Does a monitor matter for gaming

You might be in the market for gaming monitors. You are not sure whether the monitor that you want to buy for you or your kid is worth it. You are probably wondering now, if a monitor matter for gaming? Well, you are in luck, our team of experts in monitors have spent countless hours to answer whether a monitor matters for gaming.

Gaming monitors

Good Gaming monitor

Yes! The monitor matters for gaming, since you will want to have the best features to game at a higher level. You will also want to have any sort of advantage when competitive gaming.

A gaming monitor will help you improve the quality of your gaming, but there are multiple things you will want to look at to. Ideally you get a gaming pc with your gaming monitor. Keep in mind, the monitor matters, but it may or may not improve your performance.

You will want to focus on your gaming monitor:

• Refresh rate
• Resolution
• Response time
• Size
• Flat or curved monitors
• Panel type

Refresh rate

The refresh rate is the frequency in which the display updates the monitor’s screen image. The refresh rate is measured in hertz. The higher the refresh rate the better.

When you are using a gaming monitor, you should have at least a refresh rate of 75 Hz or greater. Depending on your budget, you should try to buy a gaming monitor that has a refresh rate of 120 Hz or even 144 Hz.

If you use a gaming monitor with a refresh rate of 60 Hz, the gaming monitor will not be as smooth and might not provide you with a good gaming experience. However, with a higher refresh rate, the game will appear smoother and the computer will respond quicker. Higher refresh rate monitors will be more expensive than lower refresh rate monitors.

Resolution

Resolution is the number of pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. You will want a higher resolution on top of a great refresh rate, but you have to make sure your graphics card has the capacity to display your gaming monitor’s resolution. We will go into more details about graphics cards later in the article.

Here are different resolution types:

• 1080p
• 2k or 1440p or 2560×1440
• 4k or resolution of 3860 x 2160 pixels

1080p

1080p or 1920 x 1080 pixels is the most common resolution for gaming. You can get any type of gaming monitor that you want and it will be cheaper than a higher resolution monitor for gaming. The image quality will not be as good as 2k or 4k resolution, but can be fine with gaming monitors. Many gaming monitors have at least 1080p resolution.

2k or 1440p

A 2k or 1440p resolution is a step above 1080p resolution for gaming monitors. You will be able to find gaming monitors that are cheaper than gaming monitors with 4k resolution. All good gaming monitors have at least 2k resolution.

4k

4k or 3860 x 2160 pixels is also called ultra high definition resolution. This will give you the best image quality of all the resolutions.

Response time

Response time is the time it takes for the monitor to respond to an input from the computer and change pixels from black to white. For gaming monitors, you want a low response time. A 5ms response time is usually fine but that should be the slowest your gaming monitor should be. The fastest response time for gaming monitors is .5 ms.

If you have too slow of a response time, it could result in ghosting, which is no fun. Ghosting is when the pixels trail behind a moving object. It can get quite frustrating when ghosting happens on your gaming monitor because your response time is too slow.

Size

You can get any size gaming monitor, but it is recommended to have either a 27 inch monitor or 32 inch monitor for gaming.

Flat or curved monitors

We recommend getting a curved monitor, but you can get either type of monitor for gaming. The curved monitor will provide you a great gaming experience and able to see the monitor from multiple angles.

Panel Type

• VA panels
• IPS panels
• TN panels

VA Panels (Vertical alignment panels)

VA panels have liquid crystals in the computer screen. The liquid crystals become parallel to the glass of the computer monitor when there is electrical pressure. For gaming monitors, we recommend VA panels.

IPS Panels (In plane switching panels)

Similar to VA panels, IPS panels have liquid crystals in the computer screen. Most monitors have either VA panels or IPS panels.

TN Panels (Twisted nematic panels)

Twisted nematic panels have the lower response times than the other two panels, but do not slow the gaming monitor resolution. Even though they are the worst of the three, they help make the monitor have the fastest refresh rate.

Things you will want to focus on for your pc for your gaming monitor:

• GPU (graphics card)
• CPU

GPU

A graphics card is a computer expansion card and it generates a feed of graphics output to a display device. The graphics card is an external component of the computer. Some great companies that make amazing quality graphics cards are Nvidia and AMD.

CPU

A central processing unit is an internal component of the computer that executes instructions of a computer through electric circuits.

Input lag

Input lag means the time it takes for your gaming monitor to realize output from your graphics card. Another example of input lag is the delay between pushing a button on your keyboard or mouse and your gaming monitor identifying that action.

Clearly, input lag is not good for your gaming monitor and you should definitely avoid input lag as much as possible. Good gaming monitors usually do not experience input lag.

Recap

We believe that the top four components for a good gaming monitor are response time, refresh rate, resolution, and graphics card.