Does anyone really need a 1000Hz gaming monitor?

Just a few years ago, companies like Nvidia were talking about 500Hz gaming monitor prototypes as having “benefits (for) every game and gamer, not just competitive gaming and esports professionals.” Now, the high frame rate experts at Blur Busters announce that a 4K, 1000Hz prototype display is being demonstrated by Chinese panel maker TCL CSOT at the manufacturer-focused DisplayWeek 2024 conference.

TCL’s proof-of-concept panel is all the more impressive because it doesn’t sacrifice resolution for the sake of its high frame rate: many current 480Hz monitors tend to top out at 1080p resolutions or offer options “dual mode” for higher resolutions at a lower maximum. refresh rate. And although recent advancements in pixel turnaround times have enabled TCL’s LCD prototype, Blur Busters estimates that 1000Hz OLED displays could hit the market as early as 2027.

4K 1000 Hz presented at #DisplayWeek2024 by TCL CSOT pic.twitter.com/xc2qsYocxX

– Blur Busters (@BlurBusters) May 15, 2024

The apparent and impending break in the four-digit refresh rate threshold got us thinking: Are we finally approaching a point of diminishing returns in monitor makers’ long battle for Hz? Or is 1000Hz just the latest stepping stone to realms of smooth motion still unimaginable by most gamers?

60fps is just the beginning

Research suggests that most humans no longer detect the flicker of lights pulsing at around 60 Hz, a finding that has led many people to falsely claim that the human eye “can’t see beyond 60 fps” . Part of the misunderstanding arises from the fact that this “flicker threshold” generally measures how a human responds to the flicker of a single light source. The eye’s reaction to the illusion of movement in a screen made up of millions of individual pixels can be very different.

A simple motion test on a high-end monitor is enough to clearly demonstrate the benefits of refresh rates above 60Hz. Fast-moving on-screen objects appear noticeably less blurry as you go higher and higher. higher on the refresh rate curve, because pixels from the object’s previous position “persist” for less time at higher rates. This low persistence can be particularly important in virtual reality displays, where motion blur and lower refresh rates can lead to motion sickness when you tilt your head quickly in a virtual environment.

Once displays reach around 1,000Hz, Blur Busters says you start to see results where “things stop motion blur.” But even faster refresh rates could improve the apparent sharpness of extremely fast objects on Ultra HD displays – think of a mouse pointer or video game crosshair that can move across the roughly 4,000 horizontal pixels of ‘a 4K screen in just one second. To eliminate the stroboscopic effects that can occur on such fast-moving objects, you may need a theoretical display of 10,000 Hz or higher.

Of course, even with a 1000Hz monitor, you’ll need content running at 1000 frames per second to take full advantage of the ultra-fast pixel flipping hardware. While this level of performance may seem ridiculous for today’s hardware running modern games, this type of performance is no longer as unattainable as one might think. Nvidia data shows that the RTX 4090 generates over 600 frames per second on aging but still popular games like Rainbow Six Headquarters And Fortnite with “high” settings and full 1440p resolution.

Factor in a few more generations of graphics card upgrades, not to mention frame generation technology that could offer 10 reprojected frames for each keyframe, and wait a single millisecond for your monitor to display a new frame n Maybe it’s not totally ridiculous. The way things are going, we’re already looking forward to the day, years from now, when we look at an article like this and find it quaint that we were ever impressed by the idea of ​​a screen that peaks at just 1000Hz .