The Advantages of a 120Hz LCD Monitor Featuring the BenQ XL2410 Gaming Monitor NCIX Tech Tips
**The Benefits of a 120 Hz Monitor: A Comprehensive Guide**
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### Dual-Link DVI Cable Importance
When setting up your monitor, it's crucial to use the correct cable. In this case, you should have a dual-link DVI cable. This type of cable has the full complement of pins inside, which is essential for supporting higher resolutions and refresh rates. If you try to set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 on an HD full-HD 1080p monitor without a dual-link DVI cable, the display will show an error message: "incorrect cable, please use the dual link DVI cable that came with your monitor." As demonstrated in the video, the text becomes distorted and unreadable at 120 Hz without the proper cable. However, swapping the cables restores clarity, showing how important it is to use the correct hardware.
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### The Benefits of a 120 Hz Monitor
Once you have the right setup, the benefits of a 120 Hz monitor become evident. When sitting in front of a 120 Hz monitor compared to a standard 60 Hz LCD, you'll notice a significant improvement in motion clarity and responsiveness. Even simple actions like minimizing or maximizing windows appear smoother and sharper. The delay between mouse input and screen response (known as latency) is reduced by half at 120 Hz, making tasks feel more responsive.
For gaming, the benefits are even more pronounced. A 120 Hz monitor allows for a much smoother gaming experience, reducing tearing at high frame rates. This is especially useful when playing fast-paced games like Battlefield Bad Company 2, where having a higher refresh rate means you can enjoy the game without enabling Vsync, which some players find makes games feel less responsive.
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### Non-Gaming Features
While gaming is a major selling point for 120 Hz monitors, there are plenty of non-gaming benefits too. The BenQ XL2410T, for example, comes with a height-adjustable stand that allows you to position the screen according to your comfort. This feature is particularly useful if you alternate between sitting upright and slouching in your chair or use additional monitor stands.
The monitor also offers pivot, swivel, and tilt adjustments, giving you flexibility in how you set up your workspace. While the industrial design might not be as sleek as higher-end models (it’s more of a functional piece), it still includes all the necessary features for everyday use.
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### Design and Technology
The BenQ XL2410T uses LED backlight technology, making it fairly slim and providing an even backlight with vibrant colors. However, it doesn’t use VA or IPS panels, which are typically preferred for their superior color reproduction. The reason is simple: these panel types aren't ideal for gaming at 120 Hz due to slower pixel response times. Instead, the monitor uses a TN panel, which offers faster response times and is better suited for high-refresh-rate gaming.
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### 3D Gaming Capabilities
Another standout feature of this monitor is its compatibility with Nvidia 3D Vision. While not all 120 Hz displays are certified for 3D gaming, the BenQ XL2410T meets this requirement. This makes it a great choice for gamers who enjoy immersive 3D experiences.
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### Conclusion
The BenQ XL2410T is a high-performance monitor that offers significant benefits for both gaming and general use. Its dual-link DVI support ensures compatibility with high resolutions and refresh rates, while its 120 Hz capability provides smoother motion and reduced latency. Whether you're gaming or working, the height-adjustable stand and flexible settings add to its versatility. While it may not be the most luxurious monitor in terms of design, its focus on functionality makes it a solid choice for those looking to upgrade their display experience.
Thank you for watching this episode of NC Tech Tips! Don’t forget to subscribe and let us know your thoughts on 120 Hz displays—would you consider one knowing what you now know?
