Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

[falkentyne]

(12-05-2014 07:37 PM)ToastyX Wrote:  

(12-05-2014 04:56 PM)Danja Wrote:  Ah well, I guess I'll just stick with 120hz and sell the spare one and put it towards a higher end panel. Thanks for your help, its good to know what's causing it at least!

Last question, any particular 120/144hz monitor you'd recommend?

I'd say one of the BenQ Z-series monitors: XL2411Z, XL2420Z, XL2720Z

They have a blur reduction feature that works like LightBoost without washing out the colors, and it can be used at 144 Hz. I can't guarantee they won't have any dithering/inversion artifacts though. Strobing can also make inversion artifacts worse, but you can always turn strobing off.

Long rant explanation:

From what I've seen, the Benq monitors do not have -any- dithering or inversion artifacts in benq blur reduction mode, whatsoever, because the panels don't use accelerated scanout, so the panel image quality is not compromised. Even on lagom's inversion tests, there is literally no difference between blur reduction on and off, which, despite the ghosting complaints about BBR, is a testament to BBR keeping great image quality.

Lightboost uses accelerated scanout via a LC panel update timing. I don't know much about this, but it's the LC panel update changes that cause the "scanlines" and artifacts you sometimes get in lightboost mode. Lightboost also uses per-line overdrive, which greatly helps the ghosting (this also applies to the Benq Z series' lightboost mode), and by lowering the contrast to 0 on the 27" monitors, the lightboost quality on the 2720Z gets VERY close to VG248QE quality (along with the horrible contrast and washed out colors but avoiding some of the color degradation; contrast 37 keeps the close to 1000:1 contrast ratio but with significantly more ghosting, though usually only apparent in 2d).

Benq blur reduction does not use any of these, just backlight strobing, so neither the colors nor the contrast get affected, just the brightness levels, and you have to deal with finding a good area for the crosstalk zones (strobe pulse settling errors). You can basically tell, because enabling blur reduction is instantaneous without any sort of resets or resolution changes.

Using a higher Vertical Total (like 1350 or 1500) basically forces an accelerated scanout very similar to lightboost's accelerated scanout, by speeding up the update process of the LC panel (giving the panel more time to complete the strobe phase). Increasing the Vertical total basically makes the vertical synchronization phase longer, while preserving the vertical refresh rate (which allow the panel to complete more of the strobe transitions between strobe phases (E.g.. extends the distance between the first strobe pulse at the top of the screen, and the next one at the bottom of the screen...essentially pushing the bottom one off the screen, so the thick double image effect of the strobe pulse is ofscreen). Doing this, however, raises the pixel dot clock, does stress the monitor more and the panel (For some reason) switches to the 60 hz backlight pulse widths, instead of using the normal 100 or 120hz pulse widths. So you wind up getting very similar inversion lines that you do in lightboost mode (since lightboost is accelerating the scanout the same way, but by the LC panel timings instead of vertical total changes).

If you make lightboost 120% (lightboost 100% has the top edge crosstalk (strobe pulse) completely off the top of the screen; 120% doesn't quite have it off) match benq blur reductions crosstalk (top to bottom) by using the settings with the VT 1500 tweak: Strobe duty (intensity ) 005, strobe phase (area): 000, you will find that although the crosstalk top to bottom seems to match up evenly with lightboost now, the Benq screen will be much darker, with less inversion lines (and the persistence lower, thus showing a smoother image), while lightboost mode will have more intense inversion lines. That's because lightboost's accelerated scanout pushes things harder than the VT tweak ever can.

All that being said, for some 2D games where ghosting is very apparent, lightboost with low contrast and its per line overdrive may look much better than benq blur reduction.

I don't think the 2430T supports lightboost...someone said it doesn't support 3d vision 2...can anyone confirm?