Ultra high image refresh – do you need it? –

The image refresh rate of monitors varies widely: in addition to the basic 60 Hz, 120-180 Hz displays are becoming more common, and the record, with 540 Hz, is currently held by ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP holds At the same time, the difference in the price of the displays is very large in terms of refresh rate – also staying with ASUS, a 27-inch ROG monitor with 180 Hz refresh rate can be bought for as little as HUF 85,000, while the 360 ​​Hz version costs 300-350 thousand, the And for the 540 Hz version, you have to fork out around HUF 420,000.

The question arises as to how the use and user experience (especially the gaming experience) is affected by the refresh rate of the monitors. The short answer is that a higher refresh rate results in better motion rendering and lower input lag, but the exhaustive answer is much more nuanced than that. We show you the details.

What is refresh rate?

This data indicates how many times the monitor content is updated in a single second: sixty times for a 60 Hz monitor, five hundred and forty times for a 540 Hz monitor. (Let’s add that this is the maximum value, as you can also set a lower refresh rate if you want.) The refresh rate is important for displaying motion; since the monitor itself can only display still images, but if it does them quickly enough one after the other, then our brain no longer interprets it as a series of images, but as a “movie”. Taking this one step further, the faster the rate of image change, the “smoother” the movement seems. By the way, at 15-17 Hz, our brain already sees the movement as continuous, but the less time that passes between image changes, the more beautiful and graceful the movement of objects is.

More is better. Or not

From the above, it seems completely logical to conclude that a higher image refresh necessarily means better performance and image quality, but this is not necessarily true. There is clearly a difference between refresh rates of 60, 75 and 100 Hz, which can be felt even when moving windows or scrolling web pages in Windows, but whether a value higher than this has any practical use depends primarily on what you use the monitor for. After examining the possible areas of use, he admits that one of the areas where this can have a right to exist is the world of games – because here it matters how responsive the display is. If the stars line up just right, you can gain a measurable advantage in ten milliseconds over fellow players who use slow monitors. And this can easily tip the scales in your favor during life-and-death battles.

The gaming experience is partly determined by the continuity of movements and partly by how responsive the monitor is. Let’s examine these two factors separately!

Continuity of movement

We have already talked about the continuity of movements, but you should also know that refresh rate and fps are two different things – the former indicates how quickly the monitor can update its content, and the latter indicates how often it is done in the game another frame. Obviously, it is optimal if the two values ​​are exactly the same; With a 60 Hz monitor, the performance of a GPU that can calculate up to 200 frames per second cannot be used, but the same is true the other way around. That means a 240 Hz monitor is unnecessary if the GPU is only capable of 50-60 fps. However, there is something else here: the vertical tearing effect, which occurs when the content changes during the image update process. In such cases, the upper and lower parts of the image contain different frames, and the horizontal boundary line is clearly visible: hence the name, since tearing means tearing!

The refresh rate and fps can be synchronized by turning on V-Sync or by activating some VRR solution. In the former case, the GPU adjusts its performance to the static refresh rate of the monitor; staying with the above example, it could calculate 120 frames in vain, but only calculates 60. Unfortunately, this results in higher input lag (see below). In the case of VRR, the situation is reversed, the monitor adjusts its image refresh rate to the constantly changing fps. This also increases the amount of input lag, but only to a lesser extent.

Responsiveness

This characteristic is influenced by three factors: response time, input lag and lag. The response time shows how long the monitor can update the image; i.e. how long it takes to “redraw” all the pixels.

Input lag is delay time in Hungarian. The monitor redraws the pixels based on the incoming signal, but signal processing also requires some time. The input lag therefore specifies how much time elapses between the arrival of the frame and its actual display. The theoretical minimum of input lag is determined by the frame refresh rate (1000 / frame refresh rate) – at the same time, a high frame refresh rate is not a guarantee of low input lag.

Many people call tracking blur, but in fact the image is not blurred, it is only perceived by our brain as our eyes follow (predictably) moving objects. Namely, because our eyes move further when the monitor “holds” the image until the next image update. As a result, the amount of retraction is lower in the case of a higher refresh rate.

Made for play

Summarizing the above, a high refresh rate can be beneficial for games, provided that it is an action game, and of course the condition is that the GPU can keep up with the display. In the case of strategy games or simulators, however, the difference is negligible or even imperceptible.

Movies

Another area where a refresh rate higher than 60Hz can be beneficial is in the world of movies. Here, however, only one specific higher value provides a better experience. In the case of films, the problem can be caused by the fact that the majority of cinemas that can be played on the machine have a frame rate of 24 or 25 fps, these films will not be perfectly continuous on a 60 Hz monitor. If you watch a lot of movies, choose a monitor capable of 120 Hz image refresh – as the lowest common multiple, this update is also ideal for 24, 25, 30, 60 and 120 fps content.

Consumption

In addition, it is also worth considering that the refresh rate affects the consumption of the monitor, at 120 Hz the energy consumption can be up to 30-40 percent higher than at 60 Hz, if you play a lot, this can be up to HUF 2-3 thousand can increase your monthly electricity bill.