Is 144Hz monitor Better than 60Hz one at 60FPS?

sblantipodi

sblantipodi

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 29, 2010
Messages
3,801
As title.
Is 144Hz monitors better than 60Hz one at around 60fps?
Is response time better anyway even at 60fps?

Have an rtx2080ti here and considering the upgrade of the Acer Predator XB271HK 4k 60hz with the
Acer Nitro XV273 4k 144Hz

I'm playing non fast games like action rpg and at 4k I rarely goes over 60fps but I can clearly see some ghosting on my predator 60hz.

Is ghosting be reduced by switching to a 144hz monitor even at 60fps?
 
The response time of the XV273 at 60 Hz is actually worse than the XB271HK (12.5ms vs. 11ms). At 120 or 144 Hz there should be no visible ghosting if you use G-SYNC. With the XV273 at 4K I would recommend setting the monitor's refresh rate to the highest available with G-SYNC and let your games run at an uncapped framerate.
 
Armenius said:
The response time of the XV273 at 60 Hz is actually worse than the XB271HK (12.5ms vs. 11ms). At 120 or 144 Hz there should be no visible ghosting if you use G-SYNC. With the XV273 at 4K I would recommend setting the monitor's refresh rate to the highest available with G-SYNC and let your games run at an uncapped framerate.
Click to expand...

If I set the monitor to 120Hz and then my games runs at 40fps, will I see the ghosting?

Is ghosting related to monitor's refreshrate, to gpu framerate, or both?

Thanks
 
Well I played through half of Sekiro at 60Hz / 60fps and then upgraded to a 144hz monitor however Sekiro is locked 60fps max and I saw no difference or improvement in ghosting vs the 60Hz monitor.

It's not until around 80fps and up when you start noticing smoother frames / less ghosting on higher refresh monitors.
 
sblantipodi said:
But the questions remains unanswered.
Click to expand...
As others said there is ghosting from pixel response times being too low. A 144Hz monitor only makes sense if the pixels response is strictly <7ms while at 60Hz the manufacturer can use more lax timings. So you'll usually be on the safe side with a 144Hz monitor in that regard. In general you can expect fast pixel response from TN and slower pixel response from IPS or VA derivatives, where VA is commonly slower for black to gray transitions. Stars in a black sky turn dark when turning, details in the shadows tend to turn black when moving and often when a dark object moves in front of a brighter background you'll see some purple smear. It's a monitor's overdrive that keeps this sort of ghosting in check.

Then there is inverse ghosting from overdrive is when the overdrive is too aggressive and overshoots. A dark object moving across the sky leaving a white trail would be an example. Overdrive has to be tuned for every refresh rate. GSync handles this itself, so I would imagine at 60fps/Hz it would look just fine, but no better than a likewise carefully tuned native 60Hz monitor.

Lastly there is perceived motion blur introduced by your eyes as they track an object on the screen. (What mathesar said.) This gets gradually better as you increase the frame rate in tandem with the refresh rate. A 144Hz GSync monitor at 60fps wont help with motion blur at all.

You can tune between ghosting and inverse ghosting with the overdrive setting of your monitor (select "response time" here and check for ghost images: https://www.eizo.be/monitor-test/), but there is no remedy for perceived motion blur unless the monitor does frame rate doubling via interpolation.
 
mathesar said:
Well I played through half of Sekiro at 60Hz / 60fps and then upgraded to a 144hz monitor however Sekiro is locked 60fps max and I saw no difference or improvement in ghosting vs the 60Hz monitor.

It's not until around 80fps and up when you start noticing smoother frames / less ghosting on higher refresh monitors.
Click to expand...

So 4k 144hz are pretty useless right now since there are really few titles where you can push more than 60fps.
Probably my upgrade from XB271HK to XV273K is a downgrade more than upgrade.
 
mathesar said:
Well I played through half of Sekiro at 60Hz / 60fps and then upgraded to a 144hz monitor however Sekiro is locked 60fps max and I saw no difference or improvement in ghosting vs the 60Hz monitor.

It's not until around 80fps and up when you start noticing smoother frames / less ghosting on higher refresh monitors.
Click to expand...

Sekiro can be patched to run at higher refresh rates. Ran through it twice at 120 Hz without issues.

In any case with current displays the issues are pixel response times which are not great on anything but OLEDs despite whatever "1ms" "0.1ms" times marketing tries to peddle. On top of this you have perceived motion blur from the sample and hold effect caused by our eyes tracking not being compatible with the way LCDs refresh.

Black frame insertion or backlight strobing is the remedy for this until response times can be made much much higher and GPUs can run those framerates. It's not perfect either because it can reduce display brightness heavily and is usually not compatible with variable refresh rate (ELMB has not been proven quite yet based on reviews). On TVs it tends to add a lot of input lag or is not even available in game mode.
 
kasakka said:
Sekiro can be patched to run at higher refresh rates. Ran through it twice at 120 Hz without issues.
Click to expand...

Some people claimed running Sekiro over 60fps threw off the timing in certain situations, I dont know how true that is but Sekiro was pretty difficult so I didnt wanna chance it lol.

