Overdrive is a function on gaming monitors that helps prevent ghosting or motion blur in fast-moving images. It allows you to push the monitors response time speed in order to decrease the trailing/ghosting artifacts behind fast-moving objects. Overdrive settings can be found in a monitors OSD (On-Screen Display) menu, usually under one of the following names: Overdrive, OD, Response Time, TraceFree, or something similar.

Overdrive has both advantages and disadvantages. While it can help sharpen things when they are in motion, leading to a clearer picture when moving things around, increasing the overdrive settings too much can result in inverse ghosting or trailing effects, where the images appear on the screen too soon. Therefore, it is important to find the right balance between the overdrive setting and the display settings on your monitor to find the best settings for your game.

To test what the best overdrive setting for your monitors refresh rate is, you can use BlurBusters UFO ghosting test. It is also important to note that some monitors have poorly optimized overdrive, which can result in prominent overshoot. In general, a good overdrive implementation is vital for a gaming monitor.