I'm thirty-eight, and started gaming with a keyboard and mouse about two years ago. My reflexes will never be as sharp as the teenage whipper-snappers who pwn me, but would a 144 Hz gaming monitor with a 1 ms response time be likely to improve my game? Or am I too old to benefit from it, and better to just work on technique?
Currently, I have a 60 Hz monitor with 6 ms response time. I play BF4 and DayZ. I've been eyeing up a gaming monitor (144 Hz, 1 ms), but it's $400, and I'm not sure that it would really be worth it for an old codger like me.
Update, March 2014: I ended up buying a 144 Hz monitor, and cranked my video settings down to get 100+ frames per second. It hasn't made me a vastly better gamer, but I am getting higher scores. It has also made games perceptively more enjoyable, immersive, and easier to play, as games now react in real time, rather than behind a lag. I guess I didn't realise how just laggy my old monitor was until I tried a gaming monitor. For example, helicopter control is much easier, and I can maintain steadier flight paths and more accurate turns because I'm not constantly over-correcting for the visual lag. In driving simulators, the on-screen steering wheel moves in perfect synchronisation with the physical wheel in my hand, and I find myself having to re-learn corners. If you're wondering whether it is worth $400 to get this relatively slight improvement in gaming performance and experience, that would probably vary from person-to-person and from game-to-game. For me, the answer so far is yes.
Best Answer
It may not improve your reaction time, but I've heard from others in the Counter Strike 1.6 and Quake scenes that the animation is a lot smoother and more fluid. Apparently, this helps with scanning and aiming a lot. A lot of people even prefer CRT monitors because the refresh rate is higher on them.
Have you noticed the difference in fluiditiy between HDTV's and old-style TVs? I believe that that's the difference between a 60hz monitor and a 120hz one.