What causes dark monitor ghosting in fast-moving scenes?

[Luke67]

I’ve been using my new monitor for a few weeks now, and I keep noticing this faint, dark smudging in fast-moving scenes, especially in darker games. I thought a higher refresh rate would eliminate this, but it’s still there and it’s really distracting during competitive play.

[EvelynM]

I’ve seen the same smudge in dark scenes. It kind of trails a hair, even when stuff is moving fast. I figured the higher refresh would fix it, but nope, it stays there and it drives me nuts in comp games.

[James45]

I fiddled with the monitor’s overdrive setting and also toggled motion blur options in game. It helped sometimes for a minute, then it came back. Might be persistence blur or a panel thing.

[Noah95]

I did a tiny test, played a black ramp test and measured how long the transition takes; there was a faint smear for a few frames. Not a clean fix.

[Eleanor_T]

Maybe the real problem isn’t the refresh or the panel. Could be your eyes adapting to darkness, or a game engine effect. What do you think?

[AnthonyUW]

I swapped to a different display with the same size but different brand and the smudge dropped a bit. So maybe it’s one specific batch or panel type.

[LoganEL]

Before I dive deeper, I keep wondering if the issue is just how dark scenes are rendered in that game. I might try a different game to see if it shows up then.