Asus MW221U 22" Ghosting in games.

[Devious]

Oh god, i hope Asus dont screw up my perfectly fine monitor


Good job Plodicus.

 

[Dougsnake]

Good find plodicus,just checked mine was enabled anyway which explains why mines been fine and other guys have been going nuts

 

[meglamaniac]

I managed to get need for speed most wanted to install and run (at 640x480!) on this pc so I've had a mess about with the setting in both positions. With that mind, here's what I've discovered.

Overdrive set to off (white bar covering NO on the selection screen):
- Some minimal normal ghosting from high contrast areas in NFS:MW, e.g. dark streetlight poles against the bright white/blue sky
- None of the nasty negative ghosting on Devious's videoclip
- General video playback, including HD content, is smooth

Overdrive set to on (white bar covering YES on the selection screen):
- A tiny amount of normal ghosting in NFS:MW. Now some negative ghosting as seen on Devious's videoclip is apparent too
- Nasty negative ghosting on Devious's videoclip
- General video playback, including HD content, appears harsh and flickery

So basically, while overdrive does reduce standard ghosting it introduces harsher and more noticeable "negative" ghosting, where a white or near-white ghost appears to move ahead of an area. This is a problem for video especially and is what makes it appear to be flickery. The HD video I was watching was a nature thing of bright lakes reflecting the sun on dark brown muddy land. As the camera panned across the overdrive was causing this high-contrast area appear to flicker. Without overdrive the experience was much better.

To reiterate, the horrible ghosting on Devious's video occurs when overdrive is enabled as I understand it from my testing.

In conclusion, overdrive allows Asus to claim the 2ms response time at the expense of making the display look rubbish! Good call, Asus Without overdrive, it's probably getting 5ms like the Samsung 225BW.

I now have a problem. I don't know whether to get the display swapped under warrenty, or return it for a refund (which I can do because of the backlight defect) and get the Samsung instead... which according to reviews has the problem of backlight bleed, and I want to watch movies on it.

*sigh*

Back to square one really!

 

[Devious]

Maybe they will fix the negative ghosting while overdrive is enabled on my monitor *fingers crossed*



p.s Doesn't the samsung costs more ? And doesn't look as good imo.

 

[Dougsnake]

testing a tft at 640x480 is surely wrong, im no expert but id take them results with a pinch of salt ,techie guys feel welcome to correct my assumption

 

[meglamaniac]

testing a tft at 640x480 is surely wrong, im no expert but id take them results with a pinch of salt ,techie guys feel welcome to correct my assumption

It's not ideal I agree, but the image being rescaled should not affect the actual display of the image - the pixels are still being lit in the standard manner. There might be some slight lag introduced between the image being sent and displayed, but that's irrelevant as 60fps will still be displayed at 60fps, just with a couple of microseconds delay between the graphics card and the display on the screen.

My testing with videos (both my own and Devious's) were done at native resolution, and exhibited the same results. If anyone has NFS:MW or another driving game, which are good because of the fast movement, I encourage you to try it and report back.

 

[Plodicus]

Well if the white bar is in the NO position it means that OVERDRIVE is selected and is active, the white bar is the selection highlighter so if you hit the menu key again when NO is highlighted with the white bar you will be in fact turning overdive off

I have played Toca3 with no ghosts (but it's quite a light pallette of colours), tried the oblivion video, with no ghost.

I have not noticed any flickering or anything like that (perhaps because I am using DVI), also if you select no scaling (centered image) in your drivers then the lower res will be displayed in the centre of your screen and it will be as sharp as your native res. as it will only use the number of pixels required to show the image and will not stretch the image over a number of pixels.

However some scenery can blur at fast speeds (no white line crap though), but as my eyesight is awful I can't really tell if it's me or the monitor lol Perhaps a bit of both?

 

[peahead]

I have cancelled my RMA because I have solved the problem of the ghosting...yes that's right Plodicus does the techies jobs for them yet again

And it's so simple...OVERDRIVE IS DISABLED!!!

To enable it hold down the MENU button for 7 to 8 seconds and the OSD should appear giving you 2 options YES or NO, highlight NO (long white bar) and the screen will blur for a split second, then either press the SPLENDID key twice or let the OSD time out to get rid of it.

I hope it works for you guys because mine is 100% better!!!!!

Something as simple as that eh? Makes you wonder how the hell some people manage to get jobs in the IT sector. What a relief!!!!

well done Plodicus mate thats excellent thanks so what do you think the real response time of the panel is with overdrive turned off about 6ms.

 

[meglamaniac]

Well if the white bar is in the NO position it means that OVERDRIVE is selected and is active, the white bar is the selection highlighter so if you hit the menu key again when NO is highlighted with the white bar you will be in fact turning overdive off

Oh. That's a bit counter-intuitave but fair enough.

BTW I was using DVI but as I said previously I'm very picky about my displays, probably because I tend to notice bad ones. Anyway, regardless of what the setting actually is, I think the mode where you get the negative ghosting makes it look terrible on video as well as games.

I did think of disabling scaling, but it turns out that another problem with the hopeless graphics card on this PC I'm stuck with is that it can't do that either

 

[Plodicus]

well the slowest panel I've ever owned was an old 15" 16ms V7 monitor about 2 years ago and it had no ghosting whatsoever (that I could see or notice), so I would reckon that the response time without overdrive has to be in the twenties or more but bear in mind that 2ms is only Grey to Grey and is tested by the manufacturer and (to my knowledge) there is no independant body issuing speed guidlines and benchmarks for TFT speeds like for example the british kite mark.

