NVIDIA G-Sync Pulsar monitor - Asus ROG Strix XG27AQNGV

[brownvim]

Chief you testing the new Pulsar firmware yet?

[Chief Blur Buster]

I am still waiting for my updated sample & firmware.

Thank you for bringing the Pulsar discussion back on topic!

[brownvim]

1) I have seen in some videos that pulsar should turn off once my fps goes below the threshold... either 90 Hz default or 75 Hz. But mine doesnt... I have the display internal FPS count running on top left of the screen and my steam overlay FPS on top right. And when I drop below 90... even when I go down to 40 fps (on Portal RTX that is easily possible), the display fps starts showing triple the Hz. And it is still strobing. I have checked that via phone camera and its strobing all the time.
Which I dont think is good. Actually I do not even want the double Hz, I would rather prefer it to stop strobing because when there is the double Hz mode, you clearly see a double image.
We also see this on the UFO test... with 360 Hz screen res, the 180 Hz UFO is double. each of both is sharp but you can clearly see two of them.
If I run my display at 240 Hz, the 240 fps UFO looks as clear as the 360 fps native UFO in my opinion. 240 is not that far away from 180 but it looks SO much better as its not doubled.
For this reason I would prefer pulsar to really turn off once its below the threshold but I have no idea how to achieve this?!... Why do all testers say its the case on their side?

I have the Acer model, and this behaviour was discussed earlier in the thread. Mine does the same – below 90 Hz it frame-doubles to 180 Hz instead of turning the strobing off.

I don't think Pulsar actually disables itself. It tries to stay on by using LFC to keep the effective rate high, but as you say it doesn't look good and creates that double-image effect.

Apparently this is a known bug with the current firmware, and a new update is on the way that should enable proper single strobing all the way down to 48 Hz. I really hope so anyway, because there's no crosstalk and the image looks excellent at 144 FPS and above. It would be nice to finally see it working properly at lower frame rates too.

[brownvim]

I am still waiting for my updated sample & firmware.

Thank you for bringing the Pulsar discussion back on topic!

John from Digital Foundry mentioned that Nvidia have been finding it more challenging that they thought it would be but its coming soon.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnCHHSwa7R4&t=4536s

[mawi]

I have the Acer model, and this behaviour was discussed earlier in the thread. Mine does the same – below 90 Hz it frame-doubles to 180 Hz instead of turning the strobing off.

Ah ok. And what about the DSC full screen handshake blackouts when using 360 Hz? Does Acer show this behaviour as well? All posts about this I have seen on reddit so far (on pulsar displays but also on 360 Hz DP1.4 OLED screens) are with Asus models.

[brownvim]

I have the Acer model, and this behaviour was discussed earlier in the thread. Mine does the same – below 90 Hz it frame-doubles to 180 Hz instead of turning the strobing off.

Ah ok. And what about the DSC full screen handshake blackouts when using 360 Hz? Does Acer show this behaviour as well? All posts about this I have seen on reddit so far (on pulsar displays but also on 360 Hz DP1.4 OLED screens) are with Asus models.

I don't get this issue with the Acer, never black screens. I use a RTX 5080 with it.

I do have a bug where when I start windows it defaults to 240hz sometimes instead of 360hz, i swapped my display port cables around and bought new ones but it comes and goes, no pattern to it. I have to remove the cable and reinsert it to the monitor for 360 to work.

[mawi]

I don't get this issue with the Acer, never black screens. I use a RTX 5080 with it.

I do have a bug where when I start windows it defaults to 240hz sometimes instead of 360hz, i swapped my display port cables around and bought new ones but it comes and goes, no pattern to it. I have to remove the cable and reinsert it to the monitor for 360 to work.

Ah, thanks. Ok you have an RTX50... as far as I read there is no handshake problem with RTX50, only with 30 and 40 series. The display is DP1.4 and the rtx50 series have dp2.1, it seems like the new heads manage the handshakes better even if they only use the 1.4 signal. Also AMD cards are better, but with pulsar they are anyway no option yet.

Also the Oled displays which show this problem on rtx40 cards do not show this with 50 cards. And I assume all the testers of the pulsar monitor were anyway using 50 cards.

No, I had no issue yet when booting up (except having a longer black screen on login)... Its always at 360 Hz.
I had one strange issue yesterday. I shut down the pc with 240 Hz after playing some full screen games. And when starting the PC I had the screen at 240 Hz as I left it, but no pulsar on. And the screen OSD was NOT offering me to turn it on (which is usually just the case with 120 Hz, but it was definitely running at 240). There was just ULMB2 mentionend (but greyed out). When I switched to 360 on windows Pulsar was back. And switching this back to 240 then also worked with pulsar again... very weird.

