You’ve heard of CPU or GPU bottlenecks, but monitor bottlenecks? Well, when you think about it, your monitor is where the rubber hits the road when it comes to gaming performance. Just like a high-performance car with bad tires, it doesn’t matter how good things are under the hood if you can’t make it to the finish line.
This is a more common problem than you might think, because most people don’t upgrade their monitor nearly as often as their other components. Which is funny because a better monitor can often improve your gaming experience more than a faster CPU or GPU.
When frames outrun your display
The first and most obvious way a monitor bottlenecks your gaming performance happens when your computer renders more frames than your monitor can actually display. For example, a 60Hz monitor can only show you 60 complete frames every second. So if your computer is rendering 200 frames every second, 140 of them are never seen and offer you no visual benefit. Sure, the game’s internal state might benefit from lower latencies, but you’ll never see more than 60fps of smoothness no matter what. You can extend this to any arbitrary refresh rate, whether 120Hz, 240Hz, or more.
An example of screen tearing.
So, without a display capable of showing your frames, your only option for benefiting from your powerful computer is to limit the frame rate and divert that processing power to higher game settings, but depending on how powerful your computer is that might only help up to a point.
Technologies like VRR, FreeSync, and G-Sync help prevent screen-tearing, but they don’t actually cap the frame rate, so you’ll still need to use some form of frame limiting if you’re making more frames than your monitor can handle.
Resolution: The silent performance killer
Credit: Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock.com
You might think having a higher resolution monitor is always better, but thanks to how flat panel displays work with their physical fixed pixel arrays, you have to render your game at this “native” resolution to get the best results. This becomes a problem when your computer can’t handle the resolution in question.
If the GPU puts out a lower resolution than the native grid of pixels need, some sort of scaling solution is needed. This is why so much time and effort has been poured into scaling technologies like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. Processing power thrown at solving the problem of scaling images without horrible artefacts or poor image quality. These technologies work well, but they aren’t perfect yet.
At the same time, using a monitor with a resolution much lower than your GPU was designed for leads to wasted power, especially if you can’t divert that power to higher settings or better frame rates.
The refresh rate and response time trap
Credit: Amazon
Monitor performance is much more nuanced than just a refresh rate number. Even though a cheap and expensive monitor may both have the same refresh rate, that’s different from the pixel response time.
With every refresh, and thus every frame, the pixels in the monitor panel only have a small slice of time to change from its current state to the next. This pixel response time is often listed as a GtG or “grey-to-grey” number, which is a good measure of how well a monitor does with motion. Let’s say your monitor has a GtG of 5ms and a refresh rate of 144Hz. That’s great because there’s about 7ms of time between each refresh to complete the transition. However, on a 240Hz monitor you only have just over 4ms, which would be no good with a 5ms pixel response time!
If the pixels in your monitor change state too slowly to be in time for the next refresh, you get smeary motion and ghosting. It’s more complicated than that even, because while GtG is a good average indicator, some transitions can take much longer and trip up some panels. VA panels, for example, are notorious for slow dark-to-dark transtiions, which results in “VA smear” in some situations.
Resolution
HD Wide 1440p
Screen Size
27-inches
Brand
Alienware
Max. Refresh Rate
180 Hz
Response Time
1ms
Adjustable Stand
Yes
Color and contrast matter more than you think
Credit: Tim Rattray / How-To Geek
What’s the point of having a computer that renders beautiful graphics, and then piping it to a monitor with washed-out colors and grey blacks? This is why OLED monitors are so popular with PC enthusiasts and console gamers alike. There’s an instant and obvious improvement in image quality without needing an ounce of extra performance from your computer. It’s about the quality of your frames as much as it is about the number of them, and a bad monitor can make each frame look worse than it actually is.
How to match your monitor to your PC
Finding the right sweet spot between your monitor and computer is a moving target, but I think there are some broad rules of thumb that hold true when you look at popular resolutions for gaming as of the mid 2020s.
Entry-level GPUs like the RTX 3060, 4060, and 5060 (and their AMD equivalents) are pretty much all you need when paired with a 1080p monitor. In most games these cards should offer quite high frame rates even at higher game settings. You can take advantage of this by looking for a 1080p monitor with a higher refresh rate and some form of compatible variable refresh rate technology. However, be wary of cheap panel technology and, in general, IPS panels are the best choice here. 1440p is also a viable target if VRAM isn’t a limiting factor, and technologies like DLSS and FSR can help bridge the gap where needed.
For mid-range GPUs, high-refresh 1440p monitors are pretty much a match made in heaven. Think of cards like the RTX 4070 or 4070 Ti. Playable frame rates at 4K are certainly within reach here, but for my money 1440p is the sweet spot here. It also gives you access to premium OLED monitors or other better quality gaming monitor options. 1440p is currently the gaming monitor resolution that has the most attention and support, so there are many awesome options.
If you have a high-end GPU (e.g. a 4080. 5090, etc.) then, well, 1440p is still a good choice, especially at very high refresh rates, but it does open the door to 4K monitors with higher refresh rates. However, getting refresh rates above 120Hz in 4K gaming monitors has been slow going, and 4K is still a heavy resolution for even the best cards, so it really does depend on your standards when it comes to frame rates.
There’s so much more we could talk about when it comes to how your monitor can hold a gaming rig back, but the key takeaway here is that your monitor is a performance component just like your RAM, CPU, GPU, or SSD. Which means it can be bottleneck just like any of those components.