So if these panels were tested properley I would doubt they were 2ms, my other TFT is a Hyundai Image Quest 17" 3ms response which has no ghosting at all.

In my opinion I reckon with Overdrive enabled that they are nearer 8ms response in real world testing but I may be wrong

All in all very happy with mine now

 

[Shaddow]

Good find , I have tested and switching Overdrive OFF does fix this light(house ghosting problem.

What we need to find out is if with the new Firmware update they fixed the White ghosting with Overdrive. In which case you have the best of both worlds.

I.e 2ms response and no white ghosting.

So anyone who gets their screen back please let us know

Greg

 

[Plodicus]

Well I ain't gonna bother at all with an RMA as my screen has absolutely no back light bleed, no dead pixels, no scratches, and now no ghosting

Sods law says they will have it back and trash it

Had enough fun with this monitor so far so I'm just gonna enjoy my games till Vista ruins that , Oh and choose which GFX card to buy for my birthday

 

[Devious]

Sods law says they will have it back and trash it

You know i'm worried as they have mine to 'fix' gulp

 

[Shaddow]

Can everyone who DOES NOT have the ghosting problem please confirm if their Overdrive is ON/OFF ? (It's the option HIGHLIGHED IN WHITE after pressing Menu for 8 seconds)

That would give us an indication of whether there IS a fix for Overdrive via a firmware update. - Or maybe by updating it just happens to default to OFF (Lets hope not)

Thanks

P.S who said they are sending out Cables for DIY upgrade? (I would prefer this than have to ship it off) as I have no dead pixels etc and everything else is fine.

 

[Lagz]

Can everyone who DOES NOT have the ghosting problem please confirm if their Overdrive is ON/OFF ? (It's the option HIGHLIGHED IN WHITE after pressing Menu for 8 seconds)

That would give us an indication of whether there IS a fix for Overdrive via a firmware update. - Or maybe by updating it just happens to default to OFF (Lets hope not)

Thanks

P.S who said they are sending out Cables for DIY upgrade? (I would prefer this than have to ship it off) as I have no dead pixels etc and everything else is fine.

I didn't have ghosting, but thats because overdrive was turned off. If you turn it on you get quite bad ghosting. I only received my monitor 2 days ago.

 

[meglamaniac]

I'm going to go back to the menu thing and which position means overdrive is off, because this is causing confusion in the thread!

I'm positive that when "NO" is highlighted (with the white bar over it) this indicates that overdrive is off.
Firstly, because everywhere else in the menu system the highlighted line is the option which is active.
Secondly, because of the behaviour of the display. Everything I've read about overdrive seems to suggest that if it wasn't working properly it would produce the sort of negative ghosting effect we've been seeing. Also, with the white bar covering "YES" (i.e. overdrive on, as I'm understanding it) you get the negative ghosting but only a tiny amount of normal ghosting, which is what you'd expect with overdrive on.
With that in mind, the rest of my post refers to overdrive being on or off as I've set out above.

Ok, now that Plodicus has found out how to disable overdrive I'm going to stick with the Asus display. However, I've still opted to get the display swapped for a replacement as there is still that weird internal scratch and the backlight flicker. I'm going through the retailer rather than Asus, because it's simpler and quicker, plus they'll get it to me on Tuesday... not bad when I only phoned them today (saturday).

If the replacement still negative ghosts with overdrive on then I have two options really. I can just turn overdrive off and have the slightly increased normal ghosting (which is still less than my current LCD anyway) and the much better display. Or, I can try and get Asus to upgrade the firmware to fix the overdrive problem.

What I do kind of depends on what the change is for those of you who've sent your displays off to Asus for the firmware upgrade. I'll be very interested to find out whether they've simply moved the default overdrive selection to off, or if they've actually changed the way overdrive works.

Everyone keep on posting your results!
So far this thread is a bit of a goldmine of information on this display, it's been very helpful for me and others I'm sure

 

[IT Troll]

P.S who said they are sending out Cables for DIY upgrade? (I would prefer this than have to ship it off) as I have no dead pixels etc and everything else is fine.

Your possibly thinking of me, but that is not what I said.

They told me that If I could source my own cable then they would be happy to send me the firmware files. They said they could not send out the cable as they only had one and if it was returned they would be stuffed! I didn't manage to find such a cable or even the specification for one and so I have RMA'd mine.

 

[Baddass]

this isn't the first screen I've seen this exact issue, which is what lead me to believe earlier that the ghosting issues people were experiencing was related to the aggressive application of overdrive. The Samsung 940BF also experienced this issue, and I've seen many people turn the overdrive option off in the menu which has helped remove the unwanted overdrive artefacts and trailing, as well as improve movie playback. It seems the Asus MW221U is the same. Some screens really don't offer a good overdrive control, it's a shame. Other screens can be fine, even with aggresive RTC technologies, but others show way too may issues. At least you have the option of turning it off, which will most likely revert the screen to a similar real life responsiveness comparable to the other 22" models in the market.

 

[meglamaniac]

stuff

That more or less sums it up. If the people who've sent their display off to asus end up with a vastly improved overdrive algorithm then I'll be doing the same, otherwise I'll be sticking with the current system with overdrive disabled. At least that way it's equivilant to the Samsung 225BW but doesn't have the backlight bleeding - so it's a win-win situation really.

From what I've seen so far with the one I have, the Asus is a very nice display - it's just the poor overdrive implementation which ruins it. And seriously, you have to see the sheer physical space of 22" to believe it... when it's working properly, it's absolutely stunning!

 

[Plodicus]

I agree Maniac, once all the initial colours have been sorted out and the overdrive situation corrected it really is a great panel for the money, and 22" looks great on your desktop