Just got the benq XL2411Z. What do I do now?

[harrwang38]

Hello, I posted a week back about which monitor to get and finally decided on this one. Amazing monitor so far and haven't regretted since. What should I do now to optimize it? I been researching and it's a little bit confusing.

This my 2nd monitor I ever bought and don't have much experience in calibrating and stuff. What are the best settings for this monitor? I have read tftcentral and tomshardware settings but don't know which one is better?

Should I use the VT tweaks? I see that there is 2 but don't know which one I should be using?

Do I leave instant mode on or off? Ama on high right?

If I use blur reduction do I increase my brightness or just use the blur buster utility? Which settings are the best for quality?

I play CS GO and Dota 2 mainly.

[Falkentyne]

Definitely use the VT 1502 tweak at 100 and 120hz. Both work fine. They also increase the brightness slightly, which really helps if you want to use the VERY nice 1.0ms persistence (better than lightboost's 1.4ms 10%), or you want to go all out with the 0.5ms "no motion blur here, folks" dark setting, which is absolutely unusuable WITHOUT the VT1502 tweak (barely usable with it since it's just too dark unless you're in pitch black night). 144hz's bandwidth is too high to use any tweaks.

You can also use a VT tweak for 60hz, (1260) for arcade game emulators and 60 fps/hz locked games (dark souls, anyone?). Going higher than 1260 or 1502 will cause the screen to go into power save (or not display anything).

50 hz strobing is problematic. Seems to only work with certain timings. Using it with default times on an AMD card will cause strobing to NOT work, which will (thanks to attempted strobing forcing the brightness much higher) cause the screen brightness gain to get TOO high, and the screen will power off and cycle (with blur reduction set off), then you will need to change the refresh rate to not have that happen again. Apparently works with an Nvidia card better. This is ONLY a problem in Crysis, where 50 hz is FORCED by default (most "badly" coded games like this force 60 hz, but Crysis is a known problem with running at 29hz/50hz on certain screens), unless you use a custom resolution or you remove all of the standard and established resolutions in CRU.exe (which should stop crysis from running that low).

Keep instant mode on. Instant mode off at 100hz and VT1502 works, but you have no benefit to it. 120hz and VT 1502 will corrupt the screen, so keep it on.

Keep AMA on high.
You can lower the intensity of the inverse ghosting by about 40% by y changing contrast from 50 to 40, if you ever find it bothering you. But color reproduction and intensity wise, 50 is best.

[harrwang38]

Thanks for the quick reply man! Was hoping you would reply =D

Alright I haven't done any VT tweaks yet as I still have some question after playing around. What is the difference between the 2 anyways?

I'm using tft centrals calibration settings which has my brightness at 20 and contrast at 50. Seems pretty good so far. However after trying out blur reduction mode it made my screen go way to dark for me. I want to keep the blur reduction on at all times (unless its pointless for everything else?) so I need a bright calibrated screen. Right now I am using max persistence 5.0 ms which is pretty perfect for me. What are the downsides of using max persistence? I'm going to go play some CS GO and try it out.

Loving the screen so far.

[Falkentyne]

Those TFT tweaks are ONLY for standard use of the monitor (no blur reduction). Using blur reduction on REQUIRES brightness to be set to 100%. (lightboost is the same way, except you don't see/can't adjust the brightness settings).

VT 1502 lessens the size of the thick crosstalk band (or increases the distance between the band from top to bottom, which is basically the same thing) a bit more than 1350 and raises it even farther up to the top of the screen (with strobe phase set to minimum and persistence to 1.0ms, here you can see the band still (on the alien invasion testufo page/full screen) but just in the upper half inch, and 0.5 ms persistence has it at the very top edge of the screen, almost totally gone--the horrible dark band should be not visible but you will still see a thicker ghosting trail up there anyway (much like the transparent ghosting trail you see in both LB and bbr modes at the bottom of the screen also).

0.167ms persistence (001 strobe duty in the service menu; the blur busters' utility only goes down to 003 (0.5ms persistence; the two that are too dark to be usable are 0.33ms and 0.167ms) makes the vertical crosstalk top bar completely OFF the screen totally (meaning ; completely gone), while (naturally) increasing the range of the transparent normal ghosting at the bottom a bit. Lowering contrast from 50 to 40 reduces the intensity of the transparent ghosting by 40% regardless of settings.

[harrwang38]

I see falken. Could you post me your calibrated monitor settings then? Or is it just brightnes at 100% and contrast at 40 for blur reductiion on then?

I want to keep blur reduction even when not playing games so I kinda want good colors as well.



Edit: Ok after messing around with it I found perfect settings for me. Just let me say this monitor is AMAZING. Gaming is on a whole another level now. No motion blur or ghosting that I can see with PERFECT COLORS thanks to blur busters utility. I can't thank you guys enough for all the information and the benq utility is just genius.

With the VT tweak it basically makes it so all the downsides of having blur reduction on is completely gone(specifically the brightness/luminance)

I'm using 1.5ms persistence (using 1.0ms was to dark for me and anything higher then 2+ms was to bright) and everything looks pretty much exactly the same with motion blur off. I have my calibrated settings from TFT and it looks amazing! This is the best screen ever.

[Falkentyne]

Glad you found something that works well for you.
Unless it's daylight and I can't control the lighting, I like the 1.0ms persistence setting (since I'm using VT 1502). The motion quality is outstanding, and definitely brings back the 100 hz CRT feel.

Yes there's ghosting you can see on sharp high contrast transitions (like black to gray/white borders), due to benq's AMA needing a lot of improvement (Asus' tracefree does this much better; when comparing LB mode on the VG248 vs LB mode on the Benq (apples to apples), but when you compare that motion blur reduction, with ghosting, to sample and hold with blurry stuff everywhere, it's clear what wins.

Remember to try contrast 40 if you're getting annoyed by some transparent ghosting artifacts on the lower half of the screen, while Benq's AMA can't shake a candle to how well tracefree handled overdrive ghosting, at least that helps a bit, but if that's not bothering you, contrast 50 is fine.

[harrwang38]

Is it just my monitor or does it need to warm up first before all the colors and stuff is right?

Everytime I wake up my monitor the screen becomes very white? I can't explain it goes very very bright like bloomish kinda. Is it supposed to be like this? I'm using 1.5 ms persistence. Am I just sensitive to it?

[Falkentyne]

Sounds like a defect. Go into the service menu and disable the benq eye care logo, then power off and on the monitor. (I think you can enter the service menu by holding the enter/menu (button #4) down while powering on the monitor, then when the LED's flash once, release the enter button, then press menu again to enter service menu. A second service menu (probably for factory based tweaking) is by holding button 3 down while powering on).

the brightness should be constant and NOT bloom at all.
If it does that after disabling the benq eye care logo, (power cycling the monitor causing extreme bloom when turning it back on), then RMA it instantly.

If this does not happen when powering it on and off but does happen when waking it up from sleep, that could be a different unrelated issue.

[harrwang38]

It's not that much bloom. It might be because I just woke up so I'm not used to the monitor yet? I don't know. It's just a little bit brighter and bloomier when I first wake up the monitor from sleep. This doesn't happend when I turn it off or on. It's just when I wake up in the morning and I wake my computer up. Not sure if its just placebo or not. What is eye care and how do I turn it off? I can't even access the service menu.


It also might be because I had such shitty TN panels before that I'm not used to these kind of accurate colors? The whites on my screen are really really white.

[Falkentyne]

It's the "Logo" option in the service menu.
Turn that off. That way any possible white warmup won't be 'hidden' by the giant blue "optical assault" logo that appears for a few seconds, when you push the power on button.