The mod you linked looks much more polished and interesting than what was out at the time tho, Thanks for the info!
 
Many many people in the "boom of more than 60Hz is better" said that a 120hz screen is better than a 60hz even at lower framerates.

So all those people are all dumbs since I see that mosts 120+ Hertz monitors are slower than 60hz monitors at 60hz
 
Exactly. If you have a good 60Hz model, there is nothing a 120Hz monitor can improve upon (short of inserting interpolated frames to turn 60fps into 120fps at the cost of some input lag).
 
sblantipodi said:
Many many people in the "boom of more than 60Hz is better" said that a 120hz screen is better than a 60hz even at lower framerates.

So all those people are all dumbs since I see that mosts 120+ Hertz monitors are slower than 60hz monitors at 60hz
Click to expand...

So you have already made up your mind and are not actually interested in the answers? Okay.
 
kalston said:
So you have already made up your mind and are not actually interested in the answers? Okay.
Click to expand...

What answer from this post it seems that faster refresh rate monitors bring no improvements over 60hz monitor if running under 60fps.

Am I wrong? This is what I understood.
 
Armenius said:
The response time of the XV273 at 60 Hz is actually worse than the XB271HK (12.5ms vs. 11ms). At 120 or 144 Hz there should be no visible ghosting if you use G-SYNC. With the XV273 at 4K I would recommend setting the monitor's refresh rate to the highest available with G-SYNC and let your games run at an uncapped framerate.
Click to expand...

What Amenius said. Ghosting is a matter of monitor speed from grey to grey times. 12-15ms is so slow that yeah, that's where you are getting ghosting. You need 4ms or less g2g timing. 1ms is what 'gamers' call the sweet spot, but look, I've gamed on rigs with 6-7ms with old 2008 era IPS monitors that cost me 800 each for a 24" 1920x1200 resolution. lol. I rarely had an issue. But, yeah, 4ms or less and no ghosting. (Yeah, yuo could go 5-6 and be fine too probably.

One thing for sure, ghosting is NOT a problem of refresh rates or FPS.
 
sblantipodi said:
So 4k 144hz are pretty useless right now since there are really few titles where you can push more than 60fps.
Probably my upgrade from XB271HK to XV273K is a downgrade more than upgrade.
Click to expand...
NOT ABOUT FPS or Refresh rates.
Edit: I agree. if you can't get more than 60FPS at 4K on a 244Hz monitor you just wasted 184Hz, and a lot of cash.
 
Last edited:
DWD1961 said:
What Amenius said. Ghosting is a matter of monitor speed from grey to grey times. 12-15ms is so slow that yeah, that's where you are getting ghosting. You need 4ms or less g2g timing. 1ms is what 'gamers' call the sweet spot, but look, I've gamed on rigs with 6-7ms with old 2008 era IPS monitors that cost me 800 each for a 24" 1920x1200 resolution. lol. I rarely had an issue. But, yeah, 4ms or less and no ghosting. (Yeah, yuo could go 5-6 and be fine too probably.

One thing for sure, ghosting is NOT a problem of refresh rates or FPS.
Click to expand...

If you read here
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_nitro_xv273k.htm
you will notice that the G2G varies from 60Hz to 120Hz.
So refresh rate seems to affect the G2G that with a normal overdrive Is near 8ms at 60Hz and 9ms at 120Hz.

And yesterday Nvidia released this video

Where they clearly say that at low fps ghosting is introduced.

So who's right here?
 
sblantipodi said:
If you read here
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_nitro_xv273k.htm
you will notice that the G2G varies from 60Hz to 120Hz.
So refresh rate seems to affect the G2G that with a normal overdrive Is near 8ms at 60Hz and 9ms at 120Hz.

And yesterday Nvidia released this video

Where they clearly say that at low fps ghosting is introduced.

So who's right here?
Click to expand...


Well,I can surely see your point. However, we don't play games in slow motion and he never addressed why I see NO ghosting on a 60Hz monitor with a 2ms response time. I wonder why that is?

I also updated my response to you above.
 
mathesar said:
Some people claimed running Sekiro over 60fps threw off the timing in certain situations, I dont know how true that is but Sekiro was pretty difficult so I didnt wanna chance it lol.

The mod you linked looks much more polished and interesting than what was out at the time tho, Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...

If there was a difference I did not notice one or adapted to it. I did all bosses in NG and NG+ like this.
 
sblantipodi said:
If you read here
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_nitro_xv273k.htm
you will notice that the G2G varies from 60Hz to 120Hz.
So refresh rate seems to affect the G2G that with a normal overdrive Is near 8ms at 60Hz and 9ms at 120Hz.

And yesterday Nvidia released this video

Where they clearly say that at low fps ghosting is introduced.

So who's right here?
Click to expand...

Response time generally improves with refresh rate, which is why I suggested running the monitor at 120 or 144 Hz. The XV273 example has its response time improve to 7-8ms at 144 Hz, which should decrease perceived ghosting. Any ghosting that you perceive at a lower framerate will be due to motion blur induced by a decrease in motion clarity directly as a result of the lower framerate. With VRR motion clarity is improved due to images only being displayed when the game and monitor are ready to display them.
 
sblantipodi said:
What answer from this post it seems that faster refresh rate monitors bring no improvements over 60hz monitor if running under 60fps.

