Please stop using your high refresh rate monitor on default settings
If you’ve recently upgraded to a high refresh rate monitor and are disappointed by the blurry performance, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, the cause of this blurring is not always obvious.
A lot of it depends on how screens work and how our eyes track movement. Fortunately, there are ways to fix this problem. Let’s go over some common causes and solutions for a blurry gaming monitor.
Your monitor’s overdrive is too low or too high
Ghosting is a common visual artifact that affects modern IPS and especially VA panels. This is pretty much what it sounds like: when an object moves across your screen, it leaves behind a slight blurry trail, similar to a lighter form of per-object motion blur.
This happens because pixels cannot physically change color quickly enough from frame to frame due to their slow response times. This is why OLEDs and their ridiculously fast response times of 0.01-0.03ms largely eliminate ghosting.
To combat ghosting, you can enable “Overdrive” (also called “Response Time” on some monitors). This applies higher voltage to the pixels so that they reach their target color more quickly. Depending on your monitor, you may have two or three different overdrive power options.
While it may be tempting to choose the strongest option, this can cause reverse ghosting, which is often more annoying than traditional ghosting. If you used the highest setting, it might be worth recalling. For many monitors, medium or strong settings work best, but it’s always a good idea to confirm using the UFO test and your phone’s camera.
Strobe (LED) or BFI (OLED) backlight is not activated
If your monitor supports strobe backlighting, you’re in luck: it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce unwanted motion blur in fast-paced games. The way it works is actually just magical.
Monitors use a sample and hold method to display images, meaning that an image remains visible for the entire duration until a new image is available. Your eyes track moving objects smoothly, but because each image stays on the screen until the next one appears, it creates persistent blur.
This type of blur improves at higher refresh rates, but in reality most of us don’t have PCs capable of displaying several hundred frames per second in most games.
There are many different versions of this technology by different brands, which is why you will see different names used. You can find it under names like “Motion Blur Reduction” (LG), Extreme Low Motion Blur (ASUS), and Aim Stabilizer (Gigabyte). NVIDIA’s G-Sync Ultra Low Motion Blur 2 is one of the most advanced implementations of this technology.
Interestingly, even though OLEDs don’t have strobe backlighting, they use a variant called “Black Frame Insertion” (BFI), which does exactly what it says on the tin.
Since OLEDs use self-emitting diodes, inserting a black frame has much the same effect as strobing a LED-backlit monitor’s backlight, reducing motion blur caused by eye tracking rather than pixel response (OLED pixels are already near instantaneous).
If your monitor supports this setting, you’re in luck: you should enable it and try a few different configurations to see what works best for you. A major downside is that this technology significantly reduces perceived brightness, so it’s not ideal for cinematic gaming or if your screen faces a sunny window.
It can also introduce flickering for some users and often requires you to turn off VRR (G-Sync Pulsar allows both), so keep that in mind when adjusting settings.
Your FPS and refresh rate don’t match
In a perfect world, your FPS would match your monitor’s native refresh rate. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, because an average PC can’t consistently push a high-end monitor to its limits. This is actually one of the reasons why I slightly regret purchasing a 240Hz monitor, as my PC can only achieve 240+ FPS in lighter titles, so I don’t take advantage of it in games where it really matters.
Simply put, if your in-game FPS doesn’t come close to your monitor’s maximum refresh rate, you won’t get all the benefits of the high refresh rate.
In this situation, you might consider enabling frame generation and scaling to smooth out motion and increase apparent FPS. This is not a perfect solution, however: the quality of the generated images depends on the algorithm and it will not eliminate pixel or persistence blur. Ultimately, though, upgrading to a more powerful graphics card is the only way to consistently achieve high FPS and reduce motion blur.
In the meantime, you can use VRR (AMD FreeSync/NVIDIA G-Sync) to match the monitor’s refresh rate to your FPS output to eliminate screen tearing and slightly reduce perceived motion blur caused by the FPS/refresh rate mismatch.
An in-game setting causes motion blur
What if you’ve always been focusing on the wrong part of the equation? While a monitor can certainly cause motion blur, so can modern video games. The obvious solution is to turn off motion blur in the game settings, but developers don’t always make this simple or straightforward.
If you’ve noticed smearing and general blurring in just one game while everything else looks sharp, that’s a telltale sign.
In these cases, it is best to consult a guide online on how to turn off motion blur. You may need to disable depth of field effects, adjust post-processing quality, or even dig through the game’s files to turn it off completely.
Monitor response time is too slow
If your FPS is high and you’ve tried changing all sorts of settings but you’re still noticing motion blur, I hate to say it, but your monitor’s response time may be too slow.
This is an especially common complaint on VA panels.
Manufacturers sometimes claim a 1ms response time, but this usually refers to gray-to-gray transitions (GtG) rather than moving picture response time (MPRT), which is a best-case scenario test that is not realistic for normal use. On top of that, the claimed 1ms can often only be achieved with the most aggressive overdrive settings, which can introduce reverse ghosting and other artifacts.
Because of this slow response, many cheaper VA panels are too slow in dark-to-light, dark-to-dark, and other shade transitions, resulting in visible streaking that is often referred to as “black smearing.”
The only real solution to this problem is to upgrade to a better monitor. Maybe now is the perfect time to consider an OLED?
