• Sony Bravia Sync Compatible Devices

Hello everyone,

Available “BRAVIA” Sync Operations BD/DVD player. Automatically turns the “BRAVIA” Sync-compatible device on and switches the input to that device when you select it from the Home Menu or Sync Menu. Automatically turns the TV on and switches the input to the connected device when the device starts to play.

I'm a PC enthusiastic and I have been using a 49' Sony Bravia XF90 television as my PC monitor for about 9 months now.

I have already made two posts about this TV, and to my surprise, I noticed that a lot of people are actually using their X900F/XF90 as PC monitor.

So I have decided to make a guide about setting up the TV for PC gaming.

Contents:

- Requirements

- Preparations

- Quick setup

- TV settings

- GPU driver settings and HDR

- Recommendations and performance optimizations for games and genres

Requirements:

- HDMI 2.0 Cable:

You need a good quality cable which is capable of a 14.40Gbps transfer speed. It doesn't have to be expensive, you can get a decent quality cable for 15$/m or maybe even less. I use this one: Delock HDMI 2.0 2m

The maximum recommended cable length is 5m, if you want to use a longer cable, then you should purchase an HDMI repeater to avoid blackouts/screen artifacts.
Something like this should do the job: Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDMI 2.0 Repeater

- Videocard with HDMI 2.0 support:

Nvidia: GTX 9xx, GTX 10xx, GTX 16xx or RTX 20xx

AMD: Radeon RX 4xx, Radeon RX 5xx, Radeon RX Vega xx

(This guide covers Nvidia videocards only!)

- Operation system:

Windows 10 Home or Pro version 1803+
Recommended versions: 1809, 1903

Preparations:

First things first, if you want to play games with a mouse and keyboard, then you need space.

For example: If your TV is 49' in size using the native 4k resolution, then for the optimal experience you should sit about ~100cm away from the screen.

Optimal TV size to resolution:distance table:

49' - 4k:100cm, 1440p:150cm, 1080p:200cm

55' - 4k:110cm, 1440p:165cm, 1080p:220cm

65' - 4k:130cm, 1440p:195cm, 1080p:260cm

75' - 4k:150cm, 1440p:225cm, 1080p:300cm

To achive the optimal distance, you should either wall mount your tv or use a portable/small desk with wireless mouse+keyboard (I recomend logitech gaming products for superb wireless performance.), except if you have a very big desk. Mine is 200x300cm which is big enough to support the 49' TV at 4k and 1440p resolutions.

If wall mounting is not an option and you have no space for a portable/small desk either, then you can still use a lapboard which was designed for couch and armchair usage.

Quick setup:

After the preparations you still have to connect your TV to your PC using a HDMI 2.0 cable, but first you have to enable the enhanced HDMI signal format in the TV settings:

• Press the HOME button on the remote control

• Select Settings

• Select External inputs in the TV category

• Select HDMI signal format and set to Enhanced format

The X900F/XF90 has 4 HDMI inputs, but only HDMI 2 and HDMI 3 support the 14.40Gbps transfer speed, make sure to use one of those.

If you want to use an ARC capable receiver or soundbar you can connect those to HDMI 3 which supports ARC too, but I don't recommend it. When using the HDMI 3 port to connect an ARC device and the HDMI 2 port to connect the PC to your TV then there is going to be a ~0,3 second audio delay, it might not be a big deal, but still noticable.

I recommend to use a HDMI 2.0 capable receiver, which has HDMI inputs, so you can connect both the TV and the PC to it.

TV settings:

It is recommended to change these settings to lower the input-lag of the TV:

(The TV has multiple picture profiles for every input! Either HDMI 2 or HDMI 3 has to be active when changing these settings, if your PC is turned off, you can still make any of the inputs active by selecting it with the input switcher button(top left, next to the microphone button) of the remote control.)

- Picture mode:

• Press the ACTION MENU button on the remote control

• Select Picture

• Select Picture mode and set to Game

- Motinflow, you have two options here:

• Press the ACTION MENU button on the remote control

• Select Picture

• Select Advanced settings

• Select Motion

• Select Motionflow and set to Off

or

• Press the ACTION MENU button on the remote control

• Select Picture

• Select Advanced settings

• Select Motion

• Select Motionflow and set to Custom and Clearness to 1

The second option turns on the 'X-Motion Clarity' feature, which reduces motion blur, but it lowers the maximum brightness of the TV.

