Blur Busters Forums

I always despise in-game framerate caps because you never know how they are implemented, could be buggy and often are not very precise. Of course, that's game dependent. When not using Reflex (2x framegen) + VRR + in-game VSYNC OFF + driver VSYNC ON (the latter for the cap), I always use RTSS for frame capping because it is the most consistent and can sometimes fix game frame pacing issues (stutters).

Though if I enable 'Smooth Motion' for a game (aka 2x framegen but not controlled by the game), I use the NVIDIA app frame limiter to limit the framerate to what Reflex + driver VSYNC ON would use (153 on my 160Hz monitor). Any other external frame limiter will not work properly in that specific case.

And yes, you still see people recommending capping at monitor refresh rate - 3, which is years obsolete.

Generally speaking, configuring a game perform the best as it can for:

- the monitor specs you have
- least input lag possible
- best framepacing as possible
- best framerate 1% lows
- no micro-stutter

proves to be incredibly technical and complicated in modern gaming, even for people that understand some of these.

And if you include possible Windows issues, GPU driver issues, gaming overlays issues, FSE vs Borderless fullscreen issues, Swapchains behaviour, game issues in proper framepacing, gargantuan amount of tweakables in the NVIDIA app, DX11 vs DX12 vs OpenGL vs Vulkan and more ... it becomes even more of an inscrutable minefield. Even game developers are confused by all this complexity, with sometimes bogus framepacing from hell.
Though as good news, if a game implements Reflex (often combined with framegen), you can reasonably expect it to behave properly.

So far I've found that reflex does indeed reduce the 1% lows and kinda limits the fps you can use pulsar with good motion clarity, I disable it in hunt showdown, use the driver level low latency mode and I get much more consistent 1% lows. Also, don't update to the new nvidia driver, based on the feedback I see online, nvidia bork the fans on some GPUs from spinning so they will probably put out a hotfix soon lol and no notes saying if they fixed the Vsync + Gsync + framegen issue either which is a bummer.

Which brand of the pulsar monitors is considered the best so far?

Argus wrote: ↑

26 Feb 2026, 16:53

Which brand of the pulsar monitors is considered the best so far?

It seems like in depth reviews are embargoed until reviewers get the new firmware update so hard to tell.

I have the Acer Predator version and its been fine.

Some users have experienced overheating and noise with Pulsar on with other models but that's not a problem I have had.

Found a new odd discovery, Playing wuthering waves I set riva tuner to cap the FPS to 98 with frame gen off, riva async, fullscreen and Vsync disabled with pulsar active above 75 fps. It works as expected but sometimes pulsar would disengage sometimes due to minor fluctations (I turn on fps counter with graph in monitor OSD and I see 98 fps being shown consistently). So now I enable frame gen X2 and keep the fps cap to 98 and pulsar just stops working altogether! I check the fps counter in the top left corner from the monitor OSD and I see the FPS graph is widely moving between 96 - 182 which is odd considering that I would think using frame gen would just give me a flat 98 fps graph but this isn't the case. I wonder if this is specific to wuthering waves or if this is affecting all frame gen games cause this might explain some pulsar inconsistencies I've found when enabling frame gen in some games (to try to get higher 1% lows) and then end up not getting the promised motion clarity from pulsar. Granted I will say I'm on nvidia driver 591.59 (which is before pulsar came out) but without frame gen everything seems to work as expected and any driver versions after this one seems to introduce even more inconsistencies with frame gen that are made even more apparent with pulsar active (frame pacing is just a mess with frame gen on after this driver for some reason and nvidia rolled back their new driver yesterday which introduces more bugs than fix!). Will continue testing, I also found out about some ram overclocking features from my MSI motherboard I've been using to experiment getting better 1% lows (namely high efficiency mode). If I cap 120 fps in riva with frame gen the monitor OSD shows 120 fps steady and pulsar works as expected, really weird behavior so could it be pulsar only works well at certain hz? More testing needed... I'm going to become a display motion clarity researcher I swear lol

liquidshadowfox wrote: ↑

27 Feb 2026, 11:32

I'm going to become a display motion clarity researcher I swear lol

Haha, same here. Yesterday I struggled for hours with GTA V Enhanced to get this "pulsar ready".

