I played around with and without tracefree, and tried the ELMB settings. It looks horrendous either way since my issue not just ghosting, but black smearing as well. I was completely oblivious to the fact that VA panels are notorious for this, my fault for not doing my due diligence when buying new monitors :/

I've been looking and it seems like the Acer Nitro appears to have low input lag and seems to be a good option. I was also looking at the BenQ monitors but they are out of stock mostly everywhere, which isn't super helpful.

As I mentioned above I used to have a VG248QE (TN panel) and it was fantastic. It had no noticeable input lag and I never had any problems with it but after reading around on forums recently it seems like the consensus is that it has terrible color and picture quality. I am just not up to speed on decent 144Hz 1080P monitors these days, and I don't want to get a 4K one since I feel like that would really knock my FPS down.

Ah okay thank you so much, I was not aware that this is a common artifact on VA panels. I'll definitely look for another TN panel.

I just bought and have been using an ASUS VG24VQE monitor and have been getting horrendous ghosting effects. The "TraceFree" (asus's overdrive function) doesn't do much to reduce this, even when maxed out.

I consistently am running at over 300 fps, and have had no problems with ghosting on older ASUS 144hz monitors (such as the VG248QE) so this problem is quite irritating.

I'm guessing there are currently no solutions other than finding a new monitor. Do you have any recommendations for 144Hz 1080P 24" monitors that don't have awful ghosting?

note: I have a Nvidia 1660Ti GPU

100% what Tino said. Find a psychologist, social worker, or counselor to talk to. They can definitely give you some strategies to get out of the kind of rut you're stuck in right now. Stay safe.

Are you playing on wifi by any chance?

My online classes aren't great because most of my courses were lab courses :/ I feel bad for the folks who are graduating this semester and don't get to have a real graduation ceremony.

Are you positive it is an FPS drop or is it potentially network stuttering?

yeah its really too bad. When they were still making those I thought about getting one. I ended up getting a refurbishged Garmin fenix 3 on amazon and it was fantastic.

Now I don't use a smart watch at all. I always felt like they were too delicate. I got a luminox 4220 which has been amazing, and incredibly durable.

Yeah, it's bizarre. I reinstalled my OS and everything seems to be working... Although it selects the speakers as the digital out, and the "Realtek Digital Output" does not appear to be in use.

Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciated it!

Just uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers (from Asus's website for my motherboard) and disabled the audio on my monitor. Still not working. Here's a screenshot of my device manager: https://ibb.co/Lr5spW4

I built a PC with an ASUS Z390-I gaming motherboard that uses the RealTek audio drivers, and I can only get sound using the audio jack located on my VG248QE monitor. I've reinstalled the Realtek drivers, but I still cannot get sound output from my motherboard itself. Additionally, my microphone is not even detected.

The monitor is connected via Displayport.

I don't understand how she hasn't been prosecuted by the legal system at this point. With so much public knowledge of the disgusting shit she has done, it seems like it would be good info to hand over to the authorities.

Fuck pedophiles. My childhood dentist got arrested for possession of child porn, while he was running a pediatric dental facility that conducted a ton of operations under laughing gas and general anesthesia. I shudder to think what might have gone on.

Do you have any firewalls or antivirus software that could potentially be interfering with vac?

I'd also open up a steam support ticket if you haven't already.

Thank you so much!

After installing m0reHUD yesterday, the steam cursor pictured in this screenshot https://ibb.co/2c0LBd8 appeared. I do not want to use it, and it still persists even after I removed m0rehud.

I also do not have the steam overlay, or big picture mode enabled. Does anyone know what might have toggled this on? I cannot find anything in the steam settings related to it.

Thanks!