46 PCWorld JANUARY 2021REVIEWS DO HIGH REFRESH RATE MONITORS MAKE GAMES FASTER?
faster than a typical 60Hz screen. Better yet, it
comes with Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer
tool. Built into select 360Hz G-Sync Esports
monitors, Nvidia Reflex Analyzer can measure
how long it takes for your mouse clicks to
register as an action on-screen. Check out our
Nvidia Reflex primer (go.pcworld.com/nrfl) if
you want to learn more about GeForce’s suite
of responsiveness-focused features.
While we had a latency-measuring tool in our
hands, we decided to evaluate the effectiveness
of refresh rate on overall responsiveness, by
locking the ROG Swift PG259QNR’s speed using
Nvidia’s control panel. Here’s a look at how much
faster games become when you increase your
monitor’s refresh rate.
We benchmarked Valorant, Counter-
Strike: Global Offensive, and Fortnite using
their highest in-game visual settings in a
strictly controlled testing scenario at 1080pValorant, High
Visual Settings
Average PC+ Display Latency (milliseconds)
GTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz
SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE19.612.711.814.311.216.5resolution. We measured
each game using both the
GeForce RTX 3070 Founders
Edition (go.pcworld.com/
nv38) as a high-end option,
and the original GeForce
GTX 1660 for a more
mainstream comparison.
The numbers in these
charts show the total latency of
your system and display—
everything except the time it
takes for your mouse click to
register—in milliseconds, as
measured by Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer.
The lower the number next to each result, the
faster your clicks turn into in-game actions. The
standard considered worthy of competitive
esports is generally 20ms of latency.
As you can see, latency lowers universally
across the board as the monitor’s refresh rate
increases. With both the GeForce RTX 3080We measured each game using both the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders
Edition as a high-end option.