you guys loved our last video using a high-speed camera to investigate the
real-world performance impact of upgrading to a high refresh rate gaming
monitor but you also had some feedback on both our testing methodology and our
gaming skills so for round two we reached out to NVIDIA for the
sponsorship we needed to take our test to the next level thanks to them we are
on location in the santa ana esports arena we've got a much wider variety of
tests and systems and we were able to get some very special guests to come and
participate representing the filthy casuals we've got yours truly and paul
from paul's hardware and we are going to get truly embarrassed today because in
the pro gamer tier we've got corey here from the washington justice esports team
i've kind of a general idea of what i'm doing today then we've got a couple of
outstanding twitch streamers mr grimms going from 144 to 240 kind of felt like
a slight upgrade for me and as so very
many of you requested the one and only
shroud going from 60 to 144 is like
night and day for me obviously right but 144 to 240.
so let's get down to business shall we
so to measure the impact of monitor refresh rate and FPS in game on our
subjects we've built a suite of five tests going from synthetic reaction time
tests to aiming tests to putting the whole thing together so behind me i have
three identical systems except that they've got one key trait modified so
they're all running core i9 9900k processors they're all running the same
acer predator 240hz displays
but their graphics cards have been altered system number one is running an
rtx 2060 super which is capable of running our test games today at anywhere
from around 250 to 300 frames per second
and its monitor has been completely uncapped to 240 hertz this is our best
case scenario for competitive gamers or so we think we'll see how the results
go today system number two is at the other end of the spectrum so our monitor
refresh rate has been turned all the way down to 60 hertz but we went even
further than that because having a very high performance graphics card on a 60hz
display still does actually give you
better responsiveness than if you had a lower performance graphics card so we
have dropped our GPU all the way down to a gtx 750. this is going to give us
anywhere from 70 to 85 FPS in our games
and finally by popular request representing the middle ground we've got
our third monitor dialed into 144 hertz and hooked up to a gtx 1650 that is
going to push anywhere from around 150 to 185 200 FPS now just like last time
our test subjects are going to have no idea what hardware they're sitting down
in front of until they actually start to game and we're going to be using
high-speed cameras to record not just their test scores that we could get out
of the software but also the exact points they're aiming at and even how
they aim so pulling that duty we've got a couple of prototype cameras from our
homeboys chronos that are capable of 1080p capture at a thousand FPS for 10
seconds at a time each giving us a total of 20 seconds of thousand FPS capture
now because that's not long enough for some of our tests pulling backup duty
today is our red epic w 8k camera that
is going to be running at 1080p 240 FPS
hey how's it going dude it's good
yeah okay so we set it up so that while we are
running in engine tests in game tests rather than just like a
web browser-based skills trainer the tests are really designed to test your
skills as opposed to test your ability at a game we actually had some special
development done for this video in the yprac game trainer so that we could get
exactly the data that we were after okay and what is ypak it's a workshop map by
jasper that's basically like a combination of a whole bunch of
different skills training things that you can do testing your reaction time
testing your flick shot aiming capabilities uh your your flow
kill rates as you have enemies popping up in a shooting gallery all kinds of
cool stuff okay so we got a lot of tests we've got five different tests and we're
gonna run them until we start to see statistical convergence and we can be
confident in our results per gamer so you'll be trying at three different
frame rates 60 FPS 240 FPS and 144 FPS
to determine where is that point of diminishing returns or
does FPS make a difference at all are great gamers just great gamers is it FPS
difference or and hertz or is it just FPS you know what i'm saying what a
wonderful question i am so glad to be working with people who get it today
this is awesome so that matters because if you're running a
60hz display but your graphics card is pumping out 300 frames per second in cs
go and your frame rate capped you are effectively getting much newer
information on screen than you would be if your graphics card was only
