New Windows Update Improves Mixed-Hz Multimonitor — With One Caveat

Posted Feb 18, 2020 by in: Monitors TestUFO

For a long time, Windows-based multi-monitor was defective with mixed-Hz operation.

Simultaneously connecting a 144 Hz display and a 60 Hz to the same computer was long possible, but had a side effect: Major stutters and jerky motion occurred on one of the two monitors when both monitors were simultaneously displaying motion.

Gamers, Rejoice! Fix Arrives In Windows 10 Update 2004 20H1

Reddit user loopy750 posted on reddit, a demonstration of the fix, and gamer netizens have been hugely escastic, profusely thanking Microsoft on reddit and in comments/forums such as resetera.

Gargantuous if factual

Holy shit, finally. I just assumed it would never get fixed.

wow I was expecting for this for a long time

This Windows bug is not seen by office-environment users using identical DELL and HP monitors running at identical refresh rates.

However, many gamers, esports players. and the rest of the booming gaming industry, have become vocal complainers of this bug, so the collective relief is huge.

One Possible Caveat: Still Single WDM Compositor Thread

A source has informed us Microsoft fixed this by operating the WDM compositor at the highest monitor Hz. For the 60 Hz + 144 Hz multi-monitor situation, the fix will will still greatly improve motion by preventing 144 Hz monitors running at only 60 fps.

Instead of 60fps stutter (1/60sec = 16.7ms stutters), your stutters will be be much more minor, equivalent to 144fps played back at 60Hz (1/144sec = 6.9ms stutters). Minor stutters will still happen, but much better than before.

This won’t produce as smooth motion as having separate independent WDM compositor threads (one per monitor perfectly synchronized to its refresh rate). Microsoft should enable this, at least as a Performance Setting for a future version of windows, that only gets disabled in Power Saver Mode.

Windows Still Has a 512 Hz Refresh Rate Limit Despite Upcoming 1000 Hz

Unfortunately, Windows still has a 512 Hz refresh rate limitation.

Recently, NVIDIA and ASUS announced a 360 Hz monitor at CES 2020. We created a custom TestUFO test for NVIDIA specifically for the CES demo.

Also, ASUS now has a long-term road map to 1000 Hz gaming monitors as their representative confirmed to Blur Busters, to PC Magazine, and to several other sites.

At our meeting with Asus, a rep told me that 360Hz is just the beginning of what the company calls its “road to 1000Hz,

— Quote in PC Magazine about ASUS’ 1000 Hz road map

We have been the forefront of 1000 Hz advocacy, with articles such as The Amazing Journey To 1000Hz Displays and The Stroboscopic Effects Of Finite Refres Rate. It is necessary to go dramatically up the diminishing curve of returns to maintain human-visible benefits.

We appreciate the moves Microsoft is making to recognize the refresh rate race, but acknowledge more work needs to be done.

About Mark Rejhon

Also known as Chief Blur Buster. Founder of Blur Busters. Inventor of TestUFO. Read more about him on the About Mark page.

3 Comments For “New Windows Update Improves Mixed-Hz Multimonitor — With One Caveat”

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baxenko
Member
baxenko

I ran into another problem for 2004. With long-term use of a video game (2-3 minutes) on the second monitor, on which YouTube is playing, the site and the video start to slow down significantly. I disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome, it didn’t help.

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4 years 6 months ago
namcost
Member
namcost

“”Also, ASUS now has a long-term road map to 1000 Hz gaming monitors as their representative confirmed to Blur Busters, to PC Magazine, and to several other sites.””

Interesting. They should be able to do 480hz right now though, and they are slacking off by only giving users 360hz, almost like its just a meme to them. I don’t feel like companies are innovative anymore, they just slowly do things and reap the profits along the way, which really pisses me off. Technology used to move so fast, because people’s hearts and souls were poured into their idea’s which made things possible. Compared to the past, we are in the slowest growth of computing EVER. YES the argument can be made “but technology is more complex than it used to be” but excuses don’t hide the fact that growth is slowing to a crawl.

As of DP2.0 which the spec was released and should see products with or at least cables rated as such in 2020, its fully capable of 1000hz at 1080p….

HOWEVER, me personally, I have become a snob for sharper pixels, so 1080p is out of my wheelhouse now. I currently use a 240hz 1080p alienware as my main monitor for gaming simply because of the 240hz refresh rate, but soon that will change to a 5120x1440p 240hz 1ms HDR1000 Samsung Odyssey G9. And about 5 years from that I will be on 4k at 240hz (5 years seems like a proper time frame considering how slow technology is evolving).

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4 years 9 months ago
Mark Rejhon
Author
Mark Rejhon

To be totally fair… The roadmap will probably take a decade — my guesstimate.

There are some difficulties pushing LCDs faster up the curve geometrically, needed to keep human benefits visible (60->120->240->480->960 jumps).

They aren’t slacking off. My knowledge of the general LCD industry is that it’s been very hard to push past 240Hz, but there’s definitely an approximately decade-long path to 1000Hz LCD panels.

Also, ASUS does not manufacture the bare LCD panel glass portion. Panel makers such as AUO does. ASUS have to purchase these panels from LCD manufacturers (such as AUO), so there’s a lot of things going on in the chain.

Things like the TCON / scaler play a big role, as does how the microwires / grids are manufactured in these panels. 480 Hz is no good if it has overclock-style artifacts (e.g. big drop of contrast ratio, big increase in ghosting, appearance of horizontal or vertical lines artifacts, sudden GtG slowdowns, reduced vertical resolution, frame skipping, etc) Things like GtG pixel response can be slower when overclocked beyond overdrive’s abilities, because not enough nanoseconds is spent voltaging a TFT gate transistor to cause a pixel to transition faster. The ever-shrinking microwire grid built into the panel, that makes it difficult to quickly switch TFT transistors for fast pixel response especially if you try to reduce electronic switching-pulse-time per TFT transistor. Etc. It’s a very complex chain of interactions between all components. Whac-a-mole on the weak links takes time.

Just because ultra-high-Hz refresh rates works in the lab, doesn’t mean the color/contrast quaility even matches a low-end TN panel yet.

Give the industry time. 🙂

Like6Vote Down 
4 years 9 months ago
wpDiscuz

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