31.5" 2560x1440 165 Hz VA G-Sync - LG 32GK850G

The playwares review has the gamma curves for all the modes. Except for Gamma 3 (which is about 2.2) they are all between 1.87 and 2.05.
Combine that with its basic sRGB gamut (with only very minor overcoverage) and the reduced colour consistency due to VA viewing angles - you get a bit of a washed out look.
For a deeper look I personally prefer a curve around 2.3-2.4 that bends towards 1.9-2.1 in the shadows.
If the display doesn't offer this, you'd either need a calibration device or use software/GPU driver gamma correction to change the curve (which may cause some banding)
For games there are a couple of different vibrance shaders that produce very good results and give more life to the image. They also usually aren't as harsh on the saturation highlights as the NVCP digital vibrance setting.
 
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Yea I cant get this monitor yet but I dont know how Colors/Gamma = 1/3 when Gamma Mode 3 is spot on 2.2 and sRGB coverage is solid. Shouldn't be much worse than other VA's

Also why isn't the fastest overdrive setting preferred, how is it? I thought even the fastest had like no overshoot
 
Users reported some dark overshoot at the Fastest setting so Fast seems preferrable.
It must've escaped the measurement of hardware.info since they measured very low overshoot amounts
 
Fast and fastest are very close. I did quite a bit of back and forth with different color movements and overall slightly preferred "fast".
 
Vega said:
Fast and fastest are very close. I did quite a bit of back and forth with different color movements and overall slightly preferred "fast".
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What are your thought on it's overall motion clarity, especially at 165Hz? Is 165Hz meaningful for this panel? Does it suffer from the same problems as the 35 inch AUO VA panels?
 
MistaSparkul said:
What are your thought on it's overall motion clarity, especially at 165Hz? Is 165Hz meaningful for this panel? Does it suffer from the same problems as the 35 inch AUO VA panels?
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Yes I did a lot of testing in this regard seeing as a lot of monitors don't show improvement going from 144 Hz to 165 Hz. Some even worse off so.

My favorite test is this:

https://testufo.com/photo#photo=toronto-map.png&pps=960&pursuit=0&height=0

I watch the words "Union Station" scroll by. At 120 Hz, the letters are pretty blurred together. At 144 Hz, the letters are starting to separate from one another. At 165 Hz, each letter is easily identifiable. This is one of those monitors that you want to run as high as FPS/Hz as possible. You get the most motion clarity with it maxed out. (y)
 
igluk said:
Users reported some dark overshoot at the Fastest setting so Fast seems preferrable.
It must've escaped the measurement of hardware.info since they measured very low overshoot amounts
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Yeah, I suspect tftcentral's review will show certain transitions have a bit more overshoot than the hardware.info's 5% max on Fastest.
 
Vega said:
My synopsis of the 32GK850G:

...

16. Input lag - 5/5. G-Sync, so as long as you turn on V-Sync and cap FPS to 162, you will have a butter smooth, lag-free and tear free experience.
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Do you mean 'so long as you turn off v-sync'? Because turning on v-sync would add lag, and runs contrary to the purpose of having hardware frame-syncing, no?
 
Delicieuxz said:
Do you mean 'so long as you turn off v-sync'? Because turning on v-sync would add lag, and runs contrary to the purpose of having hardware frame-syncing, no?
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No, there is no additional lag with G-Sync=On+V-Sync=On+FPS Cap set under monitors max refresh rate. Letting FPS hit monitors max refresh rate is what is bad and will introduce input lag with V-Sync=On. Letting FPS exceed monitors max refresh rate with V-Sync=Off will lead to screen tear and G-Sync being disabled. .
 
Vega said:
No, there is no additional lag with G-Sync=On+V-Sync=On+FPS Cap set under monitors max refresh rate. Letting FPS hit monitors max refresh rate is what is bad and will introduce input lag with V-Sync=On. Letting FPS exceed monitors max refresh rate with V-Sync=Off will lead to screen tear and G-Sync being disabled. .
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But that's why you put a frame-limiter on at 2 - 4 FPS below the monitor's max g-sync range. What's the point of v-sync after that?
 
Delicieuxz said:
But that's why you put a frame-limiter on at 2 - 4 FPS below the monitor's max g-sync range. What's the point of v-sync after that?
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You need v-sync to fully enable g-sync. But unless the game itself offers a limiter, the point of g-sync is removed if you have to use 3rd party software for limiting, which adds input lag.
 
Yes, you need V-Sync ON even when in G-Sync mode below monitors max refresh or you will get tearing.
 
Hmmm, I have v-sync off in game settings, but still get G-Sync working on my Acer Predator- however, I do have it on in drivers.
 
V-Sync in-game settings don't matter if you have V-Sync set in drivers. Setting the driver to "use application setting" is the only way to get in-game VSync to work.
 
Vega said:
V-Sync in-game settings don't matter if you have V-Sync set in drivers. Setting the driver to "use application setting" is the only way to get in-game VSync to work.
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You're right, I just wasn't thinking of it that way :)
 
I am very interested in this monitor. I have an PG278Q which is great but 27" is too small for me. I have a couple of questions:

Does this monitor support Nvidia 3D Vision?
Are there any other monitors to consider that are >= 30" and have resolutions >= 1440P?
 
Vega said:
No 3DVision. I would say it is the best "overall" gaming monitor, no matter the size.
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Thanks for your response. Your opinions are very highly regarded in these parts :). I remember your de-bezeling exploits from years back :D
 
Vega said:
No 3DVision. I would say it is the best "overall" gaming monitor, no matter the size.
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Wow. Now I'm even considering this based on this endorsement.


