04-18-2024 09:36 AM
So i am having this issue since the day i bought the monitor.
At first it was happening during a certain game,the callisto protocol.
Now it is happening also in Destiny 2.
As i am playing these games with HDR on,after some time the screen goes black and i have to manually turn the monitor off and on again in order for the image to appear again.
I had at the beggining the factory firmware,after i updated to MCM102 and now i have the 103.
This issue seems to be consistent on all firmwares.
I know it is not related to my windows setup because on the same pc with a different monitor this does not happen.
I have my pg32ucdm connected via dp.
Any suggestion would be much appreciated!!
4 weeks ago
Look I can save you all a lot of time:
There are two kinds of blackscreens.
One is just a bad cable. You can pretty much rule that out by trying with two different cables and ensuring your cable is not entangled with a bunch of power cables that may cause interference.
Then there is the actual problematic black screen. If you turn off DSC it will go away. If you turn off VRR it will go away. It does not depend on the cable or the GPU used. I do not know what exactly triggers it, but my educated guess after a lot of testing and research is that the monitor and/or GPU driver fails low refresh rate compensation at very high refresh display refresh rates. What is supposed to happen with VRR if you go below the refresh rate of the display (in this case, 48hz) is that the GPU duplicates frames, so at 48hz, the screen bumps up to 96hz and gets two copies of the frame. This feature works fine at 120hz (no DSC) but in DSC something changes and this duplication of frames can fail. It does not fail every time, but it fails randomly. You get a tiny fps dip to below the magical 48fps and instead of frame doubling, the monitor craps out. In reality there probably should be some kind of safety area around 48hz - meaning if the monitor outright blackscreens as soon as you try to put in 47hz refresh rate via VRR, the doubling should happen at a higher framerate. Maybe as high as 55 or 60hz. That way if the GPU/driver somehow fails to do the frame duplication promptly enough and monitor gets a frame at too low refresh VRR rate. The fact that this does not happen when DSC is off suggests the extra overhead from DSC compression may play a part.
It is plausible that this is something NVIDIA may need to fix in their drivers or GPU vBIOS instead of fixing it in the monitor firmware, but it is also plausible that there is something the monitor firmware can do to avoid this situation. As I understand it, many monitors who support VRR actually have a "safety area" below the minimum officially supported refresh rate that they can handle in case the PC outputs that to them without bumping the refresh rate and doubling up the frames immediately. Ie. if monitor officially supports minimum of 48hz, it actually won't crap out until the refresh rate goes below 40Hz. This monitor appears to be quite sensitive to this, but also this panel type is fairly new in that it supports 240Hz over DSC so comparisons to older models with lower refresh rates and/or no DSC support may not be so simple.
ASUS should take this very seriously, as they are actively selling a premium high end monitor that is, as is, unfit for the purpose it is being sold for (4K 240hz VRR gaming). And for anyone who has this issue happen too often: Reducing visual quality in the game to keep the framerate way higher can help. Turning off DSC and dropping to 120hz max is a guaranteed fix (unless you instead have a bad cable).
4 weeks ago
I am not sure if your right here. Sadly, how do you explain then my monitor having this issue in multiple titles, without VRR enabled... its simply locked to 240hz, and the screen never goes below HZ.
The issue is a protection trigger from the monitor itself, I am guessing its a trigger that happens due to to hitting over the bandwidth that DSC allows, thats why the DSC off fixes the problem, since it limits the bandwidth. I am guessing in certain gaming scenarios, the PC overshoots the bandwidth a bit over the limits possible, that in return triggers the monitor who says oops and turns itself off. Think of it something like a PSU OCP when a power surge happens on the rails. I am guessing they could tweak the threshold on this in the FW and fix it.
4 weeks ago
For trouble shooting purposes I have passed 4 3D Mark Stress test in a row, and have inspected my 4090 FE's power connector and 12V-2x6 power connector cable. At this time my household has two 4090 FE. Swapping between the two of them does not make a difference regarding the PG32UCDM's black screen problem.
4 weeks ago - last edited 4 weeks ago
If it's an Nvidia driver issues, we can rule that out of anyone here has the issue with an AMD card. I am on the latest driver and I don't have that issue with my 4090. Make sure that vsync in game settings are off. I couldn't replicate the black screen on Indiana jones pulling over 400 watts. I did see this black screen randomly in other games, but not recently, still on 105 firmware.
4 weeks ago
There's definitely something going on with the PG32UCDM specifically. I also have a 32" Odyssey Neo G8 4K UHD 240Hz monitor, and have never experienced the PG32UCDM's black screen problem on the exact same PC setups with the same Nvidia drivers. Like recently mentioned, something may need to be updated via firmware by Asus.
4 weeks ago - last edited 4 weeks ago
@Aureliannn_ROG, thank you for taking all this information and relaying it. Obviously, you are not responsible for this monitor problem or any other decision the leadership at ASUS make. You are just trying to do your job and I appreciate your help in this situation.
To the rest of you all,
The most confusing part for me is that if you read every single post on this thread, there are many discrepancies.
Some have the screen return on its own in a few seconds while other have to turn the power off and on.
Some have it occur only in games while others have it only outside of games and then there's outliers like me who had it occur under both scenarios.
For some turning VRR off fixed the problem but for others it was DSC or DDC/CI.
For some it's reproducible in certain scenarios while for others it's completely random.
All of this and more makes this really difficult to pinpoint.
Are these different manifestations of the same problem or different problems altogether?
For me, I haven't had any black screens since I updated all my drivers, firmware, BIOS, etc. as detailed from my Dec. 5th post, but I continuously live in anxiety about it because my first PG32UCDM went over a month before having an issue and my second didn't have an issue for over three months, and even though the random black screens went away for now, it's not enough to give me peace.
3 weeks ago
Exactly the reason I asked if they could collect the details of everyone's system and issue through like a survey or form so they could aggregate all the data and start seeing data on a more granular level. It is sort of cumbersome in my opinion to gather details over a thread of this magnitude.
4 weeks ago
I understand your concerns about monitor consistency. Each firmware update understandably raises anxieties about resolving the issue. While I initially believed a new DisplayPort cable and the latest firmware would rectify the problem—a belief validated for approximately five hours of gameplay—this was ultimately unsuccessful.
My primary concern is receiving a refurbished unit with the same black screen defect if the monitor is returned for an ASUS RMA. Furthermore, I wish to avoid being without this monitor during the launches of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the RTX 5090.
Maybe it's time to get Samsung involved. I believe they are the original manufacturer of this models panel.
4 weeks ago
Spoiler: Samsung G80SD has the exact same issue. I had it for 2 days before returning it as it does not offer DSC disabling and I hated the smart TV interface it used. It is effectively a small TV that pretends to be a gaming monitor. Saw 10+ black screens similar to the ASUS model ones during those two days and tried with 3 different cables (2 diff HDMI, 1 DP) to rule that out. Then just returned it and got ASUS instead.
3 weeks ago
Wanted to throw my experience with the black screen on the heap.
Machine:
Monitor settings kept at defaults except for brightness and color temp changes. VRR on, DSC on, 240hz, HDR tested on and off (doesn't seem to change prevalence of black screens). I've gotten things to stabilize after installing firmware MCM108 and using the DP cable that came with the monitor. Using an HDMI 2.1-compliant cable appears to cause the black screen issue across many different use cases (watching videos, playing video games) but it's most prevalent while gaming.