Over the past few years, gaming displays have significantly improved, with numerous manufacturers now offering a wide variety of monitors that work well with various gaming PCs and laptops. It doesn’t have to be difficult to choose a gaming monitor, but it does require some consideration. Here, we go over the key qualities to consider when choosing the finest monitor for your gaming setup.
Table of Contents
Resolution
There is no justification for purchasing additional monitors. Although the three most popular resolutions for gaming displays are Full HD (1,920 x 1,080), QHD (2,560 x 1,440), and UHD (3,840 x 2,160), you should choose a resolution that your gaming system can support. Simply said, the more pixels your GPU must create and the more power it must have, the better the resolution.
A Full HD display is OK if you have a low-end gaming PC, such as one with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU or less. On higher resolution panels, you won’t be able to play contemporary games at frame rates fast enough. You may get a UHD (also known as 4K) monitor and feel secure knowing that at least part of the games you play will support that resolution if you have a powerful CPU and an RTX 3080 or higher.
A QHD display offers a good balance for many customers. Many games can be played at QHD resolution on gaming computers with RTX 3060 or higher GPUs (also called 1440p).
Keep in mind that you can get a monitor with a higher resolution and play your games at a lower, non-native resolution. However, the overall image quality may decrease, so it’s not always the greatest choice.
Refresh Rate
The greater refresh rates that your gaming system can play your games at, the faster it is. A gaming computer can operate at higher refresh rates on a Full HD monitor than on a QHD or UHD panel, of course, depending on your monitor’s resolution.
Today, you can get monitors with up to 360Hz refresh rates. You will either experience tearing (where frames are skipped because the monitor can’t keep up with the GPU) or you will have to enable vertical syncing, which will reduce your gaming performance, if you purchase a monitor with a refresh rate that is lower than your gaming PC can produce.
However, it is unnecessary to spend money on a display that has a greater refresh rate than you require. Planning for the future is important, but there is a ceiling that you should establish.
Response time
The better the image, the faster the motion, and the less likely you are to have problems like “ghosting,” the faster the response time, or how quickly pixels can refresh. The performance of your gaming system isn’t necessary a factor in this standard.
GPU synchronization
Both Nvidia and AMD have synchronization technologies that can assist in maintaining a constant refresh rate between the GPU and monitor. By doing this, you can be confident that your games will run smoothly and look great without problems like tearing interfering with the enjoyment. Selecting a synchronization method is simple. Simply select the one that corresponds to your GPU. That is G-Sync for Nvidia and FreeSync for AMD.
High Dynamic Range
High dynamic range (HDR), a more recent addition to gaming monitors and games in general, allows for a wider variety of colors and considerably boosts brightness and contrast. HDR significantly improves the immersion and realism of video games, but for playable performance, very fast hardware is needed. If you purchase an HDR monitor, you are not required to use HDR. But even if it raises the cost of a monitor, it’s a great method to make it future-proof.