In your case: What are the 1% lows when you are getting double strobing? I have seen this a lot that frequency gets doubled although the average fps seems not to drop below 100... But 1% lows in my case did drop down to 60 (on portal rtx). I guess that is what triggers the double strobing.

What I learned: You should lower the average fps so your 1% is closer to average. But when you get 220 fps 1% lows, this does not automatically mean that if you limit your average to 220, your lows will still be there... they will probably then drop down to 180. So when you increase yours from 98 to 120, you probably increase your 1% as well, then do not get below 75 anymore, no more double strobing.

In general I have no idea how 1% lows behave with frame generation. Are they also the double value of the non generated frames? I assume they are... but how are the 1% lows if you cap the non generated frames to 49? Are the lows then also 49? What is the ratio compared to full 98 frames without FG. And what happens then if you cap these generated frames with an outside tool like Riva? Will this external tool make the game render at 49fps so the output fps is really 98? Or can it somehow take the double fps the game produces and shrink them to 98. I dont think this is the case because Riva is not having an own overlay video output like Lossless Scaling which can interpolate between frames to reach an exact number...

Ufff...
If Nvidia doesn't iron this out, I'm afraid some software will be needed to turn various options on and off to get the desired result.
Now, if everyone has to tinker with the settings like in a lab... thanks, but we'll wait.
And to all of you above, kudos to you for exploring this new technology on a volunteer basis!

This monitor has both been a blessing and a curse XD
Blessing because it does offer incredible motion clarity at lower refresh rates and a curse because now BECAUSE OF IT I NOTICE THE STUTTER! X_X I went down a rabbit hole of research, testing and momentary insanity (like is pulsar not working because it's missing the firmware update to fix things? or is it my PC software/drivers that's causing stuttering that leads to inconsistent fps that leads to pulsar not working right?).
Long story short, these are the changes I made and now my 1% lows are much higher and capping games use riva with passive wait and async leads to smoothest experience in most of my games:
1. DDU first then install Nvidia driver: 591.59 - Later drivers cause some funky things to happen with Vsync on + reflex + frame gen
2. Used MSI mode utility for enabling Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) for devices (not to be confused with MSI the company) to give my 5090 high priority and make other things have normal or low priority
3. Went into bios and disabled PBO curve optimizer (causing random stutter in league of legends)
4. Went into bios and enabled PBO curve shaper with -10 offset ONLY at high temp for all frequencies (Using a low profile cooler)
5. Used MSI mobo feature for "efficiency mode" and set it to balanced for tighter timings on my ram sticks

^all the above combined and now I've noticed much less stutter in my games and pulsar seems to be behaving a lot better with less "compensations" but I still do see room for improvement from nvidia's side which hopefully they will fix with a firmware update.

I’ve been extensively testing the XG27AQNGV across a wide range of settings and frame rate scenarios, and I came away disappointed.

Pulsar does reduce perceived sample-and-hold blur in specific edge cases, but in real gameplay the difference between ON and OFF is minimal. Above ~320 FPS it frequently stops engaging properly due to VRR window behavior, so in the exact high-FPS scenarios where competitive players operate, it often provides no tangible benefit.

The fundamental limitation remains the IPS panel itself. The advertised “1 ms” response time is a best-case gray-to-gray marketing figure measured under extreme overdrive conditions, often with overshoot artifacts. In real use, response times are significantly higher and more variable depending on transition, refresh rate, and overdrive mode. IPS panels rely heavily on aggressive overdrive to approach those numbers, which introduces inverse ghosting, overshoot, and transition inconsistency—especially above 300+ FPS.

