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Are high refresh rate monitors a real advantage or just marketing?

There are many out there that have been advocating the benefits of high refresh rate, low latency gaming monitors for years now, and faster 144Hz displays are basically standard for FPS eSports pros – but we’ve often wondered how much benefit they offer the everyday gamer. Finally we have more than marketing spiels and bandwagon testimonials on how speedy screens actually improve gaming performance for everyone. While the research does come from Nvidia itself (which has a pretty obvious vested interest in promoting gaming GPUs and high-refresh screen technology), there’s also perhaps no company with as much access to relevant data and there are some third party tech reviewers that have shown similar results.

Basically, Nvidia used data from an earlier study it did in March 2019 on how its GPUs affected kill-to-death (KD) ratios to show that higher screen refresh rates also significantly increase a players kill-to-death ratio. Nvidia plotted this data on a graph to show you have a 37% better kill-to-death ratio with a 100Hz monitor than a regular 60Hz screen, a 59% better KD ratio with a 120Hz display, a 78% better ratio at 140Hz and more than a 90% improvement for anything over 180fps. That’s a pretty compelling reason to upgrade your gaming rig with a faster display.

These numbers seem massive, which is perhaps why Nvidia has provided a number of reasons for the strong correlation between higher latency and better kill to death ratios. Nvidia’s blog post claims that faster refresh rates create notably smoother animations, which are easier for your eyes to track. Then the higher refresh rate reduces the size and effect of ghosting or partial object rendering which can lag behind moving objects and be distracting. Faster monitors will also have less pronounced screen tearing effects since there is less time between frames and therefore less of an opportunity to miss-align different frames. The last point that Nvidia stresses is that faster screens have a lower latency which means you will actually see players earlier if they emerge from behind objects on-screen. All of these features provide distinct advantages to gamers in competitive FPS titles and show how faster screens can have a significant impact on your performance.

The Linus Tech Tips Youtube channel ran a much smaller, but more detailed study on the effects of faster screen refresh rates on response time and shot accuracy in CS: GO back in June of 2019. This test found that response time was reduced by more than just the 12ms difference in latency between a 60Hz and a 240Hz displays, something that they suggested could be due to smoother visuals allowing for faster tracking and shorter response times. The study also showed that the shots taken on higher framerate settings were significantly more accurate and closer to the target on the whole than shots fired on 60Hz settings.

So there you have it, if you want to be twice as good at first person shooters, all you have to do is fork out for a much faster monitor.

“Nvidia has provided a number of reasons for the strong correlation between higher latency and better kill-to-death ratios. ”