JANUARY 2021 PCWorld 47and the GTX 1660, the tested games are more
responsive at 144Hz compared to 60Hz, and
a blistering-fast 360Hz display proves faster
yet. Great!
There are a few deeper takeaways though.
First, note that the jump from a 60Hz display
to a 144Hz display provides a huge jump in
responsiveness, but the leap from 144Hz to
360Hz is much more modest. That makes
144Hz the sweet spot from a price-to-
performance standpoint.
Also consider the difference in response
times between the two graphics cards
themselves. High refresh rate monitors don’t
magically make games faster; instead, they’re
simply able to show the frames your graphics
card is spitting out that much quicker. If your
GPU isn’t powerful enough to feed your
monitor enough frames, responsiveness
won’t improve. Witness how the GTX 1660
hovers around the same 45ms mark at both
144Hz and 360Hz in Fortnite, or how the
much more powerful RTX 3080 outpunches
the GTX 1660 across the board.
How you play your games is worth
considering too. If you swipe a page from the
playbook of esports pros and dial your game’s
visual settings all the way down, putting your
system’s bottleneck on your CPU rather thanCSGO, High
Visual Settings
Average PC+ Display Latency (milliseconds)
GTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz
SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE24.617.918.520.716.522.9SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCEGTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz46.550.247.244.721.822.9Fortnite DX12 Epic Preset
Average PC+ Display Latency (milliseconds)Valorant, Low Visual
Settings
Average PC+ Display Time (milliseconds)SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCEFortnite: RTX 308060Hz
Fortnite: RTX 3080360Hz
Fortnite: GTX 166060Hz
Fortnite: GTX 1660360Hz
Valorant: RTX 308060Hz
Valorant: RTX 3080360Hz
Valorant: RTX 166060Hz
Valorant: RTX 1660360Hz16.316.920.6159.214.2RTX 3080 GTX 166017.6
9.5