I bought a really large monitor two years ago but the colors don’t display very well. It’s too bright and the colors are a bit oversaturated. So now when I go to the electronics shop I can’t help to drool over their monitors. But I have two questions…
Is 144mhz harder on graphic cards since it can process over 60 fps? I have a good card, a 1060 gtx, but video cards don’t last long with me and summer is coming, which means it could overheat.
Are curved monitors really a good thing? I’m afraid I could get distracted by the curve more than anything. Anyone that has a curved monitor can comment on this! Do they get on your nerves, or do they help with your immersion a little?
Yes. In WoW, at 1080p on modified 8 with 8x MSAA, out in the new zones/world my Vega 64 (about 75% faster than a 6gb 1060) will be at 99% and will sometimes dip below 130fps. You can get 144 fps on a 1060, but you will need to turn things down.
Personal preference. I’ve never liked curved monitors because I use three monitors (not gaming on all three) so they would be really weird together IMO.
the monitor doesn’t determine how hard your gpu will work. most likely, your gpu runs near 100% right now. the better monitor will simply change how you see it. the only way your gpu would run at less than ~100% is if either you are capping the framerate in the settings with max foreground fps, or your gpu is being bottlenecked by your cpu, or you’re otherwise controlling it with external software.
If you’re smart you cap your FPS around your monitors refresh rate.
There’s no point in stressing your GPU to put out over 9000 FPS when your monitor displays 60
and monitor certainly can affect your video card, just not in hz. But if your monitor displays higher resolutions your card has to work harder to put out that resolution.
but if you go up in resolution, you’d just go down in hz. gpu still working the same amount. yes? like if i change my resolution from 1080p to 1440p to 4k, or change my settings from 5 to 10, my gpu still runs at 100% through all of this, unless i cap fps or run into a cpu bottleneck.
I mean, yeah, if you cap fps at 60 at 1080p on either monitor GPU demand will be identical; however, it takes more gpu to push 144fps if you cap it at 144.
Depends on if you’re being smart and capping your fps.
Lets say you have a 1080p60 monitor and you cap at 60 so your GPU sits at 50% use. You then upgrade to 1440p60, same cap, but now your GPU runs at 75% use.
I tend to cap mine at 59 as well, 60 likes to tear on certain games.
Another point on capping, and why you really should. Those extra, undisplayed frames are still processed, and your cpu and gpu are still trying their damndest to put out as many frames as possible, so it can actually lead to stutter.
If you are gaming on 1080p on an old 60hz monitor and upgrade to a 1080p 144hz monitor:
If you cap the new monitor at 144hz and keep your settings as is, it will perform the same until you are in an environment that allows for more frames to be called by the CPU and to be drawn by the GPU. What I mean is in raids and stuff it will probably be the same, but out int he world and in older areas you will see more FPS than you used to. If you want to set 144 fps as your “95%” goal, you will have to make some graphic concessions to get there. That said, 5% of the time, or during raids and heavy player count areas, you still won’t reach it. (nobody does, really).
If you are upgrading to higher resolution AND higher refresh, in order to achieve this you will need to make sacrifices in settings, and you probably won’t hit 144hz most of the time.
Higher refresh monitors by themselves obviously do not actually make your GPU work harder, but their increased capacity does mean that if your GPU can push out those frames, it will, thus increasing GPU load. If you use a 144hz monitor and cap your gameplay to your previous monitors refresh (and assuming same resolution) it will require the exact same GPU resources.
I guess it’s not worth the extra money then. My present monitor can only handle up to 60 fps and it’s really not that bad. I was hoping for a major boost but I don’t even know if there’s really a noticeable difference between 60 and 144 to begin with. So for the sake of personal savings and for the sake of my gpu’s longevity, I’ll stick with 60hz. Thank you all for your feedback!
Well, there definitely is a big difference between 60 and 144.
It’s just much harder to drive. If you think about it, the goal of 144fps is asking your cpu and gpu to push almost 3x as many frames as you are currently doing.
It doesn’t mean you HAVE to hit 144 at all times, and realistically you will dip far below 144 often enough.
But anything above 60 is definitely noticeable to me.
I tried going back to 75hz in one game (to cut down on fan speed) and it immedy gave me a physical headache.
Smoother gameplay is easier to process for your brain imo, or maybe just slower gameplay is harder on your eyes? Dunno.
At any rate, you can get close on a 1060 and personally, I will always trade detail for framerate.
the difference isn’t dramatic i wouldn’t say, but it is definitely noticeable. everything is smoother. the more quick movements/turns/etc you’re doing the more you’ll see it.
you can test right now what sort of framerates you’ll get. in the game hit ctrl + R. it will show you the fps that your hardware is outputting. if your new monitor would be the same resolution as your current one, i assume both are 1080p, then this is the fps your computer is able to drive. you can play with settings as well until you start hitting higher fps numbers to see if that tradeoff might be worth it to you. make sure you turn off max foreground fps under settings->advanced as well before checking as that will artificially cap your values.
![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
ok just making sure. so then OP should expect that unless he was previously capping his fps, the new monitor will not be harder on his graphics card.