CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Ask about motion blur reduction in gaming monitors. Includes ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur), NVIDIA LightBoost, ASUS ELMB, BenQ/Zowie DyAc, Turbo240, ToastyX Strobelight, etc.
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LordGurciullo
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CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by LordGurciullo » 26 Feb 2019, 15:08

Hi Guys!
I have read quite a lot recently and my brain feels mushy from all the technical stuff :)

So. My CRT finally died. Yup. I'm one of those old school guys who always felt looking at anything else felt weird or not clean enough.
I loved my CRT - A sony trinitron Dell P1130.

So I'm looking at these new monitors and I want something that is as close as possible. Ive used a benq with light boost at 120hz a few years back and it was good but still no CRT.

I no longer am competitive (I'm old) but would like something with similar attributes. Part of me is excited to get out of the 1600 x 1200 resolution. My computer cant pump crazy frames right now so I'm not sure if 1440 is a good idea. And my budget is 300-500.

I was looking at this
ASUS VG278Q 27 It has ELMB 27 inchs 1080 144 or
ASUS VG248QE 24 Light boost possible 1080 144 or
Acer Predator XB271HU 27 inch 144 1440 resolution (450 dollars)

I'm confused as to whats best... Gsync with high hertz or ULMB. I know there are pros and cons.
What about ELMB vs ULMB...
input lag? I want crt quality if possible.

I could go into the 240hz range as well..
I'm confused..

I play FPS games (usually old school). Dusk for example. But also will be playing all the new far crys, etc.
Please help Blur Busters!

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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 26 Feb 2019, 17:33

Don't forget extra hertzroom is beneficial for blur reduction.

120Hz ULMB on a 240Hz LCD can look better and be less laggy than 120Hz ULMB on a 144Hz LCD.

So one can also technically get a 240Hz LCD just to get better motion blur reduction (ULMB ON, DyAc ON, ELMB ON).

Motion Blur Reduction FAQ
There's a good Motion Blur Reduction FAQ

Do you need lowest strobe crosstalk?
See Advanced Crosstalk FAQ. Some brands of blur reduction have it worse than others. To reduce this, you want highest Hertzroom above your target strobed rate (for ULMB), and/or the ability to use extremely Large Vertical Totals (for 144Hz BenQ)

Do you need more flexible refresh rates?
Getting single-strobe custom refresh rates such as 60Hz, 75Hz, 59.94Hz, 90Hz, etc, can be accomplished with a BenQ ZOWIE XL2411P. To milk this to the maximum quality with minimum strobe crosstalk, you will need to learn the use of Large Vertical Total tweaking. You can use Blur Busters Strobe Utility to help you out here.

Do you need lowest lag motion blur reduction mode?
You'll want to go with the BenQ XL2546 the one with the voltage-boosted DyAc which is known to have among the lowest strobed input lag, doing 240Hz strobing at 240Hz. That said, crosstalk is a bit worse but BenQ at least unlocks you access to 240Hz strobing if you want it! For better quality strobing (less crosstalk) you'll want to lower the strobed refresh rate to match the competition (or somewhere closer, like 180Hz). That said, you'll possibly prefer 144Hz or 180Hz strobing + combined with 1/240sec velocity cable delivery via Large Vertical Total tweak (which is already reasonably low at 144Hz, so won't reduce crosstalk as much as on XL2411P, but will slightly reduce strobe lag). You can get custom strobe refresh rates above ~75Hz, it just won't single-strobe at 60Hz if you need that.

Do you need easiest strobing that doesn't have bad strobe crosstalk?
If you have an NVIDIA product, ULMB is generally the most user-friendly blur reduction. But you're sticking to NVIDIA product, and you are limited to various ULMB refresh rates (unless you decide to do ULMB hacks). All monitors with ULMB can be found here.

Do you need brightest blur reduction?
The best voltage-boosted strobing is currently found on 240Hz monitors. You can get roughly 300 nits of strobed brightness on the 240Hz ULMB-brand and DyAc-brand strobed monitors. See 120Hz monitor list.

Do you need best blur reduction WITHOUT flicker?
Sample-and-hold 240Hz will have 1/4th motion blur of sample-and-hold 60Hz. Mathematically, for a flickerfree/strobefree display, doubling refresh rate (and frame rate) will halve display motion blur due to persistence (sample-and-hold effect) explained at Blur Busters Law: The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays. The showstopper is you will need to keep framerates very high.

Do you need something with better colors with motion blur reduction?
Theoretically this would be a rolling-scan-impulse OLED once they arrive in a year or few. Best blur reduction is currently stuck with TN LCDs due to low crosstalk but if you hated TN LCDs, you can also go with 165Hz 1440p IPS GSYNC LCDs which still support 85Hz, 100Hz and 120Hz motion blur reduction modes -- just with slightly more strobe crosstalk than with a TN LCD.

Do you need maximum flexibility of choice, blur reduction and VRR?
The best low-blur VRR tends to be the 240Hz VRR displays, and the ones with the least compromises tend to be all the 240Hz GSYNC monitors. That way, you can use ULMB for some games that works better with blur reduction, and use GSYNC for other games that work better with GSYNC.

