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Just a few years ago, companies like Nvidia were talking about prototype 500 Hz gaming monitors as having “advantages [for] every game and gamer, not just competitive games and eSports professionals.” Now the high frame rate experts at Blur Busters are reporting a 4K, 1000 Hz screen prototype that will be shown by Chinese panel maker TCL CSOT at DisplayWeek 2024 , a manufacturer-focused conference.
TCL’s proof-of-concept panel is even more impressive because it doesn’t sacrifice resolution for its high frame rate – many current 480 Hz monitors tend to go up to 1080p resolutions or offer “dual mode” options for more -high resolutions at lower maximum refresh rates. And while recent advances in pixel flipping times have enabled TCL’s LCD prototype, Blur Busters estimates that 1000 Hz OLED displays could be commercialized as soon as 2027.
4K 1000Hz is displayed on #DisplayWeek2024 by TCL CSOT pic.twitter.com/xc2qsYocxX
— Blur Busters (@BlurBusters) May 15, 2024
The apparent, impending break of the four-digit refresh rate threshold got us thinking: Are we finally approaching the point of diminishing returns in monitor manufacturers’ long-standing battle over Hz? Or is 1000 Hz just the latest stepping stone to realms of motion smoothness that most gamers have yet to imagine?
60 fps is just the beginning
Research shows that most people stop detecting flicker in lights pulsating at around 60 Hz, a finding that has led many to mistakenly claim that the human eye “can’t see above 60 fps.” The misunderstanding stems in part from the fact that this “flicker threshold” usually measures how a person responds to flicker in a single light source. The eye’s reaction to the illusion of motion in a display made up of millions of individual pixels can be quite different.
A simple motion test on a high-end monitor is enough to clearly demonstrate the benefits of refresh rates above 60 Hz. Fast-moving objects on the screen look decidedly less blurry as you climb higher and higher on the refresh rate curve, because pixels from the object’s previous position “hold on” for less time at more high speeds. This low resistance can be especially important in virtual reality displays, where motion blur and lower refresh rates can lead to motion sickness when tilting your head quickly in a virtual environment.
Fast-moving objects look significantly less blurry as you climb the frame rate curve.
Once displays get to around 1000Hz, that’s when Blur Busters say you start to see results where “things stop motion blur.” But even faster refresh rates can help with the apparent sharpness of ultra-fast objects on Ultra HD displays—think of a mouse pointer or video game crosshair that can move through roughly 4,000 horizontal pixels on a 4K display in one second. To eliminate the stroboscopic effects that can occur on objects moving this fast, you may need a theoretical display of 10,000 Hz or more.
Of course, even with a 1000Hz monitor, you’ll need content running at 1000fps to take full advantage of the ultra-fast pixel flipping hardware. While this level of performance may sound ridiculous for current hardware running modern games, this kind of performance is no longer as unattainable as you might think. Nvidia’s data shows that the RTX 4090 generates 600+ fps frame rates on legacy but still popular games like Rainbow Six Siege and Fortnite at “High” settings and full 1440p resolution.
Factor in a few more generations of graphics card upgrades—not to mention frame-generation technology that can offer 10 re-engineered frames for every keyframe—and waiting a millisecond for your monitor to display a new image might not be quite absurd. The way things are going, we’re already looking forward to the day, years from now, when we look back at an article like this and find it strange that we were ever impressed by the idea of a display that barely exceeded 1000 Hz
