I've noticed some flickering when playing games with my new X35 monitor. The flickering only happens in certain spots of certain games. If I turn off overdrive or cap the frame rate at 60 FPS, the flickering issue goes away completely, but I'm left with lots of black smearing with overdrive turned off and using this monitor at 60 Hz is not what I want to do either. I initially contacted Acer tech support and they said I probably have a bad monitor and wanted me to send it in for replacement, which of course means that I have to be without a monitor for 2+ weeks because Acer does not offer any form of cross shipping ... (really Acer, you can't just charge my credit card for another monitor and I pay for both monitors if I don't send back the first monitor??)
So I was almost ready to send it back when I read the X35 review from PC Monitors (
https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/acer-x35/) and they described the exact problem I was seeing and they noted that they were in contact with Acer about the issue and the issue will be fixed in the next Nvidia driver update.
" ... some obvious flickering and strong interlace pattern artifacts (thick ‘dancing lines’ with textures breaking up into a heavily interlaced pattern). This is likely an inversion artifact issue related to imperfect voltage regulation on the monitor. It occurred if the monitor was running beyond ~80Hz when certain textures were displayed. It wasn’t particularly widespread in general, although BFV seemed to have various scenes which caused the issue in a particularly obvious way. It was very rare on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Mass Effect Andromeda, although there were some isolated instances on those titles. And there were some notable instances on Fallout 76, particularly during foggy weather. It is particularly noticeable if the refresh rate is fluctuating, so with G-SYNC active and the frame rate between 80 – 200fps. It doesn’t matter what static refresh rate is selected (except 60Hz, of course). Disabling ‘Over Drive’ rather than using ‘Normal’ or ‘Extreme’ fixes this issue, but obviously that’s an unattractive solution.
This section of video highlights the issue and discusses the conditions under which it occurs.
As noted in the video we’ve been in communication with Acer regarding the obvious flickering and heavy interlace pattern artifact issue. They’ve told us that Nvidia are aware of the issue and will fix it in their next driver release (after 431.60, which we used in the review). Newer drivers will include optimisations for the 35” G-SYNC Ultimate models. It affects all models which share the same PCB as this one, including the ASUS PG35VQ. We won’t be able to test this driver ourselves as it wasn’t available during the review period, but we’ll take their word for it that it will be fixed. We expect the release notes for the driver and user feedback to confirm this."
I then contacted Acer tech support and they said they were not aware of this issue... I have to say I was very surprised if this was a known issue and the tech support team didn't know about it. However, I have worked in tech support before and I know that the tech support team are not briefed on all the issues and they are not familiar with current internal matters all the time.
So, could somebody in Acer's product management team comment about this issue? I'd rather not send back a perfectly good monitor if there's nothing wrong with it. Especially if I'm very likely to have the same problem with a new monitor.
FAQ & Answers
Hello Aldur67,
I'm sorry that you're having flickering issues with your Acer X35 monitor. Can you please send me a private message with the S/N of your unit so I can look into this for you?
Thanks,
Acer-Manny
And just for everybody Acer-Manny was not able to help with this problem but he has escalated it so hopefully, we'll find something out.
Tinkerer
1. Especially in pubg, no matter what framerate or settings I try, in areas where there's low grass (everywhere in the game) it looks like the monitor is switching between SDR and HDR creating this weird flicker in brightness and contrast.
2. When I change settings between HDR & WCG or enable SDR through the display menu the monitor will automatically change its setting on its own, putting my display to black for a few seconds.
Note that you might have to manually set the resolution to 1080p for this youtube video, as it is not doing it for me automatically. In the video fast forward to 15 seconds as that shows the best example of what I'm talking about.
To your second point, I think that's normal for the monitor to blank out when switching between HDR and SDR modes. I really am not sure though as this is the first HDR monitor that I've ever owned. But mine does the same thing switching between HDR and SDR.
Someone please tell me what's going on and why 2 weeks in I don't know any better and this obvious issue hasn't been fixed.
Help?
Lots of others on here and a reviewer on pcmonitors also had this issue, he even says he spoke to one of your team, yet reading from another thread here you don't even know about the issue? Talk about conflicting information.
Apparently people are seeing the same with the Asus Monitor and being told its a software issue. It's annoying and shouldn't exist on a 2200 pound (eye care?) panel. A little feedback on what steps if any are going on to address this would be nice...were literally all in the dark sat waiting here being told completely different things.
Hello Boatkettlecheese,
I'm sorry that you're experiencing flickering issues with your Acer X35 monitor. Please respond to my private message with the additional information requested to better assist you.
Thanks in advance,
Acer-Manny
when will we see a solution for this expensive panel?
Please update to the latest NVIDIA Game Ready Driver v.436.02 released yesterday, if for some reason the flickering persists, try lowering the overclocking settings.
Note: Click here, for instructions on how to install the latest NVIDIA Game Ready drivers using the NVIDIA GeForce Experience application.
Thanks for the patience,
Acer-Manny
a) Set OD to off - However when moving ingame the sharpness of the ingame(signboard etc) will be affected
b) Set the monitor frequency or Game FPS to 60hz. The flicker stops totally. But then i wonder why we pay so much for such high freq monitor ....
We seriously need Nvidia to solve this with a driver or ACER to come out with a firmware on this issue.
Tinkerer