You can get between 0.25ms-1.5ms persistence with ULMB (depending on ULMB Pulse Width setting), and you can get as low as ~4.1ms persistence with 240Hz GSYNC (persistence is bottlenecked by refresh time). Mathematically, 1ms of persistence translates to 1 pixel of motion blur per 1000 pixels/second, as seen in this chart:

Image

So there's many different priorities. There's really truly no one jack-of-all-trades monitor, so one has to steer chose in the direction of the least compromises for your specific situation. Such as blur reduction needed in emulators, or priorities like brighter blur reduction, etc.
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LordGurciullo
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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by LordGurciullo » 26 Feb 2019, 21:09

Your knowledge is incredible and mind blowing.
I want crt quality as I’ve used a crt for the last 20 years :). My video card is old and weak though so I won’t be getting 120 FPS very often. Plus my budget isn’t super high. - so definitely want to stick to 1080.
I would like 1ms persistence with lowest input lag and least crosstalk of course :).

I’ve never used gsync but as my video card is a 770 I would need one that supports it natively right? Not compatibile. If I understand correctly.

Wanna give me 3 options in the 240-480 range?

Do you like the 27 inch Asus mentioned above?
It has elmb. Not sure what the options are.

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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 26 Feb 2019, 21:57

LordGurciullo wrote:Your knowledge is incredible and mind blowing.
I want crt quality as I’ve used a crt for the last 20 years :). My video card is old and weak though so I won’t be getting 120 FPS very often. Plus my budget isn’t super high. - so definitely want to stick to 1080.
I would like 1ms persistence with lowest input lag and least crosstalk of course :).
If you're tight, the cheapest budget blur reduction is the Acer GN246HL -- it has LightBoost blur reduction for less than $200. However, no VRR, and ghosting is awful on this model in non-LightBoost mode on that particular monitor, but that practically disappears in LightBoost mode, so the monitor is really saved by LightBoost.
LordGurciullo wrote:I’ve never used gsync but as my video card is a 770 I would need one that supports it natively right? Not compatibile. If I understand correctly.
Correct, you'd need native GSYNC rather than GSYNC Compatible (Aka FreeSync).

Getting the freedom to access FreeSync (GSYNC compatible) appears to be a feature limited to newer NVIDIA graphics cards (Pascal or newer architecture, so you need 10XX series or newer).

Let's note the brand new GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, which gives you pretty much GTX 1070 performance for less than 300. That could be your upgrade graphics card on a budget.
LordGurciullo wrote:Wanna give me 3 options in the 240-480 range?
The native GSYNC 240Hz monitors are sufficiently similar enough (ULMB quality is similar) that you can just price-shop the 240Hz GSYNC models.
LordGurciullo wrote:Do you like the 27 inch Asus mentioned above? It has elmb. Not sure what the options are.
I currently have little experience with ELMB, so I'm not sure how it compares to ULMB at this stage. Hopefully it's as good as ULMB, and if so, could satisfy your needs especially as you may later upgrade your GPU to a newer GPU.
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LordGurciullo
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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by LordGurciullo » 26 Feb 2019, 23:12

Remarkably Impressive. The Benq I spoke of earlier is actually in my dads room. Its a Benq XL2420t. Ive used it with 10 percent light boost and felt it acceptable. How much different is that going to be to a

144hz ULMB
I want to keep this 350 or under ideally.
What about these?

Acer Predator XB241H 350 bucks, 144hz ULMB (THIS HAS GSYNC)

Option 1.
ASUS VG248QE 24 144hz Lightboost? No Gysnc 250bucks

Option 2
Acer Predator XB241H 350 bucks, 144hz ULMB (THIS HAS GSYNC) or

AW2518H 240HZ gsync and could do 144hz ULMB 490 bucks

Acer Predator XB271HU this is 27 inchs and higher resolution for only 450... but 165 hz (strobe at 144hz)?

I was looking at the AW2518Hf but it doesn't have any blur reduction!!



Is it really worth going into the 500 dollar range for 240hz just to have more room to do 144 ULMB?
From what I understand ULMB is 99 percent what I'm going to want to use...

Input lag gsync vs ULMB 144hz is pretty comparable right?

I'm sorry to keep asking questions but this is a huge decision and anyone's opinion will be taken into account.

LordGurciullo
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Joined: 26 Feb 2019, 14:31

Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by LordGurciullo » 28 Feb 2019, 11:11

So it seems from what I’ve read I’d want
120 or 144hz ulmb with scanline sync.

How do you Guys feel about the
Predator xb241h
Acer Predator XB241H bmipr 24-inch Full HD 1920x1080 NVIDIA G-Sync Display, 144Hz, 2 x 2w speakers, HDMI & DP https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C05C1OK/

Is this the sweet spot for me?

LordGurciullo
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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by LordGurciullo » 28 Feb 2019, 20:44

Thoughts guys?
I think for 350 this cant be beat right guys?

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Re: CRT Quality replacement Questions!

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 01 Mar 2019, 23:19

Looking elsewhere,

$350 for a genuine NVIDIA native GSYNC monitor indeed is almost as cheap as you can go.

Being one of the native GSYNC, it includes the dynamic (variable) overdrive for high quality variable refresh rate.

You mentioned you were using LightBoost in the past. Keep in mind that ULMB has a different tuning than LightBoost does -- ULMB has better colors but a very tiny bit more strobe crosstalk. However, this is adjustable to an extent (using various tips). On average, your blur reduction will be very similar to what you used to have with LightBoost.

Unconfirmed, but since this monitor is a 180Hz overclockable, this monitor should also support the ULMB hacks so you can get custom ULMB refresh refresh rates (From about 60Hz through about 125Hz) as well as the undocumented GSYNC+ULMB simultaneous hack (works well only in a very few games).

For the price, it is a good compromise for what you need -- the choice between ULMB and GSYNC, while also optionally having access to 180Hz refresh rates. Make sure you have an NVIDIA card though, to milk those features.
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