Some gamers still believe that 60 hertz is all we need since our eyes can’t see more than 24 frames per second anyway. In this article, we will clarify this myth because 144hz monitors can bring significant benefits for gaming. So let’s answer the question of do I need a 144hz monitor?
The refresh rate of a display is the number of times per second measured in Hertz that your screen will update with new information. Th older CRT tube monitors had a high refresh rate which was critical because it reduced perceptible flickering and improved user comfort. Since modern LCD displays don’t work the same way; the significant remaining benefit of high refresh rates is that your eyes will receive more updates per second resulting in a smoother moving image. The drawbacks are a bit more complicated. To send more images per second, we need to send more data which means faster interconnects and higher quality cable solutions. But there’s more, for video capturing creation we need faster processors and more storage space to work with high frame rate content. And for gaming, we need much more powerful graphics cards to even render the scene fast enough to get any benefit. Otherwise, the high refresh rate display will just show the same image over and over as long as it’s waiting for a new one. You may think that, who cares I heard that the human eye can see a maximum of 24 frames per second anyway. Otherwise, how would movies looks move, they run at 24 frames per second. Movies look smooth because motion blur gives that miraculous brain of yours the hints it needs to fill in the gaps not because your eyes can’t perform any better.
Well, my game also support motion blur, same difference right? No, not at all. In games, motion blur is not a natural side effect of the way that light is captured by a camera sensor or film strip; it looks unnatural. And on top of that, it adds more latency between the input of the user and the action showing up on the screen which makes the controls feel less responsive, which is another factor that affects the perceived smoothness of an image especially an interactive one.
There is an article from 2001 that addresses this topic well. The way your eyes work is much more complicated than frames per second; they’re designed to perceive motion, changes in light levels and even certain colors better than others and further complicating matters, sensitivity will vary from person to person. So actually measuring the performance of eyes in images per second is about like measuring the tastiness of ice cream in meters. The point is that representing the real world limit isn’t just as simple as one number, and we can’t quantify it in simple terms. What we do know however is that if it was a simple number it sure wouldn’t be 24 frames per second or 30 or even 60.
However, there is a big difference between those 960-hertz clear motion TVs at the store and gaming monitors with 144hz refresh rates. Tv’s are using predictive algorithms and play tricks to increase the refresh rate that you perceive. But us gamers, all need to be united under one banner and ask for more until we reach the upper limits of what we can perceive. So is a 144hz display worth it? The answer is yes definitely!