I was playing Destiny online yesterday night with a couple of friends and the matches annoying.
Aside from connections, there was something really strange going on: one of those two friends of mine was playing with my "same" connection, meaning we have the same ISP subscription (so same network download & upload speed), same router and we live in the same building (so we're equally far from the nearest ISP's network node). We even have the same router's ports opened, but every time we were having hard times in game, he was receiving game images one second or so before me.
The only thing that differs is the TV: I have a 40" Samsung Full-HD and he has a 50" Hisense LTDN50K680XWSEU3D. So I remembered about frame rate, Hz and response time and googled everything. I found that TVs with higher Hz are better cause they show smoother images BUT the human eye only detects changes about every 1/25th second (so it's near 80Hz).
After this long premise, my question is simple: what's the best Hz amount for a perfect gaming experience? My friend's Hisense TV has 400Hz and a response time of 6.5ms. I think that something like 100Hz and 20ms of response time would be perfect for console gaming but I'm not sure.
Best Answer
OK, I'm going to set the record straight here since I know quite a bit about this topic. ;)
Modern advertising has confused the masses in regards to Hz.. so here it goes.
All consumer grade HDTVs (that I have seen so far) do not accept greater than a 60HZ input - meaning - that 60fps is the highest framerate you can achieve on a modern HDTV with vSync enabled.
Now that we have that straight.....
Where things get tricky/confusing is when manufacturers advertise 120HZ, 240HZ, 480HZ, etc.
The input signal is still 60HZ. (blu ray movies technically run at 24hz, but we're not talking about that) Notice that each of those defined HZ above are multiples of 60HZ.
What's really happening is this: HDTV manufacturers have engineered software that interpolates motion. Motion interpolation software takes information from frame A, and frame B, and averages the brightness and color coordinates in each frame to create a third frame between the two.
Middle frames are new. They were never recorded as part of the original content.
This makes the picture look very smooth, but is BAD for gaming as it's causes input lag and response lag.
So to answer your question, 60HZ is best for gaming.
What's more important for gaming is your pixel response time, which you can check for several TVs here: http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/
Also, you might try connecting to the HDMI (DVI) port on your TV.
Head over to http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/ and set your filters to the following:
Set the size to the screen size you'd like to have and start checking prices. (it will link directly to Amazon) You want to pick a TV that has a Great or Excellent rating.
If the prices are still above $950 then drop down to the next smallest screen size and check prices again.
Keep repeating this process until you find a TV with a Great or Excellent rating that is $950 or under.
Good luck!