Does anyone need a 1k Hz gaming display?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/does-anyone-really-need-a-1000-hz-gaming-display/

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

25 70 2 years ago

max-ibel• 2 years ago

The vibe of this article reads much like that of those praising gold plated audio cables.

Then again, growing up on amber CRT tubes, my sensory apparatus is no longer able to discern those higher echelons of perfection anyways ...

brudgers3• 2 years ago

It is reasonable to use gold plated connectors when the jacks are gold plated just as with any other electrical connection. Matching metals avoids oxidation do to galvanic action. Sure it probably doesn't matter with audio cables, but it is reasonable in that case.

But of course $20 gold cables connecting two $1000 electrical components with steel jacks doesn't make technical sense. For many people it makes emotional sense in a way where nobody gets hurt so it's not a place I find my outrage and it's not the most ignorant thing I am likely to come across on any given day. YMMV.

Anyway, you can measure the difference between a 1000Hz and a 120Hz display with an ordinary oscilloscope. With audio cables not so much.

amluto2• 2 years ago

I used to make my own RCA cables out of bulk RG59 or RG6 coax (which has excellent performance [1] and is cheap) and decent connectors. “Decent” means that it doesn’t corrode, goes on easily, stays on, and makes good electrical contact with the shield and center conductor.

A really nice compression connector costs under $2. The tool costs about $20. The cable costs basically nothing. Other than being a thick and a bit stiff, the results are excellent.

[1] Unbalanced audio is sensitive to picking up 60Hz noise. RG6 isn’t designed for such low frequencies, but any decent coaxial cable will fairly effectively limit this type of noise to the shield. Balanced cable would be much better but needs different gear.

PaulHoule• 2 years ago

Motion blur is for real, particularly in VR. A 1000Hz monitor for gaming has the potential to be great but could be worse in other ways (tradeoffs) and generating 1000 frames per second.

Other people might not be so affected but I find 30ms or so of latency in the display system throws me off for games. If I play League of Legends or Titanfall I just get hit and can’t do anything about it if I am playing with the slow panel on my “gaming” laptop or a Samsung TV in normal mode. I even struggle with some single player games like Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet. If I hook up a cheap but fast monitor or put on Game Mode it is a night and day difference for me.

modeless8• 2 years ago

I would like to try a 1 kHz display. I can definitely tell the difference between 120 and 240 Hz for mouse pointer motion. The motion blur tests mentioned in the article make it obvious as well. And Microsoft research has shown that when using direct touch interaction people can perceive latency all the way down to 1 ms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

Also an underrated feature of high frame rate is that it's a universal fix for poorly written software with multiple frames of latency. An application with 10 frames of latency will be faster on a 1 kHz display than a perfectly coded application on a 60 Hz display.

dullcrisp• 2 years ago

Hmm couldn’t you just skip frames to achieve that same effect on any monitor?

modeless8• 2 years ago

Well, with a latency floor at the real refresh rate. But it would be nice if OSes provided a feature like that. In general modern desktop compositors tend to go in the other direction, adding frames of latency universally to all applications.

user_7832• 2 years ago

Tangentially related on the topic of latency perception: Computer latency: 1977-2017 by Dan Luu

I also remember an HN post where it was possible to measure latency in 2 halves of the screen, top folks were able to detect it to single digit ms. I think could see upto around 16 or 32ms on my 60hz (FW13) screen.

[0] = https://danluu.com/input-lag/

foxhill3• 2 years ago

An application with 10 frames of latency will be faster on a 1 kHz display than a perfectly coded application on a 60 Hz display.

thats actually not true. you seem to be implying that the best a 60hz display can manage is 16.6ms of latency. indeed that is the worst case value, but you should consider that early graphics technologies involved changing display modes mid scan.

it’s actually not ridiculous to suggest that old platforms had sub-millisecond latency; they did. if the scanline was on, or just before, the line where you would interact (i.e., the prompt line), the text you enter would appear immediately.

of course, “vsync”, tear free, and such like approaches “fixed” this - necessarily by adding at least a frame’s worth of latency - but also adding perceptual latency.

it’s an oft-overlooked aspect of refresh rates. a 60hz CRT, without vsync, still has the lower bound of latency lower than a 120hz display. perhaps even 240hz.

i’ve used two 240hz displays for years now. i’ll never go slower than that.

