Setup and Calibration Of The Overlord Tempest X270OC
The Tempest has no OSD, so the only way to calibrate it is with LUT-generating software like CalMAN. We did this for the purposes of our tests, and we’ll explain how it affects the results as we go. If you don’t have the necessary gear, Overlord at least offers color profiles to download.
Of course, the real reason you'd make the X270OC a centerpiece of your gaming PC is its overclocking ability. Natively, we're dealing with a 60 Hz IPS panel. But thanks to Overlord’s custom PCB, it can run at up to 120 Hz reliably. Why do we say “up to”? According to Overlord, not every example will be stable at 120 Hz. It is possible that you’ll see artifacts like dropped frames, or you might even hear coil whine from the timing controller choke.
You won’t simply be able to plug in the X270OC and choose 120 Hz from your Windows Control Panel, either. There are a couple of steps you need to take first.
Setting The Refresh Rate
To begin, download the Pixel Clock Patch utility here for Nvidia or for AMD/ATI. All that this app does is removes the pixel clock limiter built into your video driver. It’s a quick operation, which can be easily undone since a backup of your un-patched driver is automatically created.
Next, you need the Custom Resolution Utility. This is where you create custom refresh rates.
The first screen manages your custom configurations. To create a new one, click Add under Detailed resolutions. Then, you're taken to the manual setup window.
As you can see, there are quite a few parameters to address when overclocking a monitor. The screenshot above represents our particular X270OC. These settings may not work for everyone. But they'll suffice as a starting point. Additionally, there are plenty of online resources available to help you create custom resolutions and achieve a stable overclock.
Calibration
The only image control available is brightness, which moves in fairly coarse steps of about 8 cd/m2 per click. To complete our benchmarks, we used CalPC to generate a software look-up table after measuring the X270OC’s default state. For more information on the CalPC process, please refer to Do It Like Tom's: Calibrating Your Monitor With CalMAN RGB,where you’ll find a step-by-step guide.