outputting let's say 70 75 frames per second so i was
actually really late to the 120 hertz uh monitor change so when i played
counter-strike i played on 60 hertz and all the top players i had no money at
the time because i was really young and all the top players had 120 hertz they were on that new new
right and i was sitting there and i was on 60 and i was still doing great i swapped to
120 honestly it didn't really change that much so i do
really think that if somebody played on a 60hz long enough they would play just
the same as playing as 144 long enough i guess we'll find out
well there's a lot of that today uh so i'm cory i go by corey inside of
game and i'm a damage dealer for the washington justice in overwatch uh i
didn't really start using like 144 240 until i started playing overwatch
interesting so that was quite recent for you then you're a late converter
how much of an improvement are you expecting to see going from 60 frames
per second to 144 and then from 144 to
240. 60 to 144 is like a huge jump like 70 like you feel the difference yeah you
immediately see it yeah uh you really have to be looking for that 144 to 240
yeah to really notice it but i'd say there's definitely a jump like a smaller
jump to the other maybe like 20 okay
started on twitch about like four plus years ago i got really into i actually
started with fighting games believe it or not got into shooters about like a
year later and then i just kind of basically just rode the wave of like all
the FPS uh you know evolution from like h1z1 to
like pubg and all the games that you know today i understand i'm supposed to
be representing a certain class of gamer
uh you told me it was probably the best the best of the best the technology
enthusiast class of gamer someone someone who builds more gaming
computers than actually plays video games yes we've got five different tests and
we're gonna run them until we start to see statistical convergence and we can
be confident in our results per gamer test number one today is pure reaction
time shroud clicks in order to indicate that he's ready for the test to begin and as
soon as it turns green he clicks again as quickly as he can
this tells us his raw reflexes do you want a red bull
what about coffee have coffee but have a little bit of
coffee sips it at every stage yeah you sip it at every stage
so this is a great discussion mike was hankering for a coffee and we actually
turned them down because we shot the tests out of order and we've already
done one without caffeine in the system so now we're just gonna have to see
just that's this is it your biological steady state i'm slow
i'm sorry i'm slow yeah i just don't i don't think for this
test specifically i don't think 60 240 144 i don't think it's gonna make a
difference because you're i mean the only time you feel 60 versus
240 is when you're moving around like so and you can feel like the tear and
everything and it's just something that you're not used to but when you're standing still it's all the same so i
don't think anyone knows the difference in my mind i know that it does not feel
good right because i'm on 60 and i'm like oh this feels terrible but i
actually haven't done legitimate like stats and break it down and like maybe i
did get less kills no i haven't wow so
one of the things our audience asked us to figure out is whether you are in fact
human and with that kind of consistency yes i
can't say that i'm sure that's really good is it
yeah i mean so consistent back in my glory days
maybe 1.5 consistent 1.72
now some of our tests are purely synthetic and a couple of them are
really focused on your reaction time now everyone knows that gamers are basically
over the hill by the time they turn 30. are you expecting your youth to be an
advantage in those kinds of tests versus someone like me i'm 33
i would say yeah a little bit wow what a dick you know what this interview is
over i mean it helps a little bit i'd say a lot of it comes down to practice in the
game because being used to be able to see like certain things like i was
watching sure i'll do the off in the middle of the double doors and if you're
not familiar with doing that every single day then uh it would kind of make a little bit of
a difference sure test number two is still a reaction time
test but this time it's a practical one the classic double doors sniper position
on dust2 so once you shoot to start
at random intervals a counter-terrorist player is going to
run across the door and jump across now these are bots so it will be in exactly
the same location every time so right there on the second line on the truck
there is about where he's gonna cross okay so this isn't about aiming it's not
about just keeping it steady clicking when i can correct okay how how am i
missing right now this is are we on 64 take