IshKebab2• 2 years ago

I think you should assume that we aren't talking about CRTs. Come on.

modeless8• 2 years ago

you seem to be implying that the best a 60hz display can manage is 16.6ms of latency

Yes, if you control the whole software stack it is possible to do beam racing to get lower than one frame of latency (assuming low latency hardware for input and display panel scanout). But I'm talking about desktop/mobile applications. In general operating systems do not do this, and many actually make it impossible. Only very recently has it become possible to do beam racing in a windowed application (not using fullscreen exclusive mode) on Windows with recent graphics hardware with multiplane overlay and very, very few people have attempted to do it. I believe it is strictly impossible to do beam racing for windowed applications on macOS and Linux/Wayland. Not sure about iOS and Android.

stavros2• 2 years ago

Except applications don't tend to lag "for ten frames", but for "ten ms". Your application that skips ten frames at 100 Hz will skip a hundred frames at 1 KHz.

modeless8• 2 years ago

It's true that some applications have input lag due to simply being slow to process input. But there are many applications that actually process input fast enough, but still have a lot of input lag because of various forms of buffering linked to frames. A typical scenario would be 1.5 frames of latency due to the desktop compositor, 2-3 frames due to buffering in the graphics API (graphics APIs optimize for throughput instead of latency by default), and 1-2 frames because the application state doesn't completely update on the same frame as the input is received. Ten frames would be unusually bad, but it can happen. It all adds up! And all of that is made faster by higher frame rates.

Properly made applications can bypass most of that latency but few bother to really optimize for it, so a systemwide fix is welcome.

BobbyTables2• 2 years ago

tcfhgj• 2 years ago

People don't like to be told that they don't need something when they want something

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

1ms to render each frame.

Does any game meaningfully achieve this today? Even if it’s visually inexpensive, there’s so many things that contribute to a baseline cost per frame.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

CS:GO used to hit 300 cap so probably somewhat higher, but after visual upgrade of CS2 I heard it is more demanding. At that point the delay starts to become also interesting in every part. You can generate 1000 frames, but how much latency is there from inputs and so on to screen might be multiple frames.

matharmin• 2 years ago

These days graphics cards do (optional) frame generation, which gives a much higher framerate than what the game can natively do. Still not sure whether that will get you to 1khz, but it would be closer at least.

7bit• 2 years ago

"Does anyone really need an automobile?"

People after the first automobile was invented.

coffeebeqn2• 2 years ago

Really? This is more like does anyone really need a car that goes 1000 mph

modeless8• 2 years ago

I mean, if it has zero safety concerns and it's possible to actually go 1000 MPH on the freeway, then sign me up! Who wouldn't want to get there faster if there were no downsides?

logicchains• 2 years ago

Driving a car isn't a good analogy because if we were driving a car remotely from a system with only 100hz refresh rate we'd definitely notice the difference even if only driving at 100 mph.

anticorporate• 2 years ago

It's a perfect analogy, because we pointlessly reshaped our world around automobiles before realizing that no, in fact, most of us didn't need one, and we would have been better off had we not created a society in which everyone has to have one in order to exist.

theultdev7• 2 years ago

There was a lot of horse shit everywhere before cars.

You could go back to bicycles but that's not great when you have a family of groceries and kitty litter to carry home in the rain.

Or when need a trip to the hospital or any other emergency.

So yes, many people need a car, and it enables personal freedom.

I live in a small town you can walk end to end in 15 minutes, it has everything you need in a small area, but a car still makes life easier and more fun.

How do you propose we structure society where you don't need cars?

dyauspitr2• 2 years ago

Hard disagree. I love the freedom of going anywhere I want in the country on a whim. I love suburban and rural living that would be very hard without extensive roads. I could go on and on about the benefits of cars over public transit.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

Ltt has done some videos, probably there are other channels but I haven't looked. The results I remember are that 240hz was significantly better than 144hz, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA but past that fps is sort of meaningless as the response time is slower than the refresh rate and you get artifacts. https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/11z0gab/240hz_...

Drew_• 2 years ago

past that fps is sort of meaningless as the response time is slower than the refresh rate and you get artifacts.

Not quite accurate since OLED panels do just fine driving >240 Hz refresh rates. There are already 360 Hz OLED panels on the market.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

What I meant is that fps by itself, without other information, is meaningless for judging panels. Like if someone says they got a 500hz panel, it is not necessarily better than a 240hz - LCD vs. OLED for example. But if you are comparing panels from the same manufacturer, same tech etc. then of course it is relevant. And obviously if you have a panel it would be stupid to run it at anything less than max fps, if your system can keep up.

spdif899• 2 years ago

Their general conclusion is focused on competitive gaming performance, which while certainly a valuable litmus test (especially for their target audience) does not tell the whole picture.

