NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[Katzenwerfer_MX]

Uncapped frames + Reflex is still king for latency in high fps games even if the difference becomes marginal at higher refresh rates. You don't have to believe me but it's what tests like this suggest. Regardless I don't think its that important when the difference is so small. I'm really wondering how Pulsar stacks up to ULMB2 though at lower refresh rates (75–200Hz). There should be a big improvement in theory but it seems to have some issues. Getting the XG27AQNGV tomorrow to test.

Going by the images you posted, uncapped reflex doesn't seem all that better latency-wise when compared against gsync+vsync+reflex.
A latency reduction of 0.7 ms for a ~200 fps increment seems pretty weak and likely bottlenecked in some fashion, but I digress.

3. If its not pulsing at 500+fps i should lock my FPS to 360FPS and it will start pulsing again, aka "4x effective motion clarity". Is it better to lock it to 360Hz with vsync: OFF than using vsync: ON and get 320~ FPS?

I couldn't answer you regarding the strobing, since I also haven't found any info about its behaviour when the frame rate is above the refresh rate. Nonetheless, basic VRR advice should apply. So, if are using a limiter, you must set it within the appropriate VRR range to prevent the display from reverting to standard vsync when near or above its max refresh rate. "gsync+vsync+reflex/ullm" already handle this automatically, and both RTSS and Special K will recommend you a similar value to stay within that range. There is no point in disabling vsync if you are staying within range, but you could do it for little to no benefit whatsoever and at worst, you might see occasional tearing.

[daviddave1]

Pg27aqn and pg248qp cut nits with at least 30% when strobing is activated. I had both monitors. How is this on the pulsar monitor? Does pulsar affects brightness?

[MSIfanboy]

With strobing, i think pg27aqn is 275 nits, pg248qp 300 nits and I think the brightest I have tried is zowie 540hz it's the brightest, maybe 330-350 nits , it's considerably brighter than even old xl2546k, I haven't tried Asus 610hz

Zowie intentionally nerfing normal max brightness without strobing , I could tweak xl2546k to go insanely bright without strobing with controlmymonitor, it must be 600-700 nits, eye searing

[radeko]

If anyone has a Pulsar, please run a test. Play Sonic in Retroarch + run a frame generator to achieve 240 fps and compare it to Sonic on a CRT. I'm curious about such a comparison.

[bbuser]

Pg27aqn and pg248qp cut nits with at least 30% when strobing is activated. I had both monitors. How is this on the pulsar monitor? Does pulsar affects brightness?

No it doesn't my Pulsar moonitor says Peak White (nits) and it's at 500, it's brighter than using my OLED in SDR for gaming. That's the maximum value I can set (500) but could turn it down, I can also pump up the contrast but have left it at default.

Brightness has stayed consistent in day to day work use and gaming with Pulsar left on the whole time.

So far so good

in HDR mode it's not that bright at all, much dimmer than SDR

[SirParcival]

My MSI MPG 272QRF arrived today.

First impression was not super positive, it took several games of The Finals to start to appreciate what was gained in motion clarity, over losing 4k resolution at 27" on my 240hz QD-OLED. I feel like I can see mild artifacts of the 10-segment backlight "bar" scanning down the screen on vertical assets in-game when panning left and right quickly. Almost like mini-tearing. It's barely perceptable, but since everything is slightly more clear, it's technically possible to see it,

There's ZERO flicker! The total monitor brightness goes UP (like 5%) when Pulsar is on!

That means we're talking like 2000 nit pulses on 1/4 duty cycle to average 500 nits. Which is pretty wild.

Personally I'd take 1/8th duty cycle at 250 nits, but then the "troughs" between pulses would be so wide that you'd need even more compensation cycles, which just add the blur back. So 1/4 might be the sweet spot.

It's the best looking 360hz 1440p panel I've ever seen, that's for sure, but if it came in 240hz 4k I'd be instantly sold. I miss being able to see EVERYTHING into the far distance, it gave its own tactical advantage.

The auto brightness and auto white balance actually WORK! Without it, a 100% white screen on max panel settings is eye-searingly bright at night.

The colours aren't the most accurate, but they're pretty darn good! They're punchy, with lots of volume, and as bright as my MSI QD-OLED gets in HDR mode. So I can finally throw out my HDR pipeline and return to SDR with roughly the same experience. Haven't tried HDR yet, don't really want to TBH.

I was worried about the colour experience being shite coming from QD-OLED, I was wrong, it's more than fine, it's actually quite GOOD! And not worrying about burnin, no more hidden taskbar, it's just a quality-of-life improvement I wasn't really thinking about.

Blacks on the panel are FINE! They aren't super cloudy as some pictures of IPS panels show. It's only a couple shades above the blacks of my OLED, in-game it's not even noticeable. Viewing angle is fine slouching off to one side of my desk, beyond 25-30 degrees it starts to fall apart.

Gonna play some more The Finals tonight, also installed Anno 1800 to test that. I tried StarCraft 2 and it was juddering cause of inconsistent frame rates or something.

[olain]

I have this monitor and I am not impressed, like at all.
A little background, I used to play pro CS and a lot of Q3 and have been playing FPS games since 1996. My CRT monitor was the legendary HP P1230 that ran 800x600 160hz or 2048x1536 @ 85 hz. I have almost always played FPS games at above 300 FPS, I run a low resolution, or lower the settings until I get that sort of performance.