i'm telling you i hit this guy at least three times okay that was a whiff but
this is bad i guess this is a hard man
i'll get him eventually
oh boy i got nothing zero
how is that even possible
i it looks to me like he's hitting it just so you guys know we double checked
the server tick it's 128 that's not the issue it's not good
i'm sorry Linus well don't apologize to me apologize to
the millions of viewers oh okay
can you explain to both of us the science behind why those shots looked
like they were hitting but did not register yeah so at 60
frames and hertz you're kind of getting delay in two areas you're getting delay
from the game state to what's actually being shown on screen so the guy is
actually in a little bit different spot because the rendering took long enough to reach your monitor additionally your
input is also delayed so when you click
that is going to take a little bit longer time to actually reach the game site so you're getting
you're getting kind of latency in both directions that's pretty cool is there anything i
don't know and you can see we have multiple frames
of our thousand frame per second camera that correspond to a single
frame on the monitor because it's only refreshing 60 times a second right so i
go scroll through pretty quick here so that was a clear miss yeah
but this one up here how uh how tippy toes
can you get cause we can't really adjust this right now i'm good okay
so this one right here there's your crosshair
that one's more arguable you kind of hit him in the tush
so that tiny difference could be exactly what
was just explained to us then maybe interesting hey i hope so because that
makes me look real bad so i'm going to tell you something you
absolutely smoked shroud and corey in that test at 60 hertz do you think you
could train up at 60 and hit as many targets as you did at a higher
refreshment yeah definitely yeah i can't because honestly like when i was kind of
like going through the test and i was kind of feeling like you know that slight delay it's
almost like a pattern right you don't want to press it too fast otherwise
you're just going to come up short so like i mentioned before like i came
from fighting games right we had like a big uh delay between like xbox and
playstation especially when it comes down like three frame inputs and stuff like that for
this one it's a little similar if you press it too soon even though you feel
like you're confident you're gonna hit it right on the target you're gonna hit it way before so you have to like kind
of enter in your head that it's it's like a slight pattern because this one
you have to like master a delay with the higher refresh rate you just have to
master more of a reaction time i would say like it it's more on towards that
aspect high refresh rate doesn't make you a better gamer but it makes it
easier to be a better gamer i would say so yeah uh i am older now i'm a dad
not that that affects your reaction time it shouldn't get through your reaction did you get a good night's sleep last
night you know it wasn't bad it wasn't bad i only got up twice to change diapers
if it makes you feel any better shroud only hit 2 out of 30 on this really yeah
and same for corey the legitimate actual professional gamer oh
so the reason you're saying that i should also be a legitimate professional
gamer no that's not what i'm saying uh grimm's hit four out of ten
wow consistently he does have a reputation for being
pretty quick so you had mentioned something really interesting to me you said that
because we're running at such a low frame rate you can't really trust your
eyes and you're just going off muscle memory pretty much
interesting i can't track either it's too hard test number three we change
things up again your reaction time still matters a lot because you've only got
.45 seconds to hit each target at least
this is your game how you feeling about this one you got
one minute to hit as many red dots as you can yeah i mean i feel pretty good
so you just put up a 13 yeah in this one
that's really good i mean i'm missing like half of them so like
true listen to this guy missing half of them
so is that just pure muscle memory you've got your own mouse today you just
yeah i mean go yeah i think i'll own on that one
probably hopefully oh yeah
this guy he will he definitely definitely will
for sure yeah but he's like a cocky so i don't want to root for him it's my
game i play this game professionally i have to this is a hard test yeah
even 0.4 even 0.5 seconds would make a
big difference because i could tell there were ones where you in your room
it was so close
next up is test number four so you need great reaction time so you can spot the
bots popping up in our shooting gallery and you need to make your flick shots
because they're not going to stand still for long we're looking for your best time to make
