I've Seen Nvidia's G-sync Pulsar In Action And It's Kinda Ruined... (2026)

There are certain things in life that, once seen, can't be unseen. The arrow in the FedEx logo, for instance. Or the fact that my beard is rapidly going grey, proving once and for all that I am truly a mortal man.

Well, I've had a chance to check out Nvidia's new G-Sync Pulsar tech in action at CES 2026, and now I'm afraid that all other gaming monitors look a bit... crap. It's Medusa-like tech. I've seen it, I can't unsee it, and now I'm forever changed.

Okay, that's a hefty dose of overstatement. But Pulsar's refresh rate-matched backlight strobing tech makes such a difference to the way your eye perceives moving objects on a screen, looking at a regular monitor in motion now feels like a lesser experience.

I was shown two demos, the first of which involved NPC characters with nametags moving quickly past my field of view in Overwatch 2. On the left was a monitor without G-Sync Pulsar, and it looked fine. A little hard to read at full speed, but hey, motion blur is motion blur, and the fast-moving characters looked completely normal to my eyes.

On the right was a Pulsar-enabled monitor. In person, the text above the fast-moving NPC appeared completely clear, sharp-edged, and 100% legible, as did the character itself. That might sound like a small difference, but in terms of the way my eyes fell on the image overall, and the way I naturally perceived the scene, the improvement in overall picture clarity felt like night and day.

Suddenly, it felt like my eyes were no longer struggling to keep up with the fast-moving image. The picture overall, with both fast-moving and static objects, seemed to beam straight into my retinas with impressive precision—resulting in a moving image quality that looks miles ahead of anything I've seen to date.

I was also shown a demo of Anno 117: Pax Romana running on the monitor tech, which initially struck me as an odd choice. After all, city builders aren't exactly known for their fast-paced action. However, moving the camera around instantly revealed why Nvidia picked it as a demonstration piece. Tons of icons, overlaid on a detailed map, with lots of zooming in and out of the game area.

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Again, the clarity difference under motion was undeniable. One was hard to parse under fast movement, the other, completely legible, whether focussing on details or looking at a moving scene overall.

Now, you're going to have to take

Source: PC Gamer