In the world of PC monitors, refresh rates keep increasing. While ultrawide and curved displays grab the headlines, monitor makers are also engaged in a quiet “refresh rate war.”
At the recent Display Week 2024 show in San Jose, CSOT, TCL’s display panel subsidiary, unveiled a monitor prototype that defies expectations. According to reports from Blur Busters, a site dedicated to monitoring and testing display technologies, TCL’s CSOT demo unit displayed a refresh rate of 1000 Hz. But the most important, is that it has reached this level with 4K definition.
The current champion is the Asus ROG Swift PG248QP, with a 540Hz refresh rate. Most industry observers expected 1000Hz refresh rates to debut on lower definition monitors 1080p or 1440p before making the jump to 4K. TCL’s prototype appears to have skipped these intermediate stepsdisplaying blazingly fast refresh rates on a razor-sharp 4K display.
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TCL shows the fastest refresh rate screen on the market
Beyond these specs, details on this TCL marvel are scarce. The company hasn’t provided any information on the screen size, aspect ratio, or even the display technology used, although Blur Busters thinks it uses LED backlighting according to his observations. TCL was probably more interested in flexing its technical muscles than announcing an impending product launch.
Because while a 4K 1000Hz monitor is a tempting prospect for gamers and power users looking for super-smooth motion, it’s also well ahead of what current hardware can reasonably support. High-end graphics cards like the RTX 4090 already struggle to maintain high 4K refresh rates in newer games. Reaching the blazing speed of 1000 frames per second, necessary to take full advantage of such a monitor, is simply not achievable with today’s GPUs.
For now, TCL’s 4K 1000 Hz monitor demo looks more like a proof of concept, a showcase of what might be possible once GPU power inevitably catches up in future generations. In particular, Nvidia is expected to launch a new RTX 5000 graphics card within just a few months.
Source: BlurBusters