If you’ve recently upgraded to a high refresh rate monitor and are disappointed by blurry performance, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, the cause behind the blur isn’t always obvious.
Much of it comes down to how screens work and how our eyes track motion, and fortunately, there are ways to fix it. Let’s go over some common causes and solutions for a blurry gaming monitor.
Your monitor’s overdrive is too low or too high
Ghosting is a common visual artifact that affects modern IPS and especially VA panels. It’s pretty much what it sounds like—as an object moves across your screen, it leaves behind a faint, blurry trail, similar to a lighter form of per-object motion blur.
This happens because pixels can’t physically change colors fast enough from frame to frame due to their slow response times, which is why OLEDs and their ridiculously fast 0.01–0.03ms response times largely eliminate ghosting.
To combat ghosting, you can enable “Overdrive” (also called “Response Time” on some monitors). This applies a higher voltage to pixels so they reach their target color faster. Depending on your monitor, you might have two or three different overdrive strength options.
While it can be tempting to pick the strongest option, doing so can cause inverse ghosting, which is often more distracting than traditional ghosting. If you’ve been using the highest setting, it may be worth dialing it back. For many monitors, medium or strong settings work best, but it’s still a good idea to confirm using the UFO test and your phone’s camera.
Backlight strobing (LED) or BFI (OLED) isn’t enabled
If your monitor supports backlight strobing, you’re in luck—it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce unwanted motion blur in fast-paced games. The way it works is actually nothing short of magical.
Monitors use a sample-and-hold method to display images, which means that a frame remains visible for the entire duration until a new frame becomes available. Your eyes track moving objects smoothly, but because each frame stays on the screen until the next one appears, this creates persistence blur.
This type of blur improves at higher refresh rates, but realistically, most of us don’t have PCs capable of drawing several hundred frames per second in most games.
There are many different takes on this technology from various brands, which is why you’ll see different names being used. You can find it under names like “Motion Blur Reduction” (LG), Extreme Low Motion Blur (ASUS), and Aim Stabilizer (Gigabyte). NVIDIA’s G-Sync Ultra Low Motion Blur 2 is one of the most polished implementations of this technology.
Interestingly, while OLEDs don’t have a backlight to strobe, they use a variation called “Black Frame Insertion” (BFI), which does exactly what it says on the tin.
Since OLEDs use self-emitting diodes, inserting a black frame has much the same effect as strobing the backlight on an LED-backlit monitor, reducing motion blur caused by eye tracking rather than pixel response (OLED pixels are already near-instant).
If your monitor supports this setting, you’re in luck—you should enable it and try a few different configurations to see what looks best. One major downside is that this technology drastically reduces perceived brightness, so it’s not ideal for cinematic games or if your screen faces a sunny window.
It can also introduce flicker for some users and often requires you to disable VRR (G-Sync Pulsar allows for both), so keep that in mind when adjusting settings.
Your FPS and refresh rate are mismatched
In a perfect world, your FPS would match your monitor’s native refresh rate. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, as an average PC can’t consistently push a high-end monitor to its limits. It’s actually one of the reasons why I slightly regret purchasing a 240Hz monitor, since my PC can only reach 240+ FPS in lighter titles, so I’m not taking advantage of it in games where it truly matters.
Put simply, if your in-game FPS doesn’t get close to your monitor’s maximum refresh rate, you won’t see the full benefits of the high refresh rate.
In this situation, you can consider enabling frame generation and upscaling to smooth motion and increase apparent FPS. This isn’t a perfect solution, though—the quality of the generated frames depends on the algorithm, and it won’t eliminate pixel or persistence blur. Ultimately, though, upgrading to a more powerful graphics card is the only way to consistently hit high FPS and reduce motion blur.
In the meantime, you can use VRR (AMD FreeSync/NVIDIA G-Sync) to match the monitor’s refresh rate to your FPS output to eliminate screen tearing and slightly reduce perceived motion blur caused by the FPS/refresh rate mismatch.
An in-game setting is causing motion blur
What if you’ve been focusing on the wrong part of the equation all along? While a monitor can certainly cause motion blur, modern video games can too. The obvious solution is to disable motion blur in the in-game settings, but developers don’t always make it easy or straightforward.
If you’ve been noticing smearing and overall blurriness in just one game while everything else looks crisp, that’s a tell-tale sign.
In these cases, it’s best to check online for a guide on how to disable motion blur. You might need to turn off Depth of Field effects, adjust post-processing quality, or even dig around in the game’s files to fully disable it.
The monitor’s response time is too slow
If your FPS is high and you’ve tried changing all kinds of settings but still notice motion blur, I hate to say it, but your monitor’s response time might just be too slow.
This is an especially common complaint on VA panels.
Manufacturers sometimes claim a 1ms response time, but that usually refers to gray-to-gray (GtG) transitions rather than Moving Picture Response Time (MPRT), which is a best-case scenario test that isn’t realistic for normal use. On top of that, the claimed 1ms can often only be achieved with the most aggressive overdrive settings, which may introduce inverse ghosting and other artifacts.
Because of this slow response, many cheaper VA panels are too slow at dark-to-light, dark-to-dark, and other extreme shade transitions, resulting in noticeable trailing that is often called “black smearing.”
The only real solution to this problem is to upgrade to a better monitor. Maybe now is the perfect time to consider an OLED?
