Competitive Gaming: choosing the right monitor and FPS Qstns

[sefear]

Hello Blur Blusters members,

I like to play vidya games. Competitively. Mostly TF2, with the occasional Dota/CS, but the main focus is on TF2. I'm currently using a Dell3007WFP and I'm looking to upgrade to something that's a bit more suited for gaming.

I'm looking for a (preferably) 27 inch 144 HZ monitor that has Lightboost or something similar. There's a pretty large debate over on our community forums (teamfortress.tv) over having Lightboost turned on for motion blur reduction or playing without at higher refresh rates.

The general opinion in TF2 is that your fps should be double your monitor's refresh rate plus one. Is there any reason why this is and is it necessary? Could you simply run the game capped at your refresh rate or would it be more beneficial to run at a higher FPS?

My budget is somewhere under 400€ (550$), but I wouldn't mind saving up for a significantly better and more expensive monitor. I'm running on a Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti, but will upgrade in the future to something newer (most likely a 770).


Cheers.

[Chief Blur Buster]

I like to play vidya games. Competitively. Mostly TF2, with the occasional Dota/CS, but the main focus is on TF2. I'm currently using a Dell3007WFP and I'm looking to upgrade to something that's a bit more suited for gaming.

You've come to the right place for looking for the "Better Than 60Hz" technologies!

I'm looking for a (preferably) 27 inch 144 HZ monitor that has Lightboost or something similar. There's a pretty large debate over on our community forums (teamfortress.tv) over having Lightboost turned on for motion blur reduction or playing without at higher refresh rates.

Some really benefit from strobe-based blur reduction (LightBoost testimonials) while others are hurt more by its addition of minor input lag. LightBoost is a tradeoff situation: When enabling, it adds a few milliseconds input lag but has dramatically better motion clarity. For those people sensitive to it, it can improve reaction times dramatically (faster aiming) that compensates for the added input lag. But not everyone benefits from it. It often benefits eye tracking situations. People who tracks eyes all over the place (away from crosshairs) while aiming, while it doesn't really benefit people who keeps eyes stationary on crosshairs without looking at other parts of their screen. So it can really help scores of some people, but not everyone.

The general opinion in TF2 is that your fps should be double your monitor's refresh rate plus one. Is there any reason why this is and is it necessary? Could you simply run the game capped at your refresh rate or would it be more beneficial to run at a higher FPS?

Playing fps_max that's double your monitor's refresh rate can be beneficial for reducing input lag, as GPU-share of input lag is the frametime itself (e.g. 240fps = 1/240sec latency induced by GPU). So there are benefits to running framerates beyond refresh rates. You can play at triple or quadruple refresh rate, but the sweet spot has tended to be double simply because of Source Engine limitations as well as GPU performance limitations. For an older GTX 560, this is accurate at 60Hz, but you may have to keep an fps_max of 119 or 121 when going to 120Hz or fps_max of 143 or 145 when doing 144Hz.

NOTE: I'm assuming VSYNC OFF, where 119 and 121 makes virtually no difference. However, for VSYNC ON, there's a lag difference: A lower fps_max is preferred if you use VSYNC ON or Adaptive VSYNC, since that is less lag than fps_max 121 because it avoids the lag induced from driver-based throttling of framerate, so you want to run framerate below the VSYNC ON limit.

My budget is somewhere under 400€ (550$), but I wouldn't mind saving up for a significantly better and more expensive monitor. I'm running on a Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti, but will upgrade in the future to something newer (most likely a 770).

If you're trying to keep costs low, consider the BENQ XL2411Z.
If you want to go all out, consider ASUS ROG PG278Q (now available in Europe)

Don't forget there's a lot of superior LightBoost sequels now. Both ULMB and BENQ Blur Reduction are superior to LightBoost in terms of ease (ON/OFF), flexibility (more refresh rates supported during strobing), and color quality is vastly better. See Official List of 120Hz+ Monitors.