How Does a Gaming Monitor Help You Win More?

As soon as a person enters the world of online gaming, it takes little to no time for the inner competitive gamer to come out. In other words, online multiplayer games are inherently competitive however this does not mean that every gamer who plays a multiplayer game is competitive.

As a gamer gets more and more competitive and starts to improve his in-game skill, a point comes where the in-game performance starts to suffer from the performance of the hardware.

Investing in a better-performing piece of equipment is sure to improve in-game performance and one of the most common upgrades is jumping from a normal monitor to a gaming monitor.

High Refresh Rate

The feature of a gaming monitor that will result in the most improvement in the in-game performance of a gamer is a high refresh rate. The refresh rate is the time rate per second of image refreshes that a monitor makes. In other words, it is a measure of the ability of a monitor to refresh an image per second. Refresh rate is measured in Hz and, most monitors support refresh rates of 60Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and 240Hz.

The sweet spot for the refresh rate of a gaming monitor is 144Hz and as you jump from a 60Hz refresh rate to 144Hz you will feel a massive improvement but after that, you will feel only slight improvements. A high refresh rate generates many improvements. These improvements are further discussed below.

Improved Responsiveness / Lower Input Lag

As you jump onto a gaming monitor with a high refresh rate, you will feel a drastic improvement in how your mouse feels. You will feel as if your crosshair is more responsive to the movements that you are making with your mouse. You feel better responsiveness because of lowered input lag.

Input lag, not to be confused with response time, is the time it takes the input from your mouse to reach the monitor and then appear on the screen. In other words, it is the delay between the movement of your mouse and the crosshair.

While playing a competitive online game, input lag can severely hinder your performance. You might have the potential to aim very well and quickly snap onto enemies in-game but, input lag will limit you from performing at your full potential. To explain how "input lag" affects your ability to have better precision, let's say you see an enemy on your screen, you quickly move your mouse to move the crosshair on the enemy's head, but you don't see the cross-hair moving until 16ms have passed so you move your mouse even more, and you end up aiming further than the enemy. 16ms can seem small but, while competitive gaming every millisecond counts.

Higher refresh rates generally yield lower input lag. For example, most 60Hz monitors have an input lag of 16ms and, 120Hz monitors can have an input lag as low as 8ms.

Reduced Screen Tearing

Screen tearing happens when you see an image on your screen that looks as if the image is torn apart and distorted. You can see a visible line where the image on the screen seems to be torn.

Screen tearing happens when your graphic card is producing more or fewer frames per second than the refresh rate of your monitor. Graphic cards these days generally don't have a hard time producing more fps than 60 hence, jumping from 60Hz to 144z will put your fps more in line with the refresh rate of your monitor and reduce screen tearing.

Screen tearing is very annoying in a competitive environment and, it disc acts your attention from the main objective. Sometimes screen tearing can be so severe that it messes up your aim from the distortion. You will see a substantial improvement in your gaming performance with lower amounts of screen tearing.

Low Motion Blur Technology

If you look closely at a moving image on a regular office monitor, you can see that the moving object feels blurry until it stops. This is called motion blur.

Gaming monitors these days are starting to offer motion blur reduction, and this feature is becoming very popular within the gaming industry. Motion blur can be annoying when you are trying to pinpoint a moving target in a competitive game. For this reason, motion blur reduction is a nice feature to have if you are a competitive gamer and it will certainly improve your in-game performance.

Some monitors come equipped with extreme low motion blur (ELMB) technology. This type of motion blur reduction technology is even more effective but can only be utilized on framerates of 80, 100, and 120.

Better Response Time

Right after the refresh rate, the second most important feature of a gaming monitor is response time. Response time is the time it takes a monitor's pixels to change between shades of gray. It is not to be confused with refresh rate or input lag. A monitor might send the instruction to refresh an image at a fast rate but, the pixels might not change their color from gray to the next level in time, this causes a phenomenon called ghosting.

Ghosting refers to the trail that a moving object on your screen leaves behind. Ghosting occurs because pixels fail to switch colors in time. Ghosting is also a very distracting effect that can limit your in-game performance. You might think that you are aiming at an enemy, while in reality, you could be aiming at the trail or "ghost" of the enemy. This may cause you to miss a target and potentially lose a match. Your ability to miss fewer targets will increase greatly after you start using a monitor with a high response time. Gaming monitors these days have response times as low as 1ms.

G-Sync and FreeSync

G-sync, provided by Nvidia, and Freesync, by AMD, are screed tearing reduction technologies that eliminate screen tearing without increasing input lag or creating a performance dip in your fps.

As discussed above, screen tearing can be annoying in a competitive match and, it may even cause you to perform poorly. However, framerate and low input lag are two features that you do not want to compromise on if you care about your in-game performance. This is where Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's Freesync technologies come in. These days most gaming monitors come equipped with G-Sync or Freesync and playing they are turned on will result in a minimal input lag hit while eliminating screen tearing. You will certainly see an in-game performance boost with the help of either of these two technologies.

Final Words

Playing on a monitor that has a low refresh rate can cause several problems. Some of these problems include input lag, response time delay, motion blur, screen tearing, etc. These problems can be very frustrating to deal with especially if you are playing in a competitive environment. The only solution that helps you overcome these problems is getting a gaming monitor. Investing in a gaming monitor is one of the best choices you can make while trying to improve your in-game performance and we highly recommend that you consider it.