15 kills this makes me look like i don't know how to play the game
i swear it's the settings in the flow test can you name a name for someone
that you think would just destroy that i would say
i probably could name every every counter-strike professional you know
they're all so good but if i was to name anybody i would name like
somebody from team liquid so maybe like stewie your
raw reaction time improvement going from 60 to 240 was the cleanest out of anyone
we tested today it was very noticeable to me and it was very consistent on the
60 hertz i was about 210 immediately dropped down to around 180
and i even i think i hit 142 or 146 at best which apparently makes me as good
or better than shroud i've been told i'm not sure if
wow 8-10 and how many did you get on 60 2
out of 110 i think if like i feel like
i'm doing the exact same same thing and watching for him to just appear in the
doorway and i'm clicking but incredible difference in in how effective i was at
this test on this test i got nine out of ten in comparison
to the last test where i could barely get two out of 30. i could
how sorry does it make a difference i guess the
answer is yeah
well mind you this is just one task one test just one test so what's interesting
though is that when i was here looking at your reaction times in milliseconds
they weren't that different
so then it comes down to that delay between the frame being prepared and
when it's drawn on the screen and
registering the click too it's great it's crazy i was sitting there it was
just a piece of cake i was just like done done done and then the other one
i just couldn't i couldn't land a shot he feels the same way right now
you guys got the exact same result that's a low bar that's all i have to
beat hey i love it it's way harder than that i feel like i
think i'm mindful then just keep the time
this is the first time i'm actually trying out like flick like programs or
like yeah modes i feel actually pretty good about it um
like i mentioned i regret not doing this earlier because i feel like i was getting better and better
so i definitely um i definitely feel way better than i thought it was so you're
definitely more comfortable shooting at human targets yeah like straight
absolutely 100 that was a completely different level
yeah it feels very different 19.16
seconds yeah compared to weren't you more in the neighborhood of 30
at 60 hertz yeah i had two 19s on 30 and i had like 35 one time and like 33. it's
so much harder on the other setup so much harder all right so that's
another under 20. yep i think i could get a 15. you think so i
i'm confident i can this one feels so weird though i'm actually just like
just hoping i hit it in time because i feel like i have a whole second delay as
if you would have a whole second more on that one yeah yeah you can definitely it
feels it's weird it feels like you actually have so much more time to react
even though it's this in theory it's the same amount of time but it's 12
milliseconds worst case scenario but then plus the actual
uh input delay as well so in terms of the actual like refresh rate of the
monitor it's very little but it actually is more than that so yeah it's great
very interesting so you just put up a 9 out of 10 in the double doors at 144.
yep so are you comfortable saying that 144 to 240 didn't really make a
difference for you here in this exact situation now because it feels it
i think the reason why this feels so so much the same is that it's
it's kind of like a still you're not really moving right you're just they're
looking for the cross you got the good frames you got 144 very
very similar and both your frame rate and your refresh rate are exceeding the
tick rate of the server yeah so you literally 10xed your result
in the flick shooting challenge going from 60 to 240 did it feel that much
better yes i i was hitting more shots uh
in particular the the the doorway on cs go like
i could barely touch it before like such poor performance and then suddenly i'm
hitting seven like seven out of ten so i can't accept responsibility myself it's
the technology that's that has given me this skill no it's great the difference
the frame rate and the hurts on the guy crossing the door it's so weird how on
that that okay it's the same thing but it's just not
it's weird okay so right now i'm doing 60 hertz but
on 300 frames instead of 60 hertz on like 80 frames
yes it's harder than the 240 hertz but
it's not quite as hard as the 60 60. you know
what i mean but it definitely is easier for sure there's not as much
i guess input lag is what i'd explained yeah i'd call it like jello yeah like
it's weird it does it doesn't float as much as yeah floaty floating that's a
really good word for it that result is exactly like you'd
describe the feel right in between a natural 60 FPS and 240 240.
