Is 1080 at 60Hz obsolete? ... Which is more important today? Res or Refresh?

[CaptainCuddles]

As described in the topic...

Lots of 1080P 60Hz monitors out there in all sizes.

Looking to upgrade some older mismatched ones, I've noticed that:
- Upping the resolution beyond 1080 tacks on a large cost
- Upping the refresh rate beyond 60 Hz tacks on a large cost
- Upping both tacks on an astronomical cost

If one were looking to upgrade, which would be most important?

And -- is it silly to buy a monitor without the higher res/rate? Is 1080P at 60Hz a "bad buy" based on obsolescence?

 

[RCFProd]

Not sure how many games actually stutter much at 60 fps, I'm really sensitive to it too and most of my games are above ~80 fps. I just limit them to 85 usually if there is a lot of inconsistency. I agree though, frame consistency is what's important.

60 FPS doesnt have to mean smooth gameplay. 40 FPS can be way smoother actually.

I can't think of any reason how 40 fps would look smoother than 60, unless you're dropping below the 60 count all the time..

Frame timings. A lot of games stutter, but to a lot of people this isnt noticeable, to me it is though, Im the kind of guy that have to watch a blu ray in 24p mode.

Agreed, I think that 1080 TN should be buried. TNand IPS are slowing down display picture quality, I really dont understand how people are buying TNs today unless its a cheap 144 Hz.

Besides price, companies like LG and especially Dell have released TN monitors with actually really good color reproduction lately, nearing IPS levels. Basically a win-win when looking for a 144Hz monitor with good color reproduction that's not so expensive.

 

[William Henrickson]

The thing is anything above 60fps looks amazing. Gameplay for me averages about 80-90fps, and it simply drops my jaw. I run the panel at 120hz for the Windows desktop, feels great scrolling webpages, the animations are smooth. No more color streaking when panning left and right etc. I feel like you can't know how good it is until you try it.

It is probably the best innovation in computers in a long time. How often do you buy something and it fades away unnoticed after a while when you get used to it. With a fast panel it is indescribable how good it is, it sort of makes the panel be invisible and you feel like it is more like a window into the game. Viewing angles aside, you will not go gaga over the color day after day.

The OP sounds like he doesn't want to invest in a good panel anyways. At least get a 4ms panel for less streaking.

 

[guanyu210379]

Fps and smoothness are a complex relationship.
Our eyes see things as smooth not only depending on fps.
It is a lot more complex than that.
Even 24p movies were made with 24 fps and nobody complains.
Motion blurring techniques, etc. have also roles.

In PC gaming:
- as long as I get stable 40 fps on games like Skyrim and Witcher 3, I can live with that as long as I can get the best image quality. GSync will smooth things up too.
- For games like CS:GO, BF3, etc. I want as high as FPS, I can get. This is where 144Hz (144 fps max displayable) comes into play. 60fps is ok but 75fps or more is simply better.

Monitors reaction time alone e.g. 4ms, is not important. This is the failure many people made during buying a monitor.
What is the use of having 1ms response but the monitor can only run @60Hz (max 60 fps).
Monitor refresh rate is the more important thing to see e.g. 144Hz means that you can go up to 144fps.
More refresh rate means not only it can display more fps, it is also about how fast it will update the new/next coming frame and having less tearing.
In order to run on 144Hz, the monitor must be able to response max 7ms. Anything faster than that is good for 144Hz monitor.

BTW, 120Hz tech is kinda obsolete or rare, you can find more often only 144Hz and 165Hz.

 

[RCFProd]

I did finish a few games by just playing at 30 fps (When I owned a lower end GPU, GTX 950). The big problem for me with limiting FPS through software is input lag. Most of the games I limit FPS with cause a suprising amount of that, or atleast it feels that way anyway. Tried disabling triple buffering and such and whatever could be the cause but didn't find a solution. Digital Foundry did tests with Dark Souls 3 and instantly mentioned how they got input delay once they limited the framerate on PC.

For me, if the FPS really can't hang on to 60 for even a few seconds, then I limit it for sure. But let's say if the counter can stay on 60 for 5-10 seconds, and I actually notice no inconsistent frametiming, sometimes drops to 50-55, no problem for me.

The help of (sometimes) lower resolutions, FXAA/TAA post processing, Motion blur effects and smoothness of controller turning make 30 fps reasonable enough on PS4 and I actually don't mind, like there's also not as much input delay. But with a GPU like the GTX 970, I didn't find a reason to go there, not yet anyway. Getting 90-110 fps in Witcher 3 with mixed settings. Smooth as hell and simply looks good without it maxed out.

 

[William Henrickson]

Reaction time is crucial, with an 8ms panel the cursor and everything streaks like crazy, end up looking like you have mouse trails enabled. 4ms is grey to grey, any black to white or color to color is multiples of that rating. The other reason Gsync is awesome is zero input lag.