Experiences Regarding Gaming on OLED screens?

Wondering if my next upgrade should be an OLED screen or not. It looks amazing, but how is the current compatability with Linux these days? Anyone with one of these sexy screens that would like to share their experiences?

  • What screen do you have?
  • TV or Monitor Screen?
  • Do you have multiple screens?
  • What brand / model is recommended?

Lemmy know! 🌻

afk_strats ,

Reposting my answer from a similar thread. TLDR: I took the plunge on OLED TV in 2021 as a primary monitor and it's been incredible

I've been using an LG C1 48" OLED TV as my sole monitor for my full-time job, my photography, and gaming since the start of 2021. I think it's at around 3000 4500 hours of screen time. It averages over 10 hours of on time per weekday

It typically stays around 40 brightness because that's all I need, being fairly close to my face the size. All of the burn-in protection features are on (auto dimming , burn-in protection, pixel rotation) but I have Windows set to never sleep for work reasons.

Burn in has not been a thing. Sometimes, I leave it on with a spreadsheet open or a photo being edited overnight because I'm dumb. High brightness and high contrast areas might leave a spot visible in certain greys but by then, the TV will ask me to "refresh pixels" and it'll be gone when I next turn the TV on. The task bar has not burned in.

Experience for work, reading, dev: 8/10

Pros: screen real estate. One 48" monitor is roughly four 1080p 22" monitors tiled.The ergonomics are great. Text readability is very good especially in dark mode.

cons: sharing my full screen is annoying to others because it's so big. Video camera has to be placed a bit higher than ideal so I'm at a slightly too high angle for video conferences.

This is categorically a better working monitor than my previous cheap dual 4k setup but text sharpness is not as good as a high end LCD with retina-like density because 1) the density and 2) the subpixel configuration on OLED is not as good for text rendering. This has never been an issue for my working life.

Experience with photo and video editing: 10/10

Outside of dedicated professional monitors which are extremely expensive, there is no better option for color reproduction and contrast. From what I've seen in the consumer sector, maybe Apple monitors are at this level but the price is 4 or 5x.

Gaming: 10/10

2160p120hz HDR with 3ms lag, perfect contrast and extremely good color reproduction.

FPSs feel really good.
Anything dark/horror pops
A lot of real estate for RTSs
Maybe flight sim would have benefited from dusk monitor setup?

I've never had anything but a good gaming experience. I did have a 144hz monitor before and going to 120 IS marginally noticable for me but I don't think it's detrimental at the level I play (suck)

Reviewers had mentioned that it's good for consoles too though I never bothered

Movies and TV: 10/10
4K HDR is better than theaters' picture quality in a dark room. Everything I've thrown on it has been great.

Final notes/recommendations
This is my third LG OLED and I've seen the picture quality dramatically increase over the years. Burn-in used to be a real issue and grays were trashed on my first OLED after about 1000 hours.

Unfortunately, I have to turn the TV on from the remote every time. It does automatically turn off from no signal after the computers screen sleep timer, which is a good feature.
There are open source programs which get around this.

This TV has never been connected to the Internet... I've learned my lesson with previous LG TVs. They spy, they get ads, they have horrendous privacy policies, and they have updates which kill performance or features... Just don't. Get a streaming box.

You need space for it, width and depth wise.
The price is high (around 1k USD on sale) but not compared with gaming monitors and especially compared with 2 gaming monitors.

Pixel rotation is noticeable when the entire screen shifts over a pixel two. It also will mess with you if you have reference pixels at the edge of the screen. This can be turned off.

Burn in protection is also noticable on mostly static images. I wiggle my window if it gets in my way. This can also be turned off.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

Damn thanks for sharing dude!

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

Came for the TLDR, stayed for the entire read. Excellent review.

afk_strats ,

Thank you! Maybe I'll do more

domi ,

I have an Alienware AW3423DWF since about a year now with about 4000 hours on it. Very happy with it, won't be going back to anything else until another technology with per-pixel lighting comes along. I also have a Dell with VA panel as second monitor and it looks like 90s technology compared to the OLED panel.

