PC World - USA (2021-01)

48 PCWorld JANUARY 2021

REVIEWS DO HIGH REFRESH RATE MONITORS MAKE GAMES FASTER?

your GPU, you’ll drastically increase your

frame rates. In our tests with both graphics

cards, every game fell at or below the esports

pro-grade 20ms barrier, even on a 60Hz

monitor with low visual details enabled.

That said, if you want even lower latency for

ultimate responsiveness, upgrading to a 360Hz

display can still reduce latency by a significant

amount, though it gets harder to feel in the

ranges we’re talking about here. Moving from a

17.6ms response time with a GTX 1660 on a

60Hz panel in Valorant to a 9.5ms response

time on a 360Hz panel means your movements

are registering almost twice as fast. But unless

you’re an esports pro, the responsiveness feels

blisteringly quick in both situations.

Bottom line: Yes, faster monitors can make

games more responsive, but only if you’re

getting frame rates fast enough to push high

refresh rate displays to the best of their

abilities. For the best bang-for-buck, consider

upgrading to a 144Hz panel, then pump the

rest of your budget into getting the fastest

GPU possible. Our guide to the best graphics

cards for PC gaming (go.pcworld.com/

pcgm) can help if you need it.

Valorant is one of the games we benchmarked.