Use the RTINGS calibration guide for a mostly color correct image:https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900f/settings

GPU driver settings and HDR:

Always use the latest Nvidia Drivers, and Windows 10 should be up to date too.

Lets have a look at the supported and tested resolutions:

Sony Bravia X900F/XF90:

resolution@refresh rate(color settings):

- 3840x2160@60(10-12bit, YCbCr 4:2:2 Limited)(8bit, RGB, Full)

- 2560x1440@60(10-12bit, YCbCr 4:2:2 Limited)(8bit, RGB, Full)

- 2560x1440@120(8bit, RGB, Full) CUSTOM

- 1920x1080@60(12bit, YCbCr 4:4:4 Limited)(12bit, RGB, Full)

- 1920x1080@120(8bit, RGB, Full) CUSTOM

As you can see, the TV supports a good amount of display modes, I have not listed all of them, just the most popular ones.

- When to use which:

To change any of the display setting open the 'Nvidia Control Panel' and navigate to Display/Change resolution (Picture):

First of all select 'use NVIDIA color settings' so we can manually adjust them.

For basic everyday usage, interent browsing, etc, always use:

- Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (native)

- Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

- Output color depth: 8 bpc

- Output color format: RGB

- Output dynamic range: Full

Reason: The Windows desktop uses RGB color format and Full dynamic range, we can only select 8 bpc output color depth because at 4K resolution we run into the HDMI 2.0 bandwidth limitation.

RGB means that the colors are not compressed.

Full dynamic range means that it uses the full RGB range from 0 to 255 aka all 0 is black all 255 is white.

For gaming, there are mostly two scenarios:

SDR Gaming settings:

- Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (native)

- Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

- Output color depth: 8 bpc

- Output color format: RGB

- Output dynamic range: Full

Reason: 99% of the SDR games are developed in RGB color space.

HDR gaming:

Okay so, HDR is more complicated.

There are two type of HDR implementations in games:

- The rare breed, which sends the HDR signal directly to the TV and it works perfectly every time, example: Hellblade Senua's sacrifice.

- And the other way is to use the Windows api to send to HDR signal to the TV, it used to cause problems, but was fixed in the 1809 version of Windows 10, so no worries.

If a game uses the Windows api to send the HDR signal then you have to turn HDR on under the Windows 10 Display settings, and then off when you are done playing.

HDR Gaming settings:

- Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (native)

- Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

- Output color depth: 10 bpc

- Output color format: YCbCr 4:2:2

- Output dynamic range: Limited

Reason: For HDR10 you want to use 10bit output color depth, but due to HDMI 2.0 bandwith limitation, at 4K@60hz resolution you have to compress the colors to be able to fit into the 14.40gbps bandwith. So you have to choose YCbCr 4:2:2 for color format and Limited for dynamic range. (YCbCr needs the limited 16-235 dynamic range to work.)

- 120hz display mode:

The X900F/XF90 supports true 120hz refresh rate without frame skipping, but it is not supported out of the box.

You have to create a custom resolution to make it work.

Custom resolutions:

Before attempting to test any custom resolution, make sure to set the color settings to the following to avoid TV restarts and driver crashes:

- Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

- Output color depth: 8 bpc

- Output color format: RGB

- Output dynamic range: Full

Reason: Due to driver limitations custom resolutions work only in this mode.

In the 'Nvidia Control Panel' under Display/Change resolution there is a 'Customize...' button under the selectable resolutions. After pressing it, a window will pop up where you have to press the 'Create Custom Resolution...' button to open another window where you can manualy adjust the resolution settings:

Settings for custom resolutions:

1080p@120hz:

Display mode:

- Horizontal pixels: 1920

- Vertical lines: 1080

- Refresh rate (Hz): 120

- Color depth (bpp): 32

- Scan type: Progressive

Timing:

- Standard: Automatic

This should work even in desktop mode outside of games.

1440@120hz:

Display mode:

- Horizontal pixels: 2560

- Vertical lines: 1440

- Refresh rate (Hz): 120

- Color depth (bpp): 32

- Scan type: Progressive

Timing:

- Standard: CVT reduced blank

The scaling is broken outside of fullscreen applications like games.
Always use exclusive fullscreen mode, if available, at this resolution!

After adjusting these settings press 'Test'. If the test was succesful then the custom resolution is going to appear at the top of the selectable resolutions under 'Custom'.