Am I wrong? This is what I understood.
Click to expand...

There are still advantages to higher refresh rates even with a low framerate. You get less noticeable tearing with all forms of sync turned off and a generally more responsive display (120hz feels awesome on the desktop too and is compatible with various video refresh rates including 24, 30, 60fps). You can use a 1/2 or 1/3 refresh form of v-sync too, which lags a lot less than regular v-sync. V-sync at 60hz is ridiculously laggy, I could never play even a casual game with that (a framerate cap of 59.xx+v-sync is a decent workaround but the stutters are annoying). But a game capped at 60fps is much more pleasant to play on a 120hz display than on a 60hz one.

60fps on 60hz without v-sync is an horrible tearing fest - glitches will be very very noticeable. At 120hz it'll be much much better.
 
kalston said:
There are still advantages to higher refresh rates even with a low framerate. You get less noticeable tearing with all forms of sync turned off and a generally more responsive display (120hz feels awesome on the desktop too and is compatible with various video refresh rates including 24, 30, 60fps). You can use a 1/2 or 1/3 refresh form of v-sync too, which lags a lot less than regular v-sync. V-sync at 60hz is ridiculously laggy, I could never play even a casual game with that (a framerate cap of 59.xx+v-sync is a decent workaround but the stutters are annoying). But a game capped at 60fps is much more pleasant to play on a 120hz display than on a 60hz one.

60fps on 60hz without v-sync is an horrible tearing fest - glitches will be very very noticeable. At 120hz it'll be much much better.
Click to expand...

I never saw any tearing back in the day,but I am just not back after a 6+ year hiatus from gaming. There were no 144Hz+ monitors back then. Or, I think they were just hitting the market. And, super expensive. Most of the game we were playing would not render faster than 60 FPS continuous, and some were locked at that FPS too. But, we did get higher frame rates sometimes. Perhaps we did turn on Vsync in those cases, but I never had an issue with tearing. So, I've never played a game with a 144Hz+ monitor and a rig that can play at 144+ FPS, so I have no idea if it is noticeable or not. Other swear by it, and others say they can't tell a diff. Either way,if our rig is only giving us avg 60FPS in our games, I doubt we would 'feel' any different playing on a 144Hz+ monitor. I just don't know. This high refresh rate is something new to me. Interesting conversation, though.

And I apologize to the OP here. It's a good thread. It probably deserves to be reintroduced as a sticky with others who know a lot more than others about the physics and application of high refresh rates and game play.
 
Armenius said:
Response time generally improves with refresh rate, which is why I suggested running the monitor at 120 or 144 Hz. The XV273 example has its response time improve to 7-8ms at 144 Hz, which should decrease perceived ghosting. Any ghosting that you perceive at a lower framerate will be due to motion blur induced by a decrease in motion clarity directly as a result of the lower framerate. With VRR motion clarity is improved due to images only being displayed when the game and monitor are ready to display them.
Click to expand...

Ok, upgraded the
Acer Predator XB271HK 4K 60Hz with
the
Acer Nitro XV273K 4K 120Hz

with the nvidia pendulum demo, by pressin the button 0, you can see a texture with some text on the pendulum.
at 60Hz the test in unreadable, at 120Hz the text is crystal clear. unfortunantly even on the 120Hz display, if the framerate goes down the text became more blurry.

in any case I can say for sure that the perceived ghosting is inferior than the XB271HK.

the real things that I will need to "understand" is the wide gamut.
so oversaturated. don't know if I really like it.
 
Last edited:
I'd like to make a correction after thinking about this a bit more. Mea culpa! There is a general benefit to a 120Hz refresh rate vs. a 60Hz refresh rate when playing 60fps. kalston was probably hinting in that direction:
A monitor running at 120Hz receives pixels about twice as fast as a monitor running at 60Hz. So if both monitors are at the start of a refresh, it will take the 60Hz monitor 16ms to receive the bottom pixel row, while the 120Hz monitor receives all pixels within ~8ms. That's 8ms less input lag for the bottom part of the screen and a clear advantage. (And even just 75Hz will have 3ms less input lag there.)

As for the NVIDIA video: The part about how VSync off works was a bit cringy. He said: "The display is going to continue updating and it's gonna grab the frame at whatever state the GPU happens to have it in, which could sometimes be partial frames." It's the other way around: The graphics card always has a complete frame ready and controls at which point it swaps it out. With VSync off it wont wait for the monitor to finish the current frame. Clearly the graphics card is the villain here, not the monitor, Mr. Salesperson. :p
In the part about ghosting they show a green circle with a ghost image, where on the left side the ghost image stays 4x longer. That presumes that every 60Hz monitor has a 4x slower pixel response time than a 240Hz monitor, which is deceptive. On the other hand eye tracking blur is definitely real and comes close to what the video tries to convey. So yeah, "60fps = more blurry motion" is true. The rest of the presentation was quite convincing though and after seeing the last slide I felt the urge to buy a high-end NVIDIA graphics card to get that K/D-ratio in a game I never played.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top