The only bad thing I can say about the monitor or OLED in general is that the dimming is fairly aggressive, i.e. on bright scenes you will not even get close to the advertised brightness. Makes the OLED monitors pretty much unusable in HDR for desktop usage. Mostly unnoticable in gaming and movies.

There also is some text fuzzing with high contrast text, not distracting for me but might be for others.

but how is the current compatability with Linux these days?

No issues here on Linux. With Plasma 6 you can even do HDR properly. Many games work with the latest Proton-TKG on Wayland and the HDR layer, some still need gamescope to properly work. mpv does movies/shows in HDR with the HDR layer, no issues.

Always check out rtings.com for their monitor ratings, they do the most thorough tests of all:

https://www.rtings.com/monitor and https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/oled

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

Are you using native Wine Wayland for HDR? I'd been using Gamescope but I've been having some issues with it recently.

domi ,

Most of the time, yes. I try first with Wine's wayland driver and if that doesn't work I switch to gamescope.

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

How do you run games using Wine Wayland? I tried using the registry edit with Proton-TKG as well as system wine but I haven't gotten it working yet.

domi ,
  • Make sure you have the Vulkan layers installed: https://github.com/Zamundaaa/VK_hdr_layer
  • Download the latest Proton-TKG (Wine master) from ProtonUp-QT
  • Start the game you want to launch with it at least once
  • Search for it with protontricks and take note of the APPID: protontricks -s NAME
  • Set the registry entry: protontricks -c 'wine reg.exe add HKCU\\Software\\Wine\\Drivers /v Graphics /d x11,wayland' APPID
  • Set the launch arguments in Steam to: ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 DXVK_HDR=1 DISPLAY= %command%
  • Switch the Proton version to the Proton-TKG you just downloaded
  • Enable HDR in KDE settings and launch the game

Some games crash on start, anti-cheat does not work and some games don't look right. So make sure to check that everything looks good once you're ingame.

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thanks! I managed to get it working in some games and it seems to output HDR. Sadly it doesn't seem to support fractional scaling (at least with two monitors), and since I use 175% scale that messes it up. Gamescope seems to work pretty well though, both for HDR and for fractional scaling.

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

I have a Mini-LED HDR monitor (Acer XV275K P3) and it looks great. It gets super bright with black blacks. I didn't want to risk burn-in, it covers the full 1000 nits that most HDR content expects, and it was only $550 which was quite a steal. There's occasionally a little blooming in dark scenes in movies, but in games it never gets that dark and there's mostly very bright things instead.

I have HDR working on Plasma 6 with an AMD gpu on NixOS, although recently Gamescope/Steam has been a bit bugged. MPV still plays movies perfectly though. I even set up inverse tone mapping so SDR videos get converted into HDR, which looks a bit better than normal SDR imo.

BertramDitore ,
@BertramDitore@lemmy.world avatar

Woah I’ve never heard of inverse tone mapping. I always assumed HDR metadata was burned into the file, didn’t realize it could be “faked.” Fascinating. What settings do you use if you don’t mind me asking?

Klaymore , (edited )
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

My current MPV config is here (in the NixOS syntax but it should be understandable). The profile is what applies the SDR->HDR effect, only if the video is in SDR.

I have target-peak set to 550 nits which seems okay, but I have control + scroll wheel bound to turn it up and down. If you go to 200 or below it seems to disable the effect, which is good for 2D animated content. I also generally turn the saturation up to like 15 or 30 or something since it can look washed out. Gamma looks best at 0 generally, but in dark scenes to combat blooming I might turn it up to like 5 or 10. I haven't messed too much with the tone mapping curve but I'm using what the documentation says is recommended so it seems good.

BertramDitore ,
@BertramDitore@lemmy.world avatar

Very cool! Thanks for sharing, I’m definitely going to play around with this.

