Nvidia's new gaming monitor tech is inspired by old CRTs, making 250Hz feel like you're playing at 1,000Hz

Nvidia has just unveiled its latest G-Sync technology aimed at making gaming monitors as responsive and smooth-feeling as can be. Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar combines the refresh rate/frame rate-syncing tech of G-Sync with a new type of monitor backlight strobing, which works a bit like old CRT screens, to provide ultra-smooth, low-motion-blur gaming.

I've long been a fan of G-Sync technology, even if few options on our best gaming monitor guide still use an official G-Sync module. Unlike some Nvidia tech, such as DLSS upscaling, frame gen, and RTX, which have not always had the most obvious beneficial impact, G-Sync just worked. Every single game running on your monitor immediately looked better if you had a G-Sync monitor and an Nvidia graphics card. Now, G-Sync and its free equivalents - adaptive sync and Freesync - are effectively ubiquitous, but with Nvidia Pulsar, the company has come up with a new reason to make you consider buying a proper G-Sync Pulsar-certified display.

The way this technology works is that it takes advantage of the already established technique of black frame insertion, which is where the pixels (of an OLED) or backlight (of an LCD) turn off for a split second between each frame. This flushing of the image has two benefits.

First, the black frame reduces the effect of eye-tracking motion blur (where your eye expects the image to move, but each frame is technically static), and second, for LCDs, the black frame helps mask the period where an LCD pixel is changing from one state (color) to another. This hides the ghostly, smeared trails that you can otherwise see on LCD monitors with slow pixel response time.

This sort of backlight strobing has been around for a long time, but has tended to come with two downsides, which are a significant drop in brightness and incompatibility with G-Sync/adaptive sync/Freesync. That meant that you either had to choose the more responsive feel of backlight strobing or the image tearing and stutter-reduction of G-Sync et al. Asus had developed its Extreme Low Motion Blur Sync (ELMB Sync) tech, as seen in the Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQ, which combines the two technologies, but up until now, it was the only company to offer this combination.

G-Sync Puslar, then, finally brings G-Sync and backlight strobing together to offer truly smooth and responsive gaming. However, it also goes a step further. Not only does G-Sync Pulsar flash the backlight, but it does so in rows that pulse four times for each frame.

This splitting up of the backlight into rows creates a similar scanline effect to old CRT displays, which were coveted for their smooth gaming thanks to the image being created by a single beam constantly scanning back and forth and up and down across the whole screen. Nvidia claims this strobing technique is so effective that a 250Hz display running Pulsar feels like using a 1,000Hz display.

Along with this pulsing tech, G-Sync Pulsar displays (see what they did there) must at least offer a 1440p resolution and 360Hz refresh rate, so we're talking about the most elite gaming displays.

Note that Pulsar isn't for OLEDs. These panels have a much faster response time, so are inherently better than LCDs most of the time, but OLEDs can't do the same scanline-mimicking backlight trick, so a G-Sync Pulsar LCD running at 360Hz should feel significantly smoother than a 360Hz OLED. Based on my experience with previous backlight strobing LCD monitors, I'm inclined to trust Nvidia with this claim - it really is that effective.

Four fresh G-Sync Pulsar displays launch today, January 7, which are the Acer Predator XB272U FS, AOC Agon Pro AG276QSG2, Asus ROG Strix Pulsar XG27AQNGV, and MSI MPG 272QRF X36. These are all 27-inch models that start at $599, so unlike some previous G-Sync tech launches, these aren't ludicrously expensive options. That said, they're still pricey for 27-inch displays, and they're very much aimed at ultra-competitive gamers playing the likes of Apex, CS2, and Valorant, even if their smooth motion can benefit other games too, as shown in the Anno 117: Pax Romana video above.