XB323QKNV - where under certain circumstances sections of the Desaturated on Monitor.

Evictus

I've run into an issue with my 4 month old XB323QKNV Acer Predator Monitor, where under certain circumstances sections of the screen become desaturated, and I've run out of ideas on how to fix it.

At first I thought it was a graphical bug in the game I was playing, but I was able to narrow the problem down to the monitor itself, as the desaturation does not appear in any screen shots or while streaming the gameplay to friends. I can also replicate the problem by taking a screenshot and opening the image in Paint, and moving the Paint window around the monitor. The desaturation appears and disappears relative to where I move the image on the screen.

I've also attached my dxdiag file in case that helps at all.

Any help at all would be great, I'm hoping this is an issue that can be resolved without having to go through an RMA.

Troubleshooting that I've done:
-Power cycled the monitor
-Replaced display cable
-Updated GPU driver
-Updated monitor firmware
-Power cycled PC
-Reset monitor to factory settings

Below are some photos I took of the monitor with my phone. As I said before, the issue doesn't appear on screenshots, so I can only imagine the desaturation is occurring outside the OS itself.

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

JackE

MicroStar manufactures your PC. It might be a proprietary version of the generic nvidia adapter with proprietary driver updates, not generic nvidia updates. Your video suggests the ACER monitor might be over- (or perhaps under-) responding to slight variations in color (green) tones as the pan angle changes. Simply put, the GPU's output does not seem to be a good match for the ACER's input as it stands. Might be a driver. Might not. If it were mine, I'd check with MicroStar on whether or not the nvidia generic driver is appropriate.

JackE

>>>under certain circumstances >>>

(1) Under the same certain circumstances, what do you see either HDMI-ed out to a TV screen or another monitor?

(2) What are the certain circumstances?

(3) Did  MicroStar provide the RTX 3080 update?

Evictus

Outputting to one of my other monitors instead looks perfectly fine, no color distortions at all.

Typically this has been happening whenever there is a lot of grass in games or screenshots that I open, but it's not consistent. It seems to change where the color distortions are based on moving windows around on the monitor as well, I'll try to get video of it happening so it's easier to understand.

Not certain what MicroStar is, but I download all of my graphics drivers directly from the nvidia support site.

Evictus

Here's what it looks like in action: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aAUb99zTUfU2Wi4r6 (google may take a while to process the video to HD)

JackE

MicroStar manufactures your PC. It might be a proprietary version of the generic nvidia adapter with proprietary driver updates, not generic nvidia updates. Your video suggests the ACER monitor might be over- (or perhaps under-) responding to slight variations in color (green) tones as the pan angle changes. Simply put, the GPU's output does not seem to be a good match for the ACER's input as it stands. Might be a driver. Might not. If it were mine, I'd check with MicroStar on whether or not the nvidia generic driver is appropriate.

Evictus

Thanks for the suggestion.

I made some progress based on what you said about the GPU output not matching the Monitor input properly. Going into the NVIDIA Control Panel, I switched the refresh rate down from 144Hz to 120Hz. Since the switch, I've not been able to reproduce the issue. I'll be doing some further testing to see if I can get them to play nice with each other at 144Hz, but for now things seem stable.

MSI is just the manufacturer of the motherboard, I pieced the rest of it together myself. Although it seems that the problem is occurring somewhere between the GPU and the Monitor, do you think updating the BIOS on the motherboard could have an impact?

Worst case scenario now is that I just have to stick with 120Hz, which is something I can live with.

Marking as resolved at this point, I'll update the post if I find any other solutions.

JackE

>>>do you think updating the BIOS on the motherboard could have an impact?>>>

Doubtful. If it was mine, it wouldn't be worth the risk of bricking it. However, I might play with any video options that exist in the current firmware.

x_TOM_x

Hi guys,

I found this thread because I have exactly the same problem that Evictus described.

Here is a video of an in-game image showing this color glitch when zoomed. As Evictus wrote, it happens in-game and then I can replicate it again by zooming in on that image (PrtSc) on desktop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OctBz9TZpY

Tried and not working:

- Different GPU driver releases (older, newer)

- Complete reset monitor

- Individual switching of options in the monitor = every single one I tried

- Switching G-sync/Vsync, changing graphics settings in games

Tried and working:

- Only ONE FIX is to switch monitor to 120 Hz, then defect color errors disappear immediately

My graphics card is RTX 4090 Gaming OC (latest bios), I use original HDMI cable from this monitor (HDMI 2.1 version)

Any experiences or ideas how to solve this problem and work at 144 Hz in UHD without these color glitches?

Thanks

x_TOM_x

I am adding other experiences with this problem:

I was able to replicate the same issue via a completely different input source = my Lenovo Legion 7 laptop (5800H + RTX 3070)

My laptop has a HDMI 2.1 port, so I connected the monitor to the laptop, switched the split screen to just the ACER screen, set the laptop panel to 3840×2160 144Hz via nvidia control panel. I transferred images which can show the color glitch from the desktop PC via USB stick and Acer monitor connected via the laptop showed the same glitches when fine zoomed this pictures as on the desktop PC. So it's clearly just a problem with the given Acer panel, all other causes are almost 99.99% excluded.

Likewise, when I play games in the laptop but via a external Acer panel, the same color glitches appear in the same places in games as on the desktop PC.

After setting 120 Hz, the problems in the laptop disappear as well as in the desktop PC.

Graphics glitches on the desktop PC did not stop even after replacing the original Acer HDMI cable with an original Acer Displayport cable. The same problems continued.

Unfortunately, this panel has a serious problem with 4K UHD 144 Hz, so I created a complaint directly through Acer support.

(Excuse my english, it's not good)

billsey

Likely best at this point... Sounds like you have done your due diligence.

x_TOM_x

I've had the monitor at home for a few days from service, and if another user has this problem, then service can fix it. Specifically, they wrote in the repair protocol that they fixed the monitor's firmware. This problem with color artifacts is finally gone.