I don't tend to go through a lot hardware and turn it over quickly.

I think the only reason I would hesitate at this point is because I see the specter of those 4k 120Hzs and such coming out of CES and I'm going to feel like an idiot if I buy this and then something like that comes out later this year and I decide I want to get that. I have seen that the G-sync and display ports are all up for upgrades on implementation as is HDMI and display port.


So the dumb question is: If that happens, what's the best/safest way some of you unload your hardware? Sell it on here?




Vega said:
Thanks!



My replacement gets delivered today. Let's hope that both of us win the lottery this round!
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We're still doing lotteries even with the this?
 
For me there's only one critical feature missing, 144Hz strobing. :D But I'm not sure if the fastest VA panels would be capable of that, likely not, fastest IPS panels would probably barely handle it without artifacts, VA I'd expect slight amount smearing/additional blur.
 
Vega said:
Thanks!



My replacement gets delivered today. Let's hope that both of us win the lottery this round!
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Hopefully your replacement is mint.

Based on some reviews on newegg there has been a few problems with dead pixels and dust under the screen? How does that happen nowadays? Garage assembly?

Luckily there were 0 stuck/dead pixels or odd uniformity issues with mine and I am now at a month of ownership.

Monitor has been amazing and I am pretty shocked at how good it is. I forget how annoying ips glow was until I power on my acer xb321 next to it for work and I go wtf is wrong with that monitor. I did not realize how annoying the glow was until using the LG as my daily driver.
 
Vega said:
Nice, my replacement is purrfect.
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That's great! Perhaps the QC on these monitors is not bad. I placed an order for one from Newegg. It should arrive tomorrow. Can't wait! :). Now what will I do with my PG278Q? I already have 2x U3014 for productivity.
 
Got my unit in from Newegg. I let the monitor warm up for about half an hour while I checked for defective pixels and trapped dust underneath the screen. Happy to report there's zero defective pixels, zero trapped dust/insects, and this monitor has some damn excellent uniformity. Probably the best I've seen for a non professional grade work monitor. All the earlier reports of great uniformity on this monitor is spot on. Good job LG.

Uniformnity check.png
 
No insects? You got robbed. That's free protein.

How's your contrast ratio?
 
Vega said:
No insects? You got robbed. That's free protein.

How's your contrast ratio?
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2700:1. Not sure if its the monitor or my meter giving an unrealiable reading for lower black depths. The same meter reported my B7A oled having a contrast ratio of 6000:1 lol.
 
hardware.info and a user on overclock measured contrast with X-Rite which is very accurate - both resulting in 2900:1-3000:1 contrast ratio
so that's the ballpark I would say (pretty much on spec)
 
So I've done some gaming on it. This is definitely the best VA panel I've used, but of course at the end of the day it is still a VA panel and it does indeed suffer from some weakness in pixel response. But it wasn't like I was expecting AUO and LG/Nvidia to come up with some black magic to give this thing TN response times. I think it's safe to say that as long as you're not a hardcore competitive gamer, in which case a 32 inch display probably isn't even the ideal size for you to even begin with, you will be happy with this monitor's performance. Here's just a small and quick example of some of the weak transitions. Crysis 3 with everything set to low in order to push a constant 162fps.

 
MistaSparkul said:
I think it's safe to say that as long as you're not a hardcore competitive gamer, in which case a 32 inch display probably isn't even the ideal size for you to even begin with, you will be happy with this monitor's performance.
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I don't see why not, bigger size = bigger peeking heads. Pro players come up with weird stretched out resolutions to compensate for the usual 23-24" sizes.

Have you tested out the CHG70 before? How does the motion feel compared to it? Because I already was satisfied with the motion performance on the C27HG70, and I play R6 Siege on "hardcore" levels.
 
Foliage is the worst case scenario. I was watching Planet Earth 2 on Netflix in 4K on my VA TV and boy oh boy did I notice this.
 
linuxdude9 said:
Foliage is the worst case scenario. I was watching Planet Earth 2 on Netflix in 4K on my VA TV and boy oh boy did I notice this.
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Some films also have extra motion blur, it causes the same effect. If you look at paused frames you can tell whether it is caused by panel response or encoded in the video.

Only thing that helps in this case is to lift shadow brightness and reduce sharpness of the image. Also heating up the panel but that's not really recommended :wacky:
 
Vega (and others) mentioned a washed out look in regards to the colors. I'm surprised to see that on a VA monitor. How much have you all been able to squeeze out of it with tweaks, calibrations, and so forth?

When I think washed out I think TN so there's no way this thing could be like that. Can anyone elaborate?
 
igluk said:
Some films also have extra motion blur, it causes the same effect. If you look at paused frames you can tell whether it is caused by panel response or encoded in the video.

Only thing that helps in this case is to lift shadow brightness and reduce sharpness of the image. Also heating up the panel but that's not really recommended :wacky:
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I'd actually be interested to see some tests done to show the effect room temperature plays on pixel response time.
 
Q-BZ said:
Vega (and others) mentioned a washed out look in regards to the colors. I'm surprised to see that on a VA monitor. How much have you all been able to squeeze out of it with tweaks, calibrations, and so forth?

When I think washed out I think TN so there's no way this thing could be like that. Can anyone elaborate?
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Yeah especially with the Highest gamma mode 3 at a distance of 90-100cm, is it still "washed out"?
 
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