'Overclocking' Your Monitor

[Clark]

Hi everyone, just wanted to share something with everyone in the community that might be helpful to most of you. As you know, you can have the beefiest and best computer a man could possibly have but without a lot of knowledge you can have just a 60hz or even as low as 50hz monitor.

Now you might be asking yourself, why would I care how many hertz my monitor is? Well let me explain. I will bring the example on CIT so it doesn't confuse anyone. Let's say you are playing at a stable 144 FPS but you have a 60 HZ monitor, you will only be able to experience the 60 FPS smoothness. Just because your computer is able to run CIT on 144 FPS does not mean you are seeing these frames per second because you are being limited by your monitor. Which really does suck.

I used to play Fortnite, and I would be running around 250-350 FPS but the game would still feel like shit for me compared to my friend's gameplay, and I realized that it is because the max refresh rate of my monitor is only 60hz.

Anyways, back to the topic and how to overclock it. It is very simple but the sad part is I only know how to do this on an Nvidia GPU (sorry to my AMD people).

So, head over to your desktop screen.
Right click on your desktop and find Nvidia Control Panel.

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Then go click on the left hand side "Display > Change Resolution"

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You will come to this screen, then you need to press "Customize"

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After clicking customize, you will be redirected to this page. Click on the box to check mark it, then press "Create Custom Resolution".

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Then you will be redirected again to another window, you will see many things here but the only thing you need to worry about here is where it says "Refresh Rate". Now in this page you need to play around with it. Go up by increments of 5, so let's say it's set to 60 for you right now, go up to 65, if it doesn't give you black screen move up to 70 and so on. If at any time you get a black screen and your monitor does not turn back on just press ESC and it will return you to the safest refresh rate.

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You can also go up by increments of 1, see what your maximum will be. As long as you screen stays on and it doesn't black screen then you are fine where you are. I have a 240hz monitor, and I was able to push all the way up to 265hz.

Just like always, please let me know if you have any questions or need any help with any of this.

[Cerberus]

Will this result in higher CPU / GPU / RAM usage?

[M3dusa]

Will this result in higher CPU / GPU / RAM usage?

No, your PC is already consuming that to generate the FPS, the monitor is just (not) showing them.

EDIT: this is in the case of gaming ^
In general PC usage it would consume more (if that setting is forcing a baseline for refresh rate across the OS)

[Clark]

Will this result in higher CPU / GPU / RAM usage?

Yes of course.

GPU: More frames to render means higher usage. ( Not noticeable to a simple eye at all)
CPU: Slightly more work to keep up with frame rates. (Same with CPU, you MIGHT see an increase from the usual % when you play by 1-2%, you can test the differences on Task Manager)
RAM: Minimal impact, but VRAM might see a slight increase. (Not noticeable to a simple eye at all)

No, your PC is already consuming that to generate the FPS, the monitor is just (not) showing them.

Not necessarily, he could be playing with his FPS capped at 60 FPS. This is also another good point, you should just cap your FPS relative to the refresh rate of your monitor.

60 Hz M - 60 FPS Cap
70 Hz M - 70 FPS Cap
80 Hz M - 80 FPS Cap

And so on, there is no need to have it uncapped when you won't be able to see the full 144 fps when you only have a 60Hz monitor.

[M3dusa]

Not necessarily, he could be playing with his FPS capped at 60 FPS. This is also another good point, you should just cap your FPS relative to the refresh rate of your monitor.

Yep, I was already editing the reply because I saw where it would be wrong.

Honestly the higher refresh rate causes more eye strain to me after a long session, though admittedly the smoother scrolling is nice.

[Clark]

Honestly the higher refresh rate causes more eye strain to me after a long session, though admittedly the smoother scrolling is nice.

I couldn't agree more, I am used to this crisp eye smoothing display at home but when I get to work and I gotta work on a 50 hz monitor I just want to poke my eyes out. It's definitely something to get used to.