I’m planning a new system a and wondering if — for sim racing — there’s any advantage to paying more for a monitor with a faster response time. If there is, is 1 ms better. than 2, 2 better than 3, etc.? If it matters, where’s the sweet spot between performance and price?
Thanks!
You don't have to worry about response time up to 5 ms. I won't buy anything above 5ms but not because of "gaming", but because of general quality.
The response time shouldn't be confused with input lag. It's just how long it takes a pixel to flick around (as you know flatscreens flip crystals around).
This is not about input lag, it's about smearing/ghosting etc.
At for example 30ms response time, your mouse will be a bit lagging behind your hand but the more important issue would be the massive smearing. You'd have a white line across your monitor as 30ms response time also probably means 30ms until it changes again when the cursor isn't at that position anymore.
BUT:
I also once ordered a monitor with 1ms response time and the ghosting/smearing was insane!
When scrolling through a text I would have a black halo in front of the scroll direction and a yellow halo behind it.
Meaning as soon as I started scrolling (black text on white background), I saw every line 3x!
I just packed it back in its box and sent it back. Wtf...
So response time alone isn't a good indicator but it simply shouldn't be too high.
I had a 1ms TN panel for years, now I have a 4ms IPS panel since 1,5 years. Both totally fine, in fact the ips panel has less ghosting/halo when scrolling etc.
The big problem with these liquid crystals is how well they respond and how well they are tuned.
They always lag behind, producing ghosting/halo behind a scrolling text.
To counter that, the monitor controller will pump some extra voltage into the crystal, called "overdrive".
This accelerates the movement but if the overdrive is too high, the next pixel will start to flick too so you'll end up with a halo in front of your scrolling text.
You can see the bad monitor I ordered had both. Too high overdrive and still too slow. 1ms response time my ass..
Next problem is that these "response times" are only grey to grey. It can be way worse for colours!
Anyway, just read a test about your future monitor. TFT Central, PRAD, enough good sites out there
About this overdrive:
A look at monitor response times, how they are measured and our hardware for testing in our reviews
www.tftcentral.co.uk
And how it looks for the Samsung C32HG70 panel with the 3 different overdrive settings and different backgrounds:
You can see at the "fastest" settings and the dark background how the overshoot causes a halo both in front and behind.
1ms is the best, I suppose that is just fact. And you can get some good value monitors with that response time, the price depends on the rest of the specs too.
But I currently have a 5ms and it works perfectly fine. It's a Samsung 43inch ultra wide and I love it for sim racing.
I also play fast action graphics intense games such as Doom, and again, I have no complaints, it is running Doom Eternal perfectly.
I've had monitors of 1ms & 2ms & 5ms in the past, and the response time of the monitor has never been a noticeable thing for me. OK, it's possible that windows open up a tiny fraction slower on the desktop with a 5ms, but in game I am not feeling any difference.
The only time I did notice that response time was when I tried a couple of large screen TVs to see if they would be suitable for gaming - the answer was no, there was *very* noticeable lag i.e. in the mouse or controller movement or when opening / closing windows, so I wasn't happy to play games using them. But they were more like 10 - 20 ms.
So yes, I would definitely not go above 5ms, and 1ms would always be the 'winner', but 5ms doesn't concern me if the rest of the specs suit my needs.
As I explained above:
You confuse input lag with response time. TVs have this massive input lag because of their inbuilt post-processing. Even with "game mode", like my Samsung TV has, it still has some stuff active that causes some tiny input lag.
Monitors usually don't have any post processing so they don't really have input lag.
The response time is only about "clarity".
Like when you flick your view 180° in a competitive first person shooter: how much will you still see during the fast movement, how blurry will it become.
High refresh rates mostly guarantee good response times (for colours too, not just grey to grey) as at 60 hz, a pixel can have a maximum 16.6ms response time while at 144 hz it only has 6.9ms.
Since 6.9ms is already enough for a good quality, most 144 hz monitors have a good clarity during movements.
May I ask why the i7 and not the i5?
I bought the 10600k a month ago after doing a lot of research and calculating costs vs performance.
For gaming, you won't gain anything apart from maybe a higher OC due to better binning.
Do you really need the 2 cores on top?
The 3 10th gen CPUs at high OC in Kingdom Come Deliverance, probably the only game out there right now that can make use of more cores:
6 fps a lot more money.. Better save the money and buy a new CPU when 7 Nanometers is a thing for Intel too...
