LG Display, the manufacturer responsible for the hardware found in the vast majority of the world’s OLED TVs and gaming monitors, has revealed the results of an experimental study in how refresh rates affect gaming performance – and the results are even more remarkable than even experienced gamers might have imagined.
Perhaps the single most striking result in a research paper on the experiment called “A study on the impact of refresh rate on real-time FPS gaming performance” (which was published at a recent academic conference) was the discovery that at the highest tested refresh rate of 480Hz, the gamers deployed in the experiment registered a win rate that improved by a massive 38% versus their win rate when using the lowest 60Hz refresh rate used in the test.
For the experiment, LG Display assembled a group of 31 adult males described as “general gamers”, and then recorded their experiences playing a first person shooter (FPS) game at four different refresh rates: 60Hz, 240Hz, 360Hz and 480Hz.
The refresh rates were experienced in random order while playing the FPS title, to avoid any potential bias in how the player’s reported their experiences. Quantitive indicators used during the experiment included hit score (the number of successful hits each player recorded) and event interval time (the time elapsed from a target’s appearance to its elimination), while qualitative indicators included the gamers’ impressions of smoothness, ease of tracking, and overall preference.
It was the Hit Score test that discovered the 38% improved win rate at 480Hz – as well as a 28% improvement over 60Hz even at the 240Hz refresh rate setting. Some of this big increase in hit rate can be attributed to the simple fact that input lag is reduced by more than 10milliseconds at 480Hz compared to 60Hz, but participants in the experiment also reported that higher refresh rate levels resulted in smoother visuals and reduced motion blur, both of which made it easier to track moving targets.
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Not surprisingly, all of this resulted in a strong overall preference for the higher refresh rate settings across the 31 participants.
A high refresh rate future
Naturally these results will come as music to the ears of LG Display given that only in May its first 540/720HZ (DFR) OLED panel was awarded “Display of the Year” by the Society for Information Display (SID). Indeed, the likelihood that the experiment reported here would yield something like the results it did was no doubt why LG Display commissioned it in the first place! But it seems that the experiment’s results have also been positive enough to inspire LG Display’s future monitor direction.
“Building on our experience in commercialising industry-leading performance products such as the 27-inch 540/720Hz (DFR) OLED,” says Choi Young-seok, CTO at LG Display, “we will further strengthen our technological competitiveness in the gaming display market while securing core technologies for next-generations displays as a technology-driven company.”
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