Optimum has reviewed some higher refresh rate monitors recently and provides some examples of where they can still give an advantage, not necessarily in reaction time but in smoothness and clarity in fast scenes. Here's a good example with a 540Hz display: https://youtu.be/nqa7QVwfu7s

One advantage in the market that is overlooked in this type of "do we need X" challenge is the increased accessibility of things less than X. For example productivity monitors at 120, 144, even 240Hz are more affordable and easier to find, as panel production becomes cheaper and the gaming brands push the marketing numbers up and up. New 480/540Hz monitors cost what a 144Hz monitor cost ten years ago.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

Here's a good example with a 540Hz display: https://youtu.be/nqa7QVwfu7s

That doesn't actually contradict my point? Like the response times on that monitor are pretty good, per 4:17 it is generally 0.3ms to go from gray to black. But if for whatever reason you had to go from black to white the response time is 3.5ms - that is 285hz so your "540hz" monitor is not going to keep up with the signal. Talking about frame rates is sort of like talking about your fuel tank size - sure, there are cases where the extra gallons help, but practically most people care about horsepower. And similarly what actually matters for monitors is response time.

Apparently TCL didn't disclose any specs of the panel, just said "an LCD", so I wonder if the panel is actually new tech. They didn't even allow running screen tests. So it could be they just prototyped the controller and used a standard panel. Then the response times are horrible but nobody can tell because it's running a prerecorded demo that avoids showing the glitchy artifacts.

Mathnerd3144• 2 years ago

the gaming brands push the marketing numbers up and up.

There is a trend in the opposite direction, where people read books and such on low-fps e-ink displays. It's true that people complain they are expensive and the low fps makes it useless for a lot of tasks, but there is still a market because the "like paper" display is so readable. I think that makes it clear that people have a variety of needs. Your logic is something like trickle-down economics - it is certainly important to continue doing research into displays but this doesn't necessarily translate into cheaper panels. I would say the main reason you can get a cheap $100 monitor now that is the equivalent of a $700 CRT from 30 years ago is economy of scale. The manufacturing process is more automated and streamlined with fewer assembly steps, and there are many competing manufacturers.

Meanwhile 240hz is justifiable even for non-gaming, e.g. https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/gaming-monitors/tcl-de... who says he noticed the benefits of 240hz just browsing and scrolling.

superkuh• 2 years ago

If they want to show smooth motion to chickens then yes.

empath75• 2 years ago

Seems like it would be hugely important for making pass-through AR work completely seamlessly if the hardware can keep up with it. Of course then you'd have to deal with your head literally being on fire from the heat.

modeless8• 2 years ago

The top concerns for AR displays are field of view, brightness, and size/weight. Frame rate is less important than those three after 90 Hz. Frame rate doesn't constrain head tracking latency because head motion can be sampled arbitrarily close to the frame presentation time.

jasonlfunk• 2 years ago

Certainly there is an upper limit to what our eyes/brains can perceive. I don’t know what it is, but I’d imagine 1 kHz is getting close.

mrob• 2 years ago

"Flicker can be perceived during saccades at frequencies in excess of 1 kHz"

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147715351243636...

"The temporal modulation appeared as a spatial pattern known as a ‘phantom array’ during the saccade. The appearance of the pattern enabled the discrimination of flicker from steady light at frequencies that in 11 observers averaged 1.98 kHz."

I personally can see it at substantially higher frequencies. And note that displaying 2kHz flicker requires a 4kHz monitor.

wwalexander2• 2 years ago

Are there any consumer GPUs that can push 4K at 1000Hz? And what display connector(s) are being used?

LtdJorge• 2 years ago

4k, not really. For 1080p, it's pretty easy on older games or less demanding/extremely optimized ones (like DOOM).

mike_hock• 2 years ago

Read: No, and nothing mainstream is ever going to design for it. There's always gonna be more visual processing you can cram in for more impressive looks if you accept a lower framerate and/or lower resolution. The trade-off will always be there. If you make the GPU fast enough to push 4K @ 1kHz, then developers are going to prefer to use the 32 times more compute they get by dropping to HD @ 120Hz to render more impressive graphics.

xyst• 2 years ago

Probably overkill at some point. Most casual gamers won’t see any difference though. Some professional gamers might, assuming their machine is able to sustain 1000+ fps

Does anyone need a 1k Hz gaming display?

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