When buying a monitor for our PC, if we plan to play games, a very important dilemma presents itself to us when choosing the monitor. Is it better to opt for the resolution or the hertz? In the first case, it ensures better image quality and more detail on the screen, the second type gives us greater fluidity when reading. However, the two elements are generally not sold at the same time and force us to decide. What is the best option according to our needs?
In the market we find a large number of laptops and monitors with frequencies above 120 Hz. This does not mean that your games will go to this frequency, because it will depend on the power of the system’s graphics card. . Sometimes we come across real nonsense that the screen resolution and the refresh rate exceed the average that the internal configuration of our computer can offer. Fortunately, when choosing the monitor for a tower PC, we have a greater range of choices, given the large number of options that exist in the market.
The big dilemma in a monitor, hertz or resolution?
One of the things that sets gaming monitors apart from others is that they tend to offer pretty high refresh rates, measured in hertz, to the point of promising triple digits in their specs. However, this is not the first thing you need to look at when buying a monitor and it is that apart from some competitive online games where the frame rate per second is literally tied to time response, as most games are not intended to run above 60 FPS.
Moreover, being able to reach these refresh rates means that the time per frame is very low and this is not only possible with a very powerful graphics card, but also with a very advanced processor. If you buy a Full HD monitor with a high refresh rate, playing some games at extremely high frame rates will not benefit your experience and you will sacrifice resolution and detail. So, for us, it’s only worth paying more hertz if you want to enjoy the games you’ll be playing on a daily basis.
If, on the other hand, you are a more relaxed gamer and prefer more cinematic experiences, we recommend giving more importance to resolution. Of course, you have to consider your graphics card model to know if it has the adequate performance to show you the graphics at an average frequency of 60Hz in your favorite games. And in case your budget doesn’t reach you, don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing to play on a Quad HD monitor and at 60 FPS. Of course, try to make them stable.
How to get the most out of your monitor in games?
As we mentioned before, when choosing between hertz and resolution, what will matter will be the type of game you are going to spend more hours on. Depending on your preferred genre, you’ll see how your graphics card power is divided into several pixels per frame or several frames per second. The ideal would be both, but only games with very little graphic load allow us to do this.
- If the game allows you to set the frame rate to a fixed value, as well as the resolution, do so. If your PC’s graphics card is powerful enough, it will allow you to enjoy the game in a higher level of detail under the monitor’s native resolution.
- Monitors are designed to display images at their native resolution. So if you can’t reach the resolution at 60 FPS in the middle of the test, lower the detail level in games and remember that you can use helpers such as DLSS on NVIDIA cards or DLSS for AMD.
- If you’re playing an eSports type game, skip the first point and get as many frames per second as possible in games. That is, you should ignore the first item in this list.
- In case you are looking for a monitor also for graphic design, we recommend not to use one with more than 120 Hz, the color quality starts to drop after said refresh rate.