[hamza_tm]

Does it make sense to return the Pulsar and buy a ULMB2-only monitor with the same specifications, which is hopefully cheaper and offers the option to further narrow the strobe pulse width, potentially increasing motion clarity even more? Would such a monitor also use line strobing?

On the other hand, if a future firmware update were to allow a reduction of the strobe pulse width in ULMB2 mode, I might end up regretting returning the monitor...

You should be able to try Pulsar in ULMB2 mode to help answer your question, at least I know you can with the Asus. The steps I did were to fully enable Pulsar (enable in monitor, and enable GSync in nvidia control panel), then disable GSync in the nvidia control panel. Kyube posted somewhere earlier about the exact process from the manual.

This made the monitor show a ULMB2 setting in the OSD which confirmed it was running in ULMB2 mode without Pulsar. You can see how it looks in your games.

Besides that, I'm honestly not sure I've seen a single decent fixed strobe alternative that is 360Hz (or even 240Hz) and 1440p and IPS. What cheaper alternatives did you have in mind?

[kyube]

My question:

Does it make sense to return the Pulsar and buy a ULMB2-only monitor with the same specifications, which is hopefully cheaper and offers the option to further narrow the strobe pulse width, potentially increasing motion clarity even more? Would such a monitor also use line strobing?

On the other hand, if a future firmware update were to allow a reduction of the strobe pulse width in ULMB2 mode, I might end up regretting returning the monitor...

As of the time of writing:
The only other ULMB2 display are the ASUS PG27AQN or the ASUS PG248QP, both of which have the detriment of red fringing, which will negatively impact your experience.
They also have fixed refresh rate targets (PG248QP — 360, 540 Hz; PG27AQN — 360, 240, 120 Hz)

The answer to your question lies in answering another question — which specific refresh rate range & frame rate range you're interested in
60–100 Hz strobing? See these models
100-360 Hz strobing?
BenQ XL2566K (high voltage boosting and blurbusters utility support) & most models with support for the BB utility support (aka vendor having appropriate VCP commands open) should scratch the CRT-like clarity itch the best.
Older ULMB1 models (24-27" QHD 120–165Hz, 24" FHD 360Hz) also scratch the itch decently well, but with the detriment of fixed refresh rate targets (240hz, 144hz or 120hz)
There are also a couple of other larger models (in PPI or physical size), such as:
ASUS PG32UQ
ASUS PG329Q
Eve / Dough Spectrum (WARNING: It's KSF/PFS; but good adjustability)
MSI E16M (WARNING: Limited to 120Hz for best clarity)
MSI 274URF-QD

I would avoid KSF/PFS-based models (aka most 24-27" QHD +240Hz models)
The alternative to KSF/PFS for wide color gamut displays is QD, which is usually limited to MiniLED panels & models which have the name "QD" in them.

You could take a look at the list in my signature, where I've compiled decent models available to the market.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I am still waiting for my updated sample & firmware.

Thank you for bringing the Pulsar discussion back on topic!

John from Digital Foundry mentioned that Nvidia have been finding it more challenging that they thought it would be but its coming soon.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnCHHSwa7R4&t=4536s

I'm aware too. I'd rather NVIDIA do the time to get the firmware right.

I've admonished the need to accomodate as many motion blur reduction scenarios -- let the user choose -- and I've pointed out their 60Hz competition is ShaderBeam.

It will not be difficult by year 2030 to program a software-based CRT-VRR shader for a 2000 Hz OLED. I can emulate GSYNC Pulsar in 100% software, given brute Hz (e.g. 2000fps 2000Hz), by supersampling at about 3:1. So you can do about a ~40-700 Hz CRT-VRR range on a future 2000Hz OLED.

In future quadruple digit Hz, VRR eventually becomes less useful (and potentially mostly obsolete) when VSYNC ON, VSYNC OFF, and VRR converges to similiar look-and-feel & similar latencies, the finer granularity the refresh cycles become.

But this is 2030s stuff. Today, Pulsar is great once the 60Hz-capable firmware comes out.

In the end it just comes down to use case: competitive esports, cinematic single-player, retro feel, or pure motion clarity. Different tools for different goals.

Indeed!

Even if CRTs are essentially they are useful, a sort of a Blur Busters "metaphorical diety", and great museum pieces, that are still affordable to some of us who has the space for a specimen or two. CRTs are becoming more and more emulatable but lots of vendors aren't overlapping the venn diagram enough. Even if brightness/etc isn't quite there yet on OLEDs and things like that, more options should be provided in hardware-based motion blur reduction.

This is why Blur Busters and multiple content creators (especially Digital Foundry) have put a bit of pressure on NVIDIA to release a good 60fps 60Hz capable firmware upgrade.