Turning it off then on again: massive increase in smoothness / fps (LG 38GL950B)

DoubleTap

DoubleTap

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I'm running the orignal LG 38GL950B and an 11900K / 3090 - all under water.

The issue I have is that when I play Apex Legends, even though I have high fps (easily 156fps @ 3840x1600)

There does sometimes seem to be a small amount of - I guess it's "micro stutter" or something like that.

The game is still playable but it just feels like a minor to moderate hit to smoothness.

What I just discovered by accident is that if I turn my monitor off (even in game) and then turn it on again, the monitor becomes - and this just needs all caps: INCREDIBLY SMOOTH - like liquid silk butter smooth. Super super smooth.

I don't know when it goes back to being "less smooth" but for the life of me, I can't figure out what's happening - it seems like it might be something related to G-Sync.

Has anyone seen anything like this?
 
Does the monitor have a cooling fan? Is it dusty? I know a lot of the good g-sync/freesync monitors run hot and need(ed) active cooling. If it's overheating, that may be why it is stumbling, and why it recovers after being shut off.
 
Nobu said:
Does the monitor have a cooling fan? Is it dusty? I know a lot of the good g-sync/freesync monitors run hot and need(ed) active cooling. If it's overheating, that may be why it is stumbling, and why it recovers after being shut off.
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It does have a fan - some people complain of fan noise, I never hear mine (which, now that I think about it, has both pros and cons)
 
i could be that the monitor isnt initializing the smoothing or gsync or whatever is built in. my tv does odd things like that too sometimes, the smoothness setting causes stutter and "game mode" sometime is goofy.
i would still double check that fan thing though, i think several here have had to replace them(maybe not that exact model).
 
pendragon1 said:
i could be that the monitor isnt initializing the smoothing or gsync or whatever is built in. my tv does odd things like that too sometimes, the smoothness setting causes stutter and "game mode" sometime is goofy.
i would still double check that fan thing though, i think several here have had to replace them(maybe not that exact model).
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I bought the LG $75 3yr warranty - which seemed like a good move for a monitor in this price range.

The service menu says it's failing the self check and one of the fans may have failed. Talked to 3 people at LG trying to figure out how to exit the service menu and I still don't know what did it but they want me to send it in for repairs. Fortunately, I kept the box.

Still, it's stressing me out a little.

I had assumed that the poor performance was just an artifact from Apex Legends (the game is quite glitchy and demanding) Now that I've seen the difference, it's pretty annoying that I wasn't getting that kind of performance most of the time. I love the format of this monitor but maybe it's time to move on to something else...
 
If anything this is an issue with graphics cards / drivers and not monitor
 
DoubleTap said:
It's the monitor - when I turn it off and on sometimes, the G-Sync starts working properly and the difference is substantial.
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Isn't your monitor stopped being detected by video card when you turn it off?
My LG monitor stops being detected even when I turn it off using OSD buttons.

It is easy to imagine how re-initialization cycle can fix issues with g-sync.
Monitor cannot just disable VRR by itself. Even normal non-freesync monitor would work with freesync signals if GPU sent them. Well, it might not work very well but it would definitely not keep displaying image with stuttering.

This might be an issue with monitor and it might be possible monitor buffers frames but it is much more likely it is a GPU issue.
 
XoR_ said:
Isn't your monitor stopped being detected by video card when you turn it off?
My LG monitor stops being detected even when I turn it off using OSD buttons.

It is easy to imagine how re-initialization cycle can fix issues with g-sync.
Monitor cannot just disable VRR by itself. Even normal non-freesync monitor would work with freesync signals if GPU sent them. Well, it might not work very well but it would definitely not keep displaying image with stuttering.

This might be an issue with monitor and it might be possible monitor buffers frames but it is much more likely it is a GPU issue.
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You're talking about Free-sync. I'm not using Free-sync, I'm using G-sync which has an FPGA controller that requires active cooling to function. Based on the fan diagnostics, it seems plausible that the FPGA (G-sync module) is over heating and likely throttling or otherwise not functioning properly which is resulting in some minor stuttering.

I see no reason to suspect the GPU:

1647383562265.png
 
Does your monitor have a "Framerate" function so it displays in the OSD? Mostly run my games in borderless but sometimes Gsync won't engage even if I have it set to fullscreen/windows. Only reason why I found out was that HZ was still maxed though FPS was nowhere near it. Toggling game Fullscreen/Back to Borderless would always engage it. It could be the monitor, gsync/Nvidia related, Windows, all of the above? lol
 
jmilcher said:
Sounds like it’s time to RMA. I think you have it figured out. Good to know you have a warranty tho!
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ziocomposite said:
Does your monitor have a "Framerate" function so it displays in the OSD? Mostly run my games in borderless but sometimes Gsync won't engage even if I have it set to fullscreen/windows. Only reason why I found out was that HZ was still maxed though FPS was nowhere near it. Toggling game Fullscreen/Back to Borderless would always engage it. It could be the monitor, gsync/Nvidia related, Windows, all of the above? lol
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It does have a frame rate function. It's not really that revealing though. Frame rate is generally high but feels stuttery.

I don't play a lot of different games but I loaded up Battlefield V - no players in the map but it ran perfect - super smooth.

It looks like it might be an Apex problem which is weird because sometimes rebooting the monitor fixes it.

Apex Legends seems to be very stutter prone when you have more than a couple dozen friends - apparently, the game will poll all your friends for their current status and if you have a lot, it causes stutter. I culled about 20 people or so and it seems better but not great.

It's possible that it's both a game problem and there is a monitor problem because it did fail it's self test.
 
Freesync, G-Sync, its the same thing pretty much and not the point of my post.

I suggested checking if turning monitor makes it disappear from GPU's list of devices: you did not check it
Some monitors when turned off do not disappear from GPU connected displays list in which case if there is difference in smoothness there is good case monitor is acting up. If display disappears and game needs to re-initialize its display after monitor is powered on then its much more likely its just OS/drivers (read: related to GPU and not monitor) issue.

VRR (G-Sync, Freesync, HDMI adaptive-sync) are known to be unreliable and sometimes switching applications or even forcing game to re-initialize can fix the issue.

Also what "Frame rate is generally high but feels stuttery.[/i] means? The question was if built-in framerate is maxed out or not. Maxed out framerate suggests VRR is not working. Of course it is possible to have so much frames per second that even with VRR it is maxed out but then V-Sync should fix the issue. And besides recommendation is to limit framerate below monitor's maximum refresh rate to have better input lag so it is good practice to use frame rate limiter in which case if monitor frame rate counter shows maxed out frame rate (read: equal to monitor refresh rate) then you can be sure VRR is not working
 
You could turn on the driver level gsync display indicator on and see if the green gsync text indicator only shows up after you turn the monitor off and on, to narrow in on gsync vs something else being the differentiator.
 
OP, thanks for posting this. I have a completely different monitor as you. And yet I could tell a difference by simply turning the monitor off and then on again in game. I had the same "micro stutter" you described. I always knew it wasn't smooth, but could never get my head around to what was causing this.

Was this just always a gsync thing not being initialized?
 
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