Best (somewhat budget) 1080p high refresh rate monitor for not demanding games?

[danamb]

Hi Everyone!

Almost a year ago I bought my PC from PCS with a 1060 6Gb vga, a Ryzen 2600X processor and 2x8GB 3000Mhz rams. Right now I am using an Acer S240HL monitor and in majority of the cases I play Rocket League. As my PC can easily output the maximum allowed 250 fps I started thinking about buying a 1080p monitor with higher refresh rate, possibly a 144Hz one. As I have no usable experience with choosing a monitor, I thought I ask couple of questions from the community here.

So, the first and most obvious one:
Which 1080p monitor would you recommend within reasonable price range?
Would the £200-300 range be reasonable for this?

The second one is only important if you have ever played Rocket League on different monitors and you know the difference:
Is there any noticeable difference between a 60Hz and a 120+Hz monitor in
- Rocket League
- everyday usage of PC (watching films, browsing the internet)
?

And the third and last one is:
Is there any real reason to go way above the 60Hz value (if at all)?
Like the 200+Hz monitors. Or do you think 60Hz is more than enough for these e-sports-like gaming? I mean I am not a professional player, but even I do this casually I still try to grind the ranks in competitive game mode(s) (plat so far in 2v2 and 3v3, so you can guess that I am far from being a professional ).

As a side-note, I am not planning to upgrade the vga. I think it will be good for me in all the games I play until it is in working condition, so I will not buy a 2080Ti just go be able to play om ultra settings in 4K.

Thanks in advance and I hope I put this thread at the right place!

 

[Oussebon]

1) Anything around £200 with freesync / adaptive sync. Now Nvidia support that.

2) Yes. There's a degree of subjectivity ofc. If you google the subject you'll find people saying hings ranging from "I saw no difference at all" to "even moving the cursor on the desktop looked so much smoother". To my great surprise, I found I fell into the latter camp.

I found gameplay a lot smoother and even moving the cursor on the desktop, scrolling through web pages etc, felt noticeably smoother.

Obviously media you consume only has a fixed number of frames per second.
(Edit: like watching a 24fps DVD on a 60hz monitor.)

3) 144hz already is way over 60hz. Almost 2.5 times the number of cycles per second.
I think I saw an alienware 240hz freesync monitor for ~£300 the other day but 240hz monitors can be more expensive.
For your uses and budget, 240hz may not be worth it. 144hz is already a huge upgrade.

NB for your budget you could even look at some budget 1440p 144hz monitors e.g. the Element Gaming 27" one.

 

[danamb]

Thank you for your reply!

I googled this question before I asked, of course and I also read a lot of "so much smoother" and "will never go back to 60Hz" opinions, but I tend to believe to those who I know has reliable opinions (you or any other admins here, for example).

Do you think the GTX1060 is good enough for 1440p (especially in the next 2-5 years)?

 

[Oussebon]

Depends on the title and settings. You seem to be fine with Rocket League.

Also it's not just about having 144hz, it's about having fps over 60. I found I already started to feel it a bit at 75hz vs 60. So if you're getting 90-100fps rather than 144hz, you're still going to have a much more fluid experience than at 60hz.

To try to minimise stutter and get rid of tearing, an adaptive sync (freesync) monitor would be ideal.

Edit:
In fact, adaptive sync is a reason on its own to upgrade monitor. So if you're playing Witcher 3 on ultra, and only getting about 60fps with occasional drops, you wouldn't get the high refresh rate experience but with adaptive sync you'd get a much smoother image without needing to keep FPS at a solid 60.

 

[danamb]

Update:

I tried a 1440p 144Hz MSI Optix MAG271CQR and holy cow, 144Hz gaming is beyond imagination if you only used 60Hz! Unfortunately, due to limited space in my room the 27" monitor was too big so I had to go back to 1080p and I bought the MSI Optix MAG241C, that is "only" 23.6", but still 144Hz.

Pro:
- When I first tried Rocket League in 144Hz, it was like playing with a completely different game! I don't know which refresh rate is the sweet spot for still spotting difference, but 144Hz is definitely something all gamers should aim for, at least when playing under 100Hz. I went up several divisions within just 2 weeks and in casual mode I begun to start playing with even higher lvl of players. So, going up from 60Hz to 144Hz *does* make a difference!
- Everything is much smoother. Normal PC usage, games, everything.

Cons:
- G-Sync is expensive and not all Freesync monitors are officially supported by NVidia. While the above mentioned MSI monitors are recognized by my VGA, in some games the menu is flickering sometimes. I am not saying it is too annoying, but keep this in mind if you do not want to spend extra $$$ for a G-Sync monitor!
- I am not exactly sure why, but brightness and response time have some effect on each other. The MSI monitors I tried have a menu to change response time (normal, fast and fastest), but when in fastest mode you cannot change brightness. It has something to do with the black pixels handling, but definitely worth to dig into this topic if you want to use the monitor for professional gaming. For casual gaming, I don't think you will notice any difference between the different response times.
- If your monitor is not officially supported by NVidia, you need to use the NVidia Control Panel to manually enable Freesync support. It is only a problem for those who does not know how to use a PC for gaming-use, but if you have some "advanced" knowledge, it will not be a problem.

I read a lot about different monitors in this <£200 price range, I watched a lot of review videos and I am glad I bought the MAG241C.

I hope these thoughts help everyone who are in the same shoes that I had been!