I own a IPS 300hz display that I am fairly content with. But I recently ordered the 280hz OLED MO27Q28G monitor that monitors unboxed rated "S-tier" of 2025. I was not happy, the text rendering was bad even though it is 4.th gen WOLED, and the OLED instant pixel response time did not have an impact in FPS games compared to what I was already on.
So I ordered the Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV
This monitor is praised for its supreme motion clarity. Now I don't really know what that practically entails, but IRL, it made NO difference to me. YES, I could run the MPRT and UFO ghost tests and see how great the monitor was. But in game? Not an upgrade.

I thought the monitor was supposed to make 120 FPS / low fps seem like something 360 FPS. But it does not. Perhaps this is due to my understanding of performance from a monitor being different than that of the reviewers and the blurbusters lingo.

My best example of how I am not "WOW!-ed" by this monitor is to simply pan your camera from left to right at very high fps (+240 fps), and the cap your FPS to 120, and compare.. The difference is night and day on a normal display, on an OLED display and yes also on this Pulsar display. 120 FPS just looks BAD, when you pan the camera quickly.

I added these clips, not to document anything as my Iphone captures at 30 fps, but just to give some example of what I mean by quickly panning the camera.
EDIT: Seems the forum wont allow youtube shorts, and youtube wont allow my short videos not to be, of type short.
120 FPS

phpBB [video]

277 FPS

phpBB [video]

[daviddave1]

Pg27aqn and pg248qp cut nits with at least 30% when strobing is activated. I had both monitors. How is this on the pulsar monitor? Does pulsar affects brightness?

No it doesn't my Pulsar moonitor says Peak White (nits) and it's at 500, it's brighter than using my OLED in SDR for gaming. That's the maximum value I can set (500) but could turn it down, I can also pump up the contrast but have left it at default.

Brightness has stayed consistent in day to day work use and gaming with Pulsar left on the whole time.

So far so good

in HDR mode it's not that bright at all, much dimmer than SDR

Ty! Preciate the detailed answer! Last question is it possible to make custom resolutions in the nvidia control panel?

[olain]

Pg27aqn and pg248qp cut nits with at least 30% when strobing is activated. I had both monitors. How is this on the pulsar monitor? Does pulsar affects brightness?

No it doesn't my Pulsar moonitor says Peak White (nits) and it's at 500, it's brighter than using my OLED in SDR for gaming. That's the maximum value I can set (500) but could turn it down, I can also pump up the contrast but have left it at default.

Brightness has stayed consistent in day to day work use and gaming with Pulsar left on the whole time.

So far so good

in HDR mode it's not that bright at all, much dimmer than SDR

Ty! Preciate the detailed answer! Last question is it possible to make custom resolutions in the nvidia control panel?

Yes it is, I had it at 2304x1440p @ 360hz with Pulsar enabled.

[whitespider999]

My MSI MPG 272QRF arrived today.

First impression was not super positive, it took several games of The Finals to start to appreciate what was gained in motion clarity, over losing 4k resolution at 27" on my 240hz QD-OLED. I feel like I can see mild artifacts of the 10-segment backlight "bar" scanning down the screen on vertical assets in-game when panning left and right quickly. Almost like mini-tearing. It's barely perceptable, but since everything is slightly more clear, it's technically possible to see it,

There's ZERO flicker! The total monitor brightness goes UP (like 5%) when Pulsar is on!

That means we're talking like 2000 nit pulses on 1/4 duty cycle to average 500 nits. Which is pretty wild.

Personally I'd take 1/8th duty cycle at 250 nits, but then the "troughs" between pulses would be so wide that you'd need even more compensation cycles, which just add the blur back. So 1/4 might be the sweet spot.

It's the best looking 360hz 1440p panel I've ever seen, that's for sure, but if it came in 240hz 4k I'd be instantly sold. I miss being able to see EVERYTHING into the far distance, it gave its own tactical advantage.

The auto brightness and auto white balance actually WORK! Without it, a 100% white screen on max panel settings is eye-searingly bright at night.

The colours aren't the most accurate, but they're pretty darn good! They're punchy, with lots of volume, and as bright as my MSI QD-OLED gets in HDR mode. So I can finally throw out my HDR pipeline and return to SDR with roughly the same experience. Haven't tried HDR yet, don't really want to TBH.

I was worried about the colour experience being shite coming from QD-OLED, I was wrong, it's more than fine, it's actually quite GOOD! And not worrying about burnin, no more hidden taskbar, it's just a quality-of-life improvement I wasn't really thinking about.

Blacks on the panel are FINE! They aren't super cloudy as some pictures of IPS panels show. It's only a couple shades above the blacks of my OLED, in-game it's not even noticeable. Viewing angle is fine slouching off to one side of my desk, beyond 25-30 degrees it starts to fall apart.

Gonna play some more The Finals tonight, also installed Anno 1800 to test that. I tried StarCraft 2 and it was juddering cause of inconsistent frame rates or something.

Thanks for the solid review. Also have a 240hz qd oled 4k. Wondering if i should wait for 4k pulsar ips.