AW2725DF, VRR flicker unacceptable

I upgraded from a 27" 1440p 165 Hz ASUS PG279Q G-SYNC IPS monitor to the Alienware AW2725DF as soon I could buy one here in the UK and have been using mine daily since I received it on 8th February 2024. This is easily the best monitor I have ever owned for image quality, and even betters my 2019 LG B9 OLED TV for HDR and colours.

However, the longer I use it the more issues I am coming across but worse is the VRR flickering when G-SYNC is enabled which varies from game to game, sometimes it is noticeable only on dark grey loading screens, other times it is visible in the game if it has a variable framerate and has a dark setting. I have even seen this VRR flickering on my desktop wallpaper backgrounds where it gets worse as soon as the auto-hidden taskbar pops up or I open a window on the desktop.

I know this is not certified by NVIDIA as G-SYNC compatible but the 32" 4K AW3225QF is so I was expecting this to just work out of the box as both use the same QD-OLED panels albeit with differing refresh rates. This is so disappointing, especially coming from the ASUS monitor which had native G-SYNC support and flawless VRR performance for the 7 years I owned it.

I realise that OLEDs are more prone to this issue than other display types as I have also seen VRR flickering on my LG B9 TV when using my PS5 in some 120 Hz games though it is very, very minor overall and not annoying. The issue is far more problematic on this monitor though because I am sat much closer to the screen so the issue is kind of hard to ignore.

I really hope that Dell can address this in a firmware update. However, I am curious as to how well VRR and G-SYNC work on the certified AW3225QF because it seems a lot of professional reviews neglect to mention VRR in their testing, which is surprising considering these are both gaming monitors.

Does the AW3225QF have VRR flickering too but it just isn't mentioned by reviewers or have Dell and NVIDIA done something different for that monitor that isn't implemented on the smaller AW2725DF? I mean if NVIDIA have certified the 4K monitor then one would think that it would not have any flickering with G-SYNC at all, right?

I also have the same pronounced issues with flickering on this aw2725df. I must say I am aware of the vrr flickering issues for a very long time and there are certain scenarios that flicker on a large number of monitors (like certain menus) and that specific issue I don't really find bothersome. I also had both the aw3423dw and dwf and while they both had flickering in menus I wasn't bothered/didn't observe any in the actual gameplay. Now the 2725df I must say reminds me of some of the earlier gsync/freesync VAs that I've had and who presented horrendeous flicker. I am not sure if the 360hz are making the issue even more obvious but I am surprised. The dwf also isn't gsync compatible certified but didn't have the flickering issues to this extent. For now I needed to disable gsync to eliminate this issue as I'm not keen on trying alternatives (like using CRU tool and blah blah) for something that should work significantly better.

Always list the video card, and type of connection used with displays. Those are 2 important factors.