Shawdow194 ,
@Shawdow194@kbin.social avatar

LG OLED TV I use for gaming (65G2)

I will never go back to LCD haha. It's a much better picture

I wouldnt worry about burn in with modern day 'pixel shift' technology and the panels are much better about not burning in than they used to be

BertramDitore , (edited )
@BertramDitore@lemmy.world avatar

This may be controversial, and may also be totally wrong (I’m no display expert), but I have a 55” Hisense U8K QLED and am still legitimately shocked at how black the blacks are. I can’t even tell if the screen is on or off if it’s just showing my black background. No light bleed or blooming, and inky rich blacks with incredibly smooth gradients. This screen convinced me that I’ll never need to shell out for an OLED.

Edit: in case you’re curious, I use it as the third screen in my PC setup, running at 144hz. It’s also my first experience with high refresh rates, and it has been a joy. Oh and the nits on this thing are something else. Ever been blinded by a sunrise in 4K HDR? It’s awesome.

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

I have the Alienware OLED monitor as my primary.

Great for games, kinda meh for browser and movies.

Also use a vertical IPS monitor for browser windows.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

Thanks for sharing, is there anything in particular that makes it a "meh" experience?

deegeese ,
@deegeese@sopuli.xyz avatar

Ultrawide aspect ratio, glossy screen, OLED brightness variation, mediocre resolution for the size.

For non-game content, a regular 32” 16:9 4k IPS would be better and cheaper.

deranger ,

Insane “meh” for movies IMO.

Perfect black is the best thing for movies, especially dark ones. Of all the content I’d want to see on OLED, movies are near the top. No way I’d massively downgrade to an IPS LCD for movies.

LG B6 w/ over 12k hours on it, probably 6k hours of just movies. Completely spoiled me, I can’t switch back.

BallShapedMan ,
@BallShapedMan@lemmy.world avatar

I just swapped out my ~5 year old LG C9 for a new LG C3 due to a slight amount of burn in. It was in the center of the screen and while nobody else could see it I could.

It's also our main TV.

For gaming it's amazing, incredibly low latency and the pixel smudging from poor pixel response rate is gone, so it's more like a CRT in that respect.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

Thanks for sharing 🌻

cybervseas ,

I can't comment on Linux, but other than poor support for HDR I don't see what would be different on Linux at this point.

  • Samsung Odyssey G8 OLED. 34" ultra wide
  • Monitor
  • Yes, this monitor plus my living room TV plus VR headset. Things were unreliable and buggy until I sent it into Samsung for repair and it works well now. The software on the monitor (lol) is silly though. Don't use it, don't agree to their EULA.

My issue with Samsung is they required me to ship the monitor to them for repair instead of sending someone to my home. It's thin ultra wide and curved and I was scared it would get damaged in shipping. They would have done it in home for a TV, but refused to do the same for this very large monitor 😓

Even SDR games look great on it. Deep dark blacks, rich colors, and incredible pixel response times make games more enjoyable for me. And for 21:9 ratio movies and tv shows omg.

Sunny OP ,
@Sunny@slrpnk.net avatar

Thanks for sharing your experiences! I have really poor experiences with Samsung and hope to steer away from their products in the future.

foiledAgain ,

Lg oled. Looks amazing. Will never go back to normal lcd. BUT some games will result in but in. Eg vampire survivors has left a perm red affected burn-in from its health bar placement in the middle of the screen. So be wary.

newthrowaway20 ,

I have been using my LG OLED TV as my gaming monitor as well for about 2 years now. Haven't had any issues with burn in on mine. I run the pixel refresh utility once every few months, and typically don't play a game for more than a 3~4 hour stretch of time, so I think I get enough screen variety that it hasn't been an issue.

If you haven't run the Pixel refresher tool, try giving that a go for a few hours and see if it helps with your burn in. It could just be 'stuck' and not actually burnt.

As far as the LG, I mainly picked it for the VRR and 4k120 HDR support. Games look great, and It's also my main TV for movies, which also look great.

Noodle07 ,

I have a steam deck, screen is sick 👌

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