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What advantages does a 120 Hz LCD TV offer over a 60 Hz TV for console gaming?

I've heard there are problems with lag and jerky scrolling. Does 120hz address these issues?

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I edited your question in order to make it less subjective, questions asking what is the 'best' are frowned upon here. – user56 Aug 31 '10 at 5:18
edited to make clearer – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 2:09
I think turning VSYNC on can help the "lag and jerky scrolling" but that depends on what's causing it (and I'm thinking PC, don't know how many consoles/console games these days have VSync off). – MGOwen Sep 2 '10 at 5:21

5 Answers

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For console gaming, there isn't much of an advantage. Some aspects of motion might be made clearer, but it varies between implementations.

Real 120Hz (usually marketed as 3D-ready/capable/etc) on PC is a rather different, and has benefits for most games and gamers.

Also note that 120Hz displays don't necessarily transition beween colours any faster than good 60Hz monitors, meaning that input lag is often similar.

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Any references? Sorry, without references I call BS on most of these sorts of answers, regardless of whether I agree with the content. – blesh Jan 14 '11 at 18:14
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The only real advantage of a 120 Hz display is that you can use NVIDIA 3D Vision to play games in 3D. Although many games can be played at a framerate of 120 Hz, to the naked eye it won't make a big difference. Note that this is different from person to person.

3D Vision requires 120 Hz so that it can show 60 frames per second per eye.

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>>Note that this is different from person to person. Although, the difference between 60 and 100 Hz is quite noticable when watching moveies etc when there's a sudden sideways scroll of the view, it jumps...doesn't scroll smoothly – Samrat Patil Aug 31 '10 at 8:34
@Sammy - Not really. At 60 Hz it's already very smooth. The human eye can identify the difference between the two, but in practice you hardly notice any difference. Besides, most movies are recorded at 30 Hz max because people associate more with home videos. – user56 Aug 31 '10 at 13:09
@Sammy - thanks, I've heard the same. I was wondering if it was an issue with games. – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 2:13
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@Arda Xi - I believe the 120 hz TVs interpolate 30 hz or 24 hz sources. Sometimes it interpolates incorrectly and you get the jerkiness mentioned by Sammy. This is just based on what I've read. Hoping the gamers here could shed more light. Thanks. – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 2:15
@Brian - Not usually. It is possible, that is to say, the technology exists, but that would take a lot of processing power which most TVs don't usually have. If they do it it'll be a specific feature of that TV. – user56 Sep 2 '10 at 3:50
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up vote 3 down vote

I tried playing on a 120 Hz TV once, and it made me sick. The image is ultra smooth, so I guess if you got used to it, it would be nice, but I doubt you'd be happy playing on a 60Hz TV ever again.

That being said most 120Hz TVs will allow you to change your setting to 60Hz so getting one with that option isn't a bad idea either.

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Any reason to the downvote? – Alex Larzelere Sep 1 '10 at 14:55
Agreed. Good post. Actually the kind of info I was looking for. – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 4:40
Unfortunately I don't have enough rep yet to upvote. – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 4:40
up vote 1 down vote

Most gaming monitors aren't 120hz yet, so it's not necessary, and won't give you a very noticeably better gaming experience (85Hz is about the limit of what you can see, and old-fashioned ideas of "Persistence of Vision" maintained that the eye only detects changes about every 1/25th second).

The only thing you really need 120Hz for is 3D display, if you have an Nvidia GeForce video card, a 120Hz screen and the Nvidia 3D Vision glasses then you can game in 3D.

If you look in your Nvidia control panel app, you probably have a heading that says "Enable Stereoscopic 3D" you can set this to use either normal cheap red/blue 3D glasses aka "3D Vision Discover" (setup instructions), or you can buy "3D Vision wireless active shutter glasses" that give 3D stereo vision without any colour distortion if you have a 120Hz display (check if you have here). If you don't have this in your setup at the moment, the 3D drivers are a free download from Nvidia's website.

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Question was in regard to LCD TV rather than computer monitors. 120 and 240 hz are quite popular among LCD TVs. Does this info apply? The TV demos in the store do show a difference between 120hz and non-120hz. Thanks! – Brian Low Sep 2 '10 at 4:39
up vote 0 down vote

If you are a gamer 120 Hz is the way to go and yes there is a big difference when gaming. The higher the framerates the slower things look to your eye. not laggy but slower depending on your settings. Iif you know the right ones it can be a huge advantage when cutting around corners and having to instantly shoot someone, how do you think the pros do it?

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this aint true i've played high level CSS and i've always played on 60 Hz screen 120 Hz doesn't give that much noticable difference it just feels better to your eyes. because it makes stuff more smooth. – ronnie Dec 27 '11 at 8:28

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