems like for oled to match Pulsar you need the BFI and that both breaks the bank and has similar issue as my current panel which cuts brightness in half.

Current BFI implementations are bound to: Pulse on-time = min(refreshTime);
This means that, on a 480Hz screen, you can only use BFI @ 240Hz and achieve ~480Hz effective motion clarity.
This makes BFI practically irrelevant for majority of users who want the same experience as a CRT.
Once they allow more aggressive duty cycles (10%) and any refresh rate target you want, then it might be viable.

As it stands at the time of writing: OLED cannot match Pulsar at the same frame rate values in terms of effective motion clarity.
OLED is bound by the same sample & hold blur "law" that your LCD is bound by, which can be seen in the Nvidia graph I've sent you above
You can only "eclipse" it by:
- Playing high FPS games @ High Hz screens (4-5 digit values), which is practically impossible on vast majority of games and hardware
- Rely on impulsed path (CRTs, ULMB2/VRB,...), which makes chasing 3-4 digit values of effective motion clarity (measured in Hz) relatively easy.

[RealNC]

Also, BFI on OLED is implemented incorrectly. It introduces lag because current BFI implementations show a black frame first, then the content frame. So there's always one full frame of lag added. This is because they don't use accelerated scanout.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Also, BFI on OLED is implemented incorrectly. It introduces lag because current BFI implementations show a black frame first, then the content frame. So there's always one full frame of lag added. This is because they don't use accelerated scanout.

It's more Unintended Consequences, a necessity of law of physics.

It is because it's using standard VESA timings standard (e.g. CVT-R2 or similar, rather than a Large Vertical Total)

Imagine a refresh cycle as a water tank. A low Hz means the tank fills slowly. A BFI algorithm at the panel requires a faster refresh cycle (to accomodate space for black frames). It's like having to wait for a slow-refill of a water tank (the low Hz) before fast-pour of a water tank (the high Hz). You can't have a full output of the pixels of a refresh cycle output faster (like the second half of a BFI) before you've fully received the last pixels.

If we started BFI too early, the fast-scanout of the BFI will glitch when it reaches an undelivered pixel (data not yet arrived on HDMI or DisplayPort).

I might begin making some YouTube animations on some of the weird nuances of input/output when they're different rates (standard timings, Large Vertical Total, etc).

If VESA came up with a standardized Large Vertical Total (or QFT) protocol/standard, and mandated manufacturers to use it, for lower-latency BFI, then that would have been the ideal situation. Then BFI visible frame can begin scanning out as immediately as one scanout-time prior to the receiving of the final slow pixel from the pipe (DP/HDMI).