Other recomended setting:

- Open the 'Nvidia Control Panel' and navigate to 'Display/Adjust desktop size and position'

- Under 'Perform scaling on:' there is a drop down menu, select Display to further reduce the inpu-lag.

Recommendations and performance optimizations for games and genres:

The goal is to run all games on the TV's native resolution with the highest possible refresh rate while keeping the performance at an acceptable level.

With the X900F/XF90 the goal is 3840x2160@60hz, 60FPS or 2560x1440@120hz,120FPS.

4k@60fps and 1440p@120fps are demanding and hard to reach targets.

If money is no problem, then you can buy an RTX 2080 Ti or two and an Intel core i7 8700K/9900K + 16GB DDR4 ram to reach those Resolution@FPS targets most of the time, but not many people can afford a PC like that.

So what can we do?

The TV has no g-sync or freesync support, it means that for a smooth experience your PC has to maintain the target FPS 99% of the time. Most of the gamers agree that the sweet spot in gaming is 60FPS, but is it? Every genre/type of games has performance tiers, tier one is the best experience and tier x is the 'worst', but still perfectly smooth and playable. These tiers change and depend on the game type/genre. If your PC can't reach tier one then aim to reach tier two of you can't reach tier two then aim to reach tier three...

- These are my recommendations for each game type/genre, considering the capabilities of this TV:

The last tier is perfectly acceptable picture quality and performance wise, but I personaly would never go below this target. For competitive gaming there are only first and second tiers.

First Person games:

Recommended control method: keyboard+mouse

- First Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- First Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- Second Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Third Tier

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

Reason: First person games are best played with a mouse and keyboard, the extra precision of the mouse is the reason to use a PC instead of a console, below 60 FPS is not ideal.

Third Person games:

Recommended control method: controller->keyboard+mouse

- First Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- First Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- Second Tierf singleplayer 1:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierif singleplayer 2:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 30fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer 1:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer 2:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 30fps

Reason: Third person games are better to play with a controller except if you are playing competitive games where aim is very important. 30fps is perfectly fine but you have to use a controller to make it feel responsive.

Real Time Strategy:

Recommended control method: keyboard+mouse

- First Tierboth:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierboth:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

Reason: Real time strategy games are usually not that demanding, and the 60 fps target is easy to reach, 30 fps is fine too but only for 2D games.

Fighting Games:

Recommended control method: controller

- First Tierboth:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Sony Bravia Sync Compatible Devices

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierboth:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

Reason: Fighting games are usually locked to 60fps, and for the combo timings and net code it requires 60fps to work.

Racing:

Recommended control method: wheel->controller

- First Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- First Tierif singleplayer:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierif online competitve:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 120hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 120fps

- Second Tierf singleplayer 1:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Second Tierif singleplayer 2:

Target Resolution: 3840x2160

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 30fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer 1:

Target Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 60fps

- Third Tierif singleplayer 2:

Target Resolution: 2560x1440

Refresh rate: 60hz

Minimum target frame rate (1% low): 30fps

Reason: If you have steady FPS in racing games then you are usually fine, you need a constant fps to controll the car.

After you have selected the tier you want to reach, you want to maintain that target minimum fps 99% of the time, this is where performance optimizations come in:

First you have to reduce the input-lag to the minimum, if you followed the guide from the beginning, then it should be quite low already, but there are still a few ways to reduce it:

Open the 'Nvidia Control Panel' and navigate to 3D Settings/Manage 3D Settings and on the 'Global Settings' tab, change the 'Maximum pre-rendered frames' to 1.

This can cause stutter on PCs with weak GPU, but if you chose the correct tier, then it should be no problem.

The other way to reduce input-lag is to disable V-Sync in games, but then you are going to experince screen tearing, which can be quite distracting. I recommend turning it on, except if you have a fast GPU, then you can use RVSS's 'Scanline sync' function, more about that at the end of the guide.

And now the last part:

Butter smooth 120 or 60fps and console like 30:

Input-lag should be quite low for a TV now, so all that's left is to 'limit' your PC to the selected tier.

Normaly you would have to check the true refresh rate of your monitor/TV, but I already know that the X900F/XF90 uses a 60.000hz panel.

You need two programs to 'limit' your PC, remember you want to maintain the target minimum FPS at all time.

- First: You need MSI Afterburner+RivaTuner Statistics Server.

Download the latest stable release from here:

- Second: You need Nvidia Profile Inspector DmW.

