Yeah, I wasn't really disagreeing with you just saying CPU seems to usually be the weak link, but it depends and you're 100% right about balance.

Also the sad fact is we'll never be playing everything at 144hz (or more). Even with some godlike titan PC or whatever there will be games that cap your framerate or break above 60fps. I'm replaying Fallout 3 at the moment and anything over 60 breaks the physics, and despite it being so mod friendly no one's figured out a fix yet. It just is what it is.

In other words, it sucks but it's just a truth you have to accept when getting a 144hz monitor that you'll fall in love with high refresh and then have to go without it sometimes.

Can you explain how these non-visible frames make a big difference?

It still makes a difference due to input lag. The most common and naive use of vsync means that your game reads inputs, then immediately renders the scene, and waits for the GPU to present the frame on next sync.. which is where you end up waiting for up to 1000/Hz milliseconds for the frame to be displayed. For a game that renders very fast, that means you always get ~16 milliseconds of pure latency on 60Hz refresh. Simply allowing the game to render at double the framerate gives you much fresher frames with no more than 8 ms of introduced latency.

Quake 3 also has wonky physics and you can circle-strafe-bunnyhop faster with higher framerates, though neither 60 nor 120 fps are optimal.

Of course, (physics wonkiness aside) it is possible to do much better than render at 120 fps, in the case of games like Quake 3. If you know the hardware can process an entire frame in one millisecond, then you can wait for 15ms after vsync, then gather your inputs and render.. voila, no more than 1.66ms of latency. 99% of commercial game developers cannot be bothered to implement something like this, even if it's simple.

I didn't know about the effect on input latency. But the person I quoted didn't mention any V-sync or input latency - in fact, he didn't say much at all, except for "big difference". Nothing about what I said warranted this defensiveness. We're not mind reader around here.

That said, I consider input latency caused by V-sync a personal pet peeve (not mine) - not a "big difference". Hyperbole is fine, but own up to it.

Guess we're all sensitive to different things. For me, input latency is the one thing that used to always nag me whenever I picked up a new game. By contrast, animation smoothness is something I perceive but am not particularly sensitive to (except in a few games like stepmania). A first person shooter at 45 fps with low input latency is ok. I can see the jerkiness, but it doesn't bother me that much. A game that runs at a smooth 60 fps but has vsync input lag just irritates me a lot. So it's a big deal for me. Smoother animation from going 144Hz is merely a "nice to have but wouldn't pay much for it" to me. The main thing though is that freesync + 144Hz means I can always keep vsync on (no more tearing and wasting CPU or GPU cycles) and get reasonable latency.

I too was wondering what "input latency" was. Thank you for your explanation.

There are several things that make up the input latency. Scaling down from the monitor's native resolution and some picture postprocessing typical for TVs are two more I would like to mention. Especially bad if the monitor/TV has a slow processor.

Thank you for the explanation (s)! It makes me wish that I could actually see it ('high' input latency), experience it for myself. (or maybe not, then I'd be bothered by it myself, maybe ;-) )

OT: I've never experienced a high refresh rate monitor myself, but what I conclude from online discussions:
- People into fast paced and/or competitive games: they all (most of them?) find: more Hz/fps than 60 = better.
- Anyone else: they're divided on the 'issue'.*

I'm in this category. I have a 60 Hz screen, but some games at an fps a lot lower than 60 fps can feel perfectly 'smooth' to me. Knowing that, I just can't imagine that an fps higher than 60 would ever matter to me.

That is what I am trying to understand. It may be unimportant to me, or maybe it would be important once I tried it but I won't miss until then.

Not all competitive games need more than 60 fps, some are even locked to 60fps despite 144Hz screen support (eg fighting games). It highly depends on the game and how sensitive you are, myself fall in the same category as clarry, I tend to be more sensitive to input lag than to high refresh rates. However some games play way better with high fps and no V-Sync, CS-GO is the classic exemple.

As a exemple 2 "similar" games I know quite well Dirt Rally and Richards Burns Rally, both are considered the "best" Rallye games (until Dirt Rally 2) towards the simulation side.
Dirt I can play with V-Sync on, there's considerable input lag but once used to it, becomes almost not noticeable and lap times fall in the same range.
Richards Burns is almost unplayable with V-sync on to the point of crashing in almost any stage. Disable V-Sync and run it at high refresh and suddently all the crashing is gone, driving is smooth as. Not sure if it's the physics, the input lag, the old v-sync implementation or placebo but is way easier to control the car at higher fps in a 60Hz screen.

Currently playing Shadow Tactics and I'm ok with 20-30fps... Movement is jerky and more strain to the eyes (on a very subject opinion) but very playable.
The previous game I played, Mirror's Edge, had lot's of input lag with V-sync on. Turn it off and the camera responds almost instantly to mouse movement.
Fun fact: 1 person on my family who is sensitive to motion sickness on First Person games is usualy able to play without V-Sync and not with V-sync on.

I won't be using the computer for gaming only. I'd say more than 70% of the time I'll be doing something else. I do know that greater real estate does provide gains all the time (unless you apply a lower resolution, or the software has a fixed window size). Higher refresh rates are much smaller in scope of improvements. Given that the money does not stretch, part of the question is: would it be worth sacrificing 4K resolution (going into 1440p) to gain 144Hz? I suppose I could buy a great screen with QHD or a medium UHD.
I'm thinking of opening another thread to discuss the resolution (I wanted to learn a bit more on refresh rates beforehand), but you may as well share your thoughts on this.

There is nothing to figure out since it's hardcoded in the engine. We can thank consoles for that. But luckily, high refresh rate monitors allow you to change their refresh rate to lower ones so you don't have to turn on terrible stuff like V-Sync or hard capping the frame rate by some external software. Mine can choose between 60, 100, 144, 200 and 240.

But it's still fun watching Skyrim intro videos where people run it at insane frame rates. The cart becoming a pogo stick and launching into space, thr horse's torso stretching 30 meters and other fun stuff all the while the player is firmly rooted in place on the cart :P

If you plan on playing anything new, I would avoid the performance killer that is 2160p. Unless you're going to get a larger than 27 inch screen, it is definitely not worth it IMO. To me, higher FPS always > than higher resolution.

Like I said earlier, you notice the fluidity of 144hz even on a Windows desktop. Switch back to 60hz and it feels awful. However if you're mainly doing business or artistic tasks, then the higher pixel density allows you to have a bigger screen which can also be helpful, or edit 4k video natively, so it depends on your priorities.

144hz benefits literally everything you do though, it's not just for competitive FPS games or whatever. You feel it in everything.

There's no need to be a mind reader.
Besides the, good, explanation you were given by clarry, Quake ]I[ Physics engine is dependent on framerate, simply, which can manke a "big difference".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he02vJvKaRs

If that isn't a "big difference" I really don't know what else it is.