Blur Busters Forums

first of all sorry for the long post, but its important issue for me and dont want to make a bad/rushed purchase and then have to deal with returning monitor and the hassle associated with that!


today I have a asus vg248qe im very very happy with, running at 120 hz with 10% lightboost as im sensitive to motion blur and play a lot of fast paced FPS, but now I want to get a 240hz monitor, with a good implementation and option of strobing to switch between 240 hz non strobed and strobed if needed and to test out the differences, a 240hz gsync monitor with 144 hz ULMB option is also an alternative if its a great monitor in other aspects (overdrive, very low input lag, etc)


so i've done a lot of research on the subject, spending hours reading and searching for/looking at reviews from rtings/tftcentral/prad.de and so on, aswell as these forums! it still feels hard to say what 240hz monitor would be a safe purchase for me and would make me satisfied with great overdrive against motion blur, very low input lag and good implementation of blur reduction(ULMB/ELMB/DyAc etc) while also supporting freesync/gsync either natively or by the new nvidia drivers with no problems like flickering etc,


i'm more and more inclined to waiting with getting a 240hz monitor until the choice is more clear, or can someone say there is a monitor out there that safely is a good choice in all 3 of these departments? (overdrive,input lag,implementation of strobing) it should also have freesync/gsync or atleast work 100% with freesync through nvidia drivers even if its not officially supported,



monitors that seem interesting so far to me and seem to meet all or some of the criteria:



Asus PG258Q (seems great all around, only negative doesnt support ULMB at 240 hz, up to 144hz maximum it seems?)


Benq Zowie XL2540/2546, from what I understand both are great in terms of input lag, not really sure what to make of their overdrive, strobing tech and freesync compatibility, it seems 2540 supports freesync unofficially and strobing is hidden in a service menu but can be enabled up to 240 hz, for the 2546 it seems strobing/DyAc is enabled by default and works up to 240 hz aswell, but cant find clear answer on if freesync is supported on this model (while dyac disabled) ?

Asus XG258Q (has ELMB, cant find reviews on this or info on whether it works at 240hz, or how good it works, has support for freesync, but cant find any reviews on the monitor or input lag test/overdrive test?)


based on all this it would seem the asus pg258q would be a pretty safe bet for a good 240hz monitor only negative would be no strobing at 240 hz but 144 hz max, but overdrive and input lag seem to be on good levels, on other hand the zowie xl2546 seems great aswell in terms of input lag, cant seem to find 100% answer if freesync is supported and the overdrive is good on it, and lastly cant really find much info on the xg258q :S



there are probably more 240 hz 24" monitors out there I should take a look at but it seems hard to find definitive answers and tests, would appreciate any feedback here and personal experiences would be great if anyone has one of these or some other 240hz monitor! sorry for the long post, want to make a solid purchase to replace my trusted old vg248qe!



cheers

Some comments:

- I recommend 100-180Hz for strobing on a 240Hz monitor. NVIDIA intentionally locks ULMB from going beyond 144Hz whie BenQ/Zowie lets user decide whether to go higher. Because strobing becomes worse quality the closer to the max Hz (due to increasing amount of crosstalk when diffrence between strobed Hz and LCD's max Hz becomes smaller). So 144Hz strobing is great on both of them. You just have a choice between so-so strobing and not being allowed to use strobing. Hertzroom below max Hz is good for CRT-quality strobing while avoiding strobe crosstalk. Besides, 100fps@120Hz strobing looks much better and clearer than 144fps@120Hz strobing -- you want framerate == refreshrate == stroberate when you do strobing. (To avoid duplicate images that are similar to CRT 30fps@60Hz). VSYNC ON with the ultrahigh-DPI mouse tweak (low in-game sensitivity) has the smoothest experience with strobing, and it's harder to do fps=Hz at higher Hz.

- XL2546 strobing is brighter than XL2540 because DyAc uses voltage-boosted backlight strobing.

- If you have an NVIDIA card, usually native GSYNC will usually be higher quality than non-native GSYNC Compatible (via FreeSync) because of dynamic overdrive support.

- ELMB support is limited to 144Hz, for the same reasons as ULMB. Only a few vendors (BenQ, etc) unlocks higher Hz and let users decide whether the quality tradeoff is worth it.

- If you are hell bent on 240Hz strobing, make sure your GPU is upgraded to allow framerate=Hz. Because 180fps@240Hz strobing looks much worse than 120fps@120Hz strobing IMHO.

Chief Blur Buster wrote:Some comments:

- I recommend 100-180Hz for strobing on a 240Hz monitor. NVIDIA intentionally locks ULMB from going beyond 144Hz whie BenQ/Zowie lets user decide whether to go higher. Because strobing becomes worse quality the closer to the max Hz (due to increasing amount of crosstalk when diffrence between strobed Hz and LCD's max Hz becomes smaller). So 144Hz strobing is great on both of them. You just have a choice between so-so strobing and not being allowed to use strobing. Hertzroom below max Hz is good for CRT-quality strobing while avoiding strobe crosstalk. Besides, 100fps@120Hz strobing looks much better and clearer than 144fps@120Hz strobing -- you want framerate == refreshrate == stroberate when you do strobing. (To avoid duplicate images that are similar to CRT 30fps@60Hz). VSYNC ON with the ultrahigh-DPI mouse tweak (low in-game sensitivity) has the smoothest experience with strobing, and it's harder to do fps=Hz at higher Hz.

- XL2546 strobing is brighter than XL2540 because DyAc uses voltage-boosted backlight strobing.

- If you have an NVIDIA card, usually native GSYNC will usually be higher quality than non-native GSYNC Compatible (via FreeSync) because of dynamic overdrive support.

- ELMB support is limited to 144Hz, for the same reasons as ULMB. Only a few vendors (BenQ, etc) unlocks higher Hz and let users decide whether the quality tradeoff is worth it.

- If you are hell bent on 240Hz strobing, make sure your GPU is upgraded to allow framerate=Hz. Because 180fps@240Hz strobing looks much worse than 120fps@120Hz strobing IMHO.

thanks chief ! it STILL seems very hard to decide on the most "balanced" 240 hz monitor in terms of input lag - overdrive - strobing, but the pg258q seems more and more like the choice for me , even if it only strobes at 144 hz...

rtings xl2540 review/test seems great also however, minimal overshoot with AMA high , lowest input lag they ever measured at 3.7 ms from what I can gather, and freesync compatible with nvidia drivers, 2546 should be the same just with a better strobing implementation, would really like them to test the pg258q for comparison and/or the xg248q..


ah well, will have to wait and see a bit probably :S