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What gamers have long sensed intuitively has now been officially and scientifically confirmed. LG Display published a study titled “Analysis of the Impact of Refresh Rate on First-Person Shooting (FPS) Game Performance” at an international academic conference. The findings from these tests are clear. A higher screen refresh rate genuinely and measurably translates into better performance in games.
Blind test
In the experiment 31 adult gamers took part. Their task was to test gameplay in a first-person shooter (FPS) on monitors with four different refresh rates: 60Hz, 240Hz, 360Hz and 480Hz. The whole experiment was run as a blind test. Participants did not know which settings they were using at any given time. The results were measured rigorously, including overall accuracy and reaction time from an enemy’s appearance to its elimination.
Higher Hz = higher win rate
The collected data show that the technological leap drastically affects how we perform on the virtual battlefield:
Increase of 38%: Accuracy improved by this much for players using a 480Hz panel compared with a standard 60Hz.
An extra 10% at 480Hz: Interestingly, although a huge performance jump was already observed when moving to 240Hz, raising the refresh rate to 480Hz delivered a further 10% accuracy advantage. This demonstrates that the benefits of extremely high refresh rates continue to grow consistently as they are increased.
Where does sense end and marketing begin?
The results published by LG Display align closely with the conclusions from our tests. In theory the benefits of motion blur reduction (stemming from the Sample-and-Hold nature of image display) increase without limit, but the human eye has perceptual limits and the curve of benefits starts to flatten at a certain point.
Moving from 60Hz to 120Hz+ is a huge and noticeable jump for every user. Above those values, however, we enter the realm of diminishing returns. For example, shortening the duration of a single frame between 360Hz and 500Hz amounts to only about a 0.8 ms difference. For most people, that will be purely cosmetic.
Based on our analysis we know that for the vast majority of even very demanding gamers the threshold for full satisfaction with smoothness and sharpness sits at around 300 Hz. The key condition, of course, is having a sufficiently powerful computer. If the graphics card doesn't produce as many FPS as the monitor has hertz, you're paying extra for a spec you simply don't use. LG Display's test data show, however, that hardcore esports players, professionals and people highly sensitive to motion can gain a real advantage from 480Hz panels. The perception threshold in extreme conditions, such as very fast pans or texture detail close to the face, can shift toward 600 Hz. Anything above that is increasingly a technical arms race between manufacturers, which rarely changes anything in actual gameplay.