so i had i think i had misunderstood this test i have to play against shroud
just for the first one you say that like it makes it a lot
better so test number five is going to be a good one and we've just got shroud
dialing in his mouse dpi and in-game sensitivity settings until he's at the
point where he feels like yeah this is pretty good ready to go now he does
usually use a g-pro wireless instead of a g-pro with a wire so that might
introduce a little bit of variability but at least it's the same
basic sensor so yep hopefully it's all right so test
number five is the shooting gallery test obviously everything we've seen so far
is still synthetic in the sense that you're playing against bots now it's
time to see if those skills translate into the real world and take on a human
opponent i sure wish i could have picked my opponent here but i don't get to
i did pick him but like not because i thought it would give me a chance to win
hey you could beat me here yeah i don't think so so the way this test works is
both competitors are going to be at the far end of a long hallway and seth from
NVIDIA is going to be crouched behind a half-height wall and just
popping up at random human
intervals whoever kills them first gets a point we play the best of five
then we get to switch computers
so you're on the struggle bus computer we'll see
is that what the pros do they switch switch to their weapons real fast i gotta get the jitters
gotta get the jitters out the land jitters
what man we're competing i would wish you luck but you don't need it
yeah yeah we're ready i guess wait oh
what the hell i was still talking wait a minute when he's a silhouette is he
hittable oh yeah he's got spawn
protection it
damn it
oh come on we both lived
yeah okay oh that's five nothing
how do you like that machine this is rough it's okay i'll be fine
i still don't think i'm going to win he was so fast
i'm ready i'm ready all right let's try this
oh there you go
crap i got one
damn holding a shot i'm slow
oh no crap you're faster than me
fact i overshot
oh no
yes no
okay fine okay okay
oh no unreal come on baby
no oh come on that's what i'm saying there
we go that was hard that was actually
noticeably harder i still lost
now what you guys are going head-to-head oh so nice to see who can headshot me
first i didn't even shoot
there's one
nice that was quick
oh hold on nice
we kind of suck at the off to be honest
oh boy
there's one damn
there's one
so that's it 5-2 for corey but
now they have to change places i don't think i played counter-strike in like an
absurd amount of time it's crazy i mean this whole thing's hard because
monitor fresh rate frames everything is that's what we're trying to do to you
it's it's rough you guys ready yep yep all right
okay it's just better that was quick
oh thai game ladies and gentlemen
hold on nice right in the center
jeez
we'll get him eventually yeah i'm not gonna lie i suck at this
it's two two red d ready
damn
nice still tied
oh what a shot
oh my god we're terrible yeah actually
oh boy you're embarrassing us
nice so no pressure or anything boys but next one wins
i'm gonna be as trixie as i can
shoot that's it
did you feel like 240 hertz made a difference in that challenge definitely
does for sure yeah especially in like the middle one you pick up and you go
down i think that matters the most do you feel
four hours smarter nope
no did you already know everything that we saw today
i so i want to say everything because i'm still under the impression that somebody
on 60 hertz can be just as good as somebody on 240 but now i'm starting to
think that it might vary based on games
i didn't expect my reaction time to be so bad because in reality my reaction
speed might look good compared to i don't know maybe like a
casual player or something yeah but in comparison to these pros and i've seen
their reaction time they're doing like 1.4 easy on average
and i'm at like 1.67 or something
when you're scanning around a map do you think having a higher refresh
rate monitor helps you identify a target more quickly that's where i'd say it
helps you the most because when you're moving the faster you move the harder it
is to see on 60 hertz if you're i mean the reaction time is
kind of a good way to put it i guess because like when you're looking at a
still image nothing's going to change but once everything's moving around it's
going to get a lot harder so yeah absolutely do you think that compared to
the gear you use your game sense and training your mind
is more important less important or equally important
i would say it's way more important that's like what you need to be a top tier gamer
hardware and peripherals and stuff of course does matter but you got to be
good at the game you know 144 and 248 does have a difference but
the difference is not like huge i would say
so you were the 60 hertz king today not
only did you nail more double door shots than shroud and corey combined i think
um you also scored equally on your bomb site defense between 60 and 144 i don't
know like i mean like i mentioned before like 60 hertz was you know pretty much
like my main thing for a while and then finally moving on it like when i
switched to 60 hertz um it all kind of felt familiar with like the delays and
you know button timing and all that stuff so i was kind of able to just pick it up right away
so um and with 144hz i mean pretty much that was like my main thing back at home
so it for me it wasn't really too tough to transition going back into the past
and then kind of back to the present cory and shroud had a lot of mitigation
strategies to compensate particularly between 144 and 240 their results were
usually very close do you think that the
lack of those strategies made it so that the hardware affected your ability to
perform better i would say definitely um just looking
at the scaling of my testing and i wasn't i wasn't trying to do anything
like that i was trying to be very straightforward from test to test