Download the latest stable release from here:

Install MSI Afterburner+RivaTuner Statistics Server. After it's done, a blue monitor icon with purple numbers should appear on your taskbar, double click on it. A very simple looking window should pop up, the interesting options are 'Framerate limit' and the 'Scanline sync'.

Framerate limit: One of the best if not the best 5 digit frame limiter.

Scanline sync: A really smart way to fix screen tearing without using V-Sync, you need GPU performance headroom (under 75% GPU usage for DX11 and 45% for DX9/DX12/Vulkan) to make it work.

Now all you have to do is to limit your framerate in RivaTuner Statistics Server to your chosen tier.

To do that, first press the 'Add' button and browse the game executable, then set the 'Framerate limit' to:

- If 60fps then True Refresh-rate - 0.010 = 59.990

- If 120fps then True Refresh-rate - 0.010 = 119.99

- If 30fps then (True Refresh-rate 2) - 0.010 = 29.990

Almost done, but if you plan to play on 30fps and you want a console-like experience then you still have one thing to do:

- Unzip and start 'Nvidia Profile Inspector DmW'.

- From the 'Profiles' drop-down menu select the game you want to run at 30fps.

- Under 'Sync and Refresh' set 'Vertical Sync' to '12 Refresh rate' and 'Vertical Sync Tear Control' to 'Standard'

- Press 'Apply changes' and you are done.

The importance of refresh-rate in framerate limiting:

In an ideal world you would limit the framerate to 60.000, but in the real life it's not that simple.

All LCD panels are different, and none of them is perfect.

True refresh rate means that the panel runs at 60.000hz avarge. Sometimes i'ts 59.995 sometimes 59.999, or 60.001 etc. to prevent frame repeat, the framerate should match the refresh rate without exceeding it.

It is impossible to dynamically adjust the framerate and refreshrate without freesync or g-sync, so we have to use the next best thing, scanline sync, and if that's not available, then we have to limit the framerate as close to the minimum refresh rate as possible.

The sweet spot for true 60.000hz is usually between 59.990 and 59.995, so you have to subtract 0.010 - 0.005 from the target framerate. 0.010 is always a safe bet.

Extra:

- For the best performance and correct scaling, you should always use exclusive fullscreen mode if available, especially when using custom resolutions! Borderless fullscreen can be useful, but only use it when you really have to.

- If you have to lower the resolution to reach the target FPS/tier, then always do it in the game options. You should leave the resolution setting in the Nvidia Control Panel on 3840x2160 (native). The only time when you have to change it is when you want to use the custom 120hz resolutions.

- Games nowadays include the option to change the render resolution aka 'resolution scaling %'. It is useful to keep the UI on the native resolution, but if the game uses TAA or something similar to reduce aliasing, then don't go below 80% to prevent bluring the image. The TV's video scaler does a better job at keeping the image sharp. It is recommended to lower the overall resolution to a lower tier like 2560x1440 instead of lowering the resolution scaling further.

Scanline sync:

Using 'V-sync' means more input lag and we don't like that, especially the '12 Refresh rate' option, to combat this AlexUnwinder added the 'Scanline sync' option to his RivaTuner Software, which is amazing to be honest. It makes the tear line appear in a fixed invisible position.

If you want to use this feature then first you have to force disable V-sync:

- Start 'Nvidia Profile Inspector DmW'.

- From the 'Profiles' drop-down menu select the game where you want to use Scanline sync.

- Under 'Sync and Refresh' set 'Vertical Sync' to 'Force off'

- Press 'Apply changes'.

In RivaTuner Statistics Server:

- Set 'Framerate limit' to 0

- If 60fps then set 'Scanline sync' to -30

- If 30fps then then click 2x on 'Scanline sync' to change it to 'Scanline sync x/2' and set it to -30

(-30 should work with this TV, but if you can still see the tear line then lower it by -10 each time until it dissapears. On 120hz there are two tear lines and you can only hide one of them)

If your GPU stays under 75% usage (or 45% DX9/DX12/Vulkan), then the tear lines should appear in a fixed invisible position, this means that you are having a perfect g-sync like experience without the extra input-lag from V-Sync.

I hope that this guide was helpful to anyone who wanted to bring out the maximum of this nice mid range TV.

M.Paul

(Edit: Added 'Extra' and 'The importance of refresh-rate in framerate limiting' under 'Recommendations and performance optimizations for games and genres', fixing typos)