Pulsar also disables variable overdrive, which means overdrive tuning no longer adapts dynamically to refresh rate. That results in either underdrive at lower Hz or overshoot and crosstalk at higher Hz. In practice, effective response behavior becomes less consistent, not more. I also observed refresh rate compliance inconsistencies, added processing overhead, and signs of short buffer-induced latency when combining certain sync modes.

With V-Sync ON + Reflex Ultra, the system hard caps at ~320 FPS and latency increases from roughly 4 ms to ~12 ms. 1% lows worsen and frametime consistency degrades. The behavior feels similar to buffered rendering, which defeats the purpose of a 360 Hz esports panel. In contrast, running G-Sync with a manual 357 FPS cap and V-Sync OFF or Fast results in better responsiveness, tighter frametimes, and no meaningful clarity loss.

Marketing frames Pulsar as a competitive advantage, but it mainly reduces perceived blur. It does not change panel speed, pixel accuracy, or transition consistency. Motion clarity on IPS remains limited by response behavior, not refresh rate alone. Crosstalk and ghosting become more noticeable once you push beyond ~320–350 FPS.

In direct comparison, OLED remains fundamentally superior for motion. Near-instant pixel response, absence of overdrive artifacts, stable transitions across refresh rates, and higher contrast all improve motion definition and target visibility. Even at lower FPS, OLED appears cleaner and more responsive because it does not rely on aggressive tuning trade-offs.

After a week of testing every relevant configuration, I returned the monitor and switched to a 540 Hz WOLED panel. The difference in motion stability and responsiveness is immediately noticeable. IPS still depends on refresh rate scaling, overdrive compromises, and artifact balancing. OLED avoids most of those structural limitations.

For competitive gaming, I see no meaningful advantage from Pulsar over a fast OLED panel.

Mdruy1 wrote: ↑

02 Mar 2026, 07:52

For competitive gaming, I see no meaningful advantage from Pulsar over a fast OLED panel.

I agree with most of what you say. Pulsar is not (and I think should have never been advertised) as the ultimate esport device.
If you play 300+ fps games all the time and you have the hardware to deliver these frames... take an OLED. End of story. I never bought the "4x clarity" marketing blabla anyway.

And these facts do NOT bother me at all and I will keep mine because I will play my retro games, emulators, side scrollers etc with 60-120 fps with this pure clarity which is possible although 60 Hz needs to be proven still with the new firmware but 90 fps.. omg this can look so damn fine with pulsar, OLED just cannot deliver this without bfi - which then brings other downsides with it. Zelda Breathe of the wild with fps++ at around 110-160 fps looks mindblowing. I could go on forever. There are so many titles.

The thing I am disappointed is that the first tests sounded like "ok we have the 75 Hz limit and need this lower, but as long as you are within this limit, it 'just works'...". That is what Digial Foundry and others said. And this is clearly not the case. Probably because I am not using an RTX 5090 - but as I see from this discussion here, even with a 5090 there might be problems. But probably not on retro titles.

Its not just the stutters due to 1% lows. Its also the full screen blackouts, which you cannot avoid in some older games when there just is no borderless windowed option (spaghetti kart and other emulation games which look incredible, but black out for some seconds ingame if you play them with 360 Hz)... Yes, with 240 Hz they do not (yet) and look identical, but just the fact that I have to switch between Windows refresh rates for some games is annoying and... it does not "just work".

And this is not even a pulsar thing. Seems like many Asus oled screens with DP1.4a connection and 360 Hz suffer from the same behavior... since years (!). So to me it sounds like there is no quick solution for that.

Mayyyyybe... if they manage one day to bring this to a mini LED panel (which I think makes a lot more sense and is possible way earlier than with an oled panel), with DP2.x support, no more blackouts, maybe full 360 or more Hz without using DSC... I will jump right on it.

For now, its just waiting for new drivers, firmwares etc. to get most of this sorted out...