so i wasn't trying to figure out the ai too much or anything like that
but i so i think that maybe goes to show that
the hardware is going to have more of an impact on a casual gamer versus somebody
who's professional where those little those little gains you get from the
hardware are gonna have less of effect because they're already playing at such a high level one really interesting
takeaway based on shroud's much better performance at 60 hertz with the rtx
2060 super versus that aging 750
was that even if you're still running a 60hz monitor there is something to be
gained from a graphics card upgrade and running at much higher FPS because
there's just so much less delay even on your inputs
okay so it's been about a week and we've had some time to dig into our data and
our high speed footage and see if using a high refresh rate monitor and a
powerful graphics card like a GeForce rtx 2080 ti can make you a better gamer
it's worth going through test by test here while raw reaction times in our
synthetic test were similar across refresh rates when it came to reacting
to moving objects and timing in our double doors test
hit rates were way lower at 60 FPS 60
hertz than at our higher refresh rates
with most of our shots actually being just a few milliseconds off
we also have a couple of shots here where they look like they could have
been hits but ended up missing because at 60 frames per second the target's
location doesn't update as often which meant that what our camera and therefore
your eyes was seeing was already out of date by the time the shot landed
mr grimm showed us that with enough practice you can actually overcome some
of this disadvantage his experience with beat and rhythm games allowed him to
quickly familiarize himself with the speed of the queue so that's the
appearance of the opponent and then predict when they would cross his
crosshair but everyone including brims performed
better with frame rates over 60 FPS showing that with more information to
predict trajectory and speed everyone will perform better we actually had
shroud repeat this test at 60 hertz on his monitor but with a frame rate well
above 200 and the result was much better because the input lag and overall
latency is reduced but he still didn't land as many hits as when he had both
high FPS and a high refresh rate display in the overwatch flick test at 60 frames
and 60 hertz we definitely saw differences in aim movement it was
slower and with more corrective movement after the initial flick furthermore
shots would often be taken a few milliseconds after the target
disappeared the ghosting effect which occurs regardless of refresh rate is also
greater at 60 hertz and the displacement of the image between refreshes is larger
making everything look blurrier at speed which necessitates slowing down
onto our bombsite defense or flow state test at 60 frames and hertz movement is
slower because the position of in-game aim is less clear the timing of the
shots and movement prediction and tracking is worse and a movement between
targets ends up being slower and less accurate because the subject has to
readjust unsurprisingly shroud's runs in the
bombsite defense flow state test were the fastest though not actually the most
consistent what was surprising was that his fastest
runs were at 144 frames and hertz
this appears to have been due to the training effect where he had started to
recognize patterns in the test by the time he got to the 144hz station
with mr grims and paul neither of whom have played much cs go we actually found
that the less familiar you are with the activity the more the results line up
with our expectations so their runs were both faster and more consistent as the
refresh rate and frame rate increased we also found that i ended up being a
great example of the training effect as well i did my 144 frame and hertz test
first then i did 60 then 240 and my
runtimes ended up improving as i went
so overall 60 FPS at 60 hertz clearly
had the worst results in every test while some individual runs did have
better scores the consistency between runs was usually much better at 240hz
and the most predictable improvements were actually found in the more casual
players who didn't have as much game sense and muscle memory to rely on
so aim in game then could be described as a function of muscle memory response
prediction and confirmation when a target appears you begin to aim towards
it based on your existing knowledge of where your mouse is and where it needs
to be as you're moving you receive a visual and correct or continue your
movement until you've reached your target when your target moves you
predict where the target will be and when based on a combination of
pre-existing knowledge of speed and your brain calculating the speed and
trajectory based on what you see on the monitor so with lower frame and refresh rates
the following disadvantages are present you've got less up-to-date target
information due to frames being displayed for longer your movement is
blurrier thanks to the transition of frames between refreshes and you've got
a worse speed and trajectory estimation due to that lack of information
these effects can be overcome to a great degree with training but there's going
to be a limit to the situations where that training can be applied
so i wasn't surprised to find out that 60 FPS gamers are at a significant
disadvantage compared to high refresh rate gamers
but i was surprised at how big the difference was between 144 and 240. so
then all other things being equal will high FPS and a high refresh rate monitor
make you a great gamer no
but will it make you a better gamer undoubtedly so using a powerful graphics
card like an NVIDIA rtx 2080 ti thanks
again to our sponsor for making this whole video happen to see things sooner
and to have a better chance of hitting what you're aiming at does help and i
can't wait to see how this translates to 300 FPS 300 hertz and beyond
is that a teaser for a part 3 i will let you be the judge