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou should have dual link DVI you also need a dual link DVI cable which means it has the full complement of pins inside the cable as opposed to only half of them in a single link DVI cable okay now I'm going to show you guys what happens if you try and set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 this is an HD full HD 1080p Monitor and if you try to set it to 120 HZ without a dual Link cable this is more just for entertainment value than anything else but here is what happens I accidentally did this it looks like the monitor gives us a nice little error message incorrect cable please use the dual link DVI cable that came with your monitor and check out what happens to all of our text now it is running at 120 HZ right now but as you can see the display is uh completely broken so give me a moment I'll swap the cables and then I'll talk a little bit more about 120 HZ so all I had to do was SWA the cable now our text is crisp and clear and here is the first benefit that I personally notice when I sit down in front of a 120 HZ Monitor and it's going to be really hard to demonstrate this given that we're shooting at 24 FPS or whatever it is that we're shooting at with that camera but when you're using a 12 120 HZ monitor versus a regular 60 HZ LCD you are going to notice much more crispness in the overall motion of everything on the screen now you'll hear people talking endlessly about how many FPS the eye can perceive but I can tell you personally and from everyone I've talked to who's sat in front of a 120 HZ display versus a 60 HZ LCD display that it is a very perceivable difference even with something as simple as minimizing and maximizing a window it looks smoother it looks sharper dragging a window around it feels more responsive because remember if you start an input to the computer at exactly the the beginning of displaying a frame there is going to be a one 60th of a second leg between you moving your mouse and anything actually moving on the screen you canot feel it normally but as soon as you replace that and you make it so that the absolute maximum possible leg is only half that period of time you are all of a sudden going to say oh wow this is so responsive compared to 60 HZ now yeah so what you're going to buy a 120 HZ monitor so that you can drag Windows around on your desktop really responsively no this SK is all about gaming so you can actually see they've got a couple pictures of as far as I can tell a couple famous Gamers Heaton and spawn I think are their uh are their gaming handles and um 120 HZ is far more important for gaming than it is for anything else so not only does it give you that extra little bit of responsiveness remember this is a very very quick response time panel because in order to operate at proper 120 HZ uh frequency it's going to have to resp respond very quickly in terms of the pixel response times as well but it also gives you a much smoother gaming experience just like dragging those windows around when you're looking around in a game you're going to be far less susceptible to tearing at high FPS rates and you are also going to get that quicker response to movement on the screen so this LCD also has very low input leg which is another gaming oriented feature and I will show you guys the non-gaming features in just a moment so let's talk non-gaming oriented features the first thing that I noticed about this LCD and I did mention this in my unboxing video is that honestly the stand isn't the most robust it's a plastic stand um it's not really you know a great piece for your fancy office with your mahogany desk and all that kind of stuff this is a functionality piece so you've got all of the features you want but I would go as far as to say that the industrial design is not quite up there with something that you you put on a on a $4,000 desk okay so let's just be upfront about that done but you've got features like pivot okay you have swivel you have tilt you have height adjust which is huge I cannot stress enough how important height adjust is to me personally I use my height adjustable monitor at home I use it from time to time depending on whether I want to slouch in my seat or whatever I want to do I might hide adjust and use the Tilt in order to get a better viewing angle and I also use it at work or I have little monitor stands as you guys have probably seen in my office in some of my unboxings so it's got all of those different adjustments I mean pivots a cool one too because if you wanted to buy three of these and game at 120 HZ so nice smooth gaming experience in with triple portrait mode you could do that using Nvidia surround okay we've also got an HDMI input which I mentioned in my unboxing 1080p 120 Herz I've mentioned those as well and this is one that I'm really happy to see too matte finish I am not a big fan of glossy screens it can make the images look a little bit brighter but instead of or rather brighter more vibrant but instead of taking that approach to get a more vibrant image out of this panel BenQ has also implemented LED backlight technology so it makes it fairly slim although it's not by any stretch of the imagination the slimmest LCD monitor out there but it also gives it a very even backlight as well as great overall Vibrance to the colors so they've included pretty much every feature that you could want on a marketing tick boox list except for one and I'm going to explain why they haven't done that now this does not use a VA or an IPS panel and the reason for that is that VA and IPS panels while they do offer better color reproduction are not really optimal for Elite Gaming because they don't have the pixel response times that that are able to match up with a 120 HZ refresh rate so for a gaming scenario that is not an ideal option so they've included everything in here that does make sense two one so I'm playing some Battlefield Bad Company 2 and I want to demonstrate why this is a perfect example of a game that will benefit from a 120hz display now the reason for that is you can see right now my frame rate is in the is in the pretty much 60 FPS or so arrange you can see that up here in the top now see there right there so it popped up a little above 60 FPS now what happens when your frame rate goes above the refresh rate of your monitor is that the game is actually the video card is drawing more frames than your monitor can display so what happens is sometimes in the middle of a screen refresh rate in the middle of a screen refresh the video card actually will be drawing a slightly different image so you see what's called tearing where you might see a line down the middle of the screen where on the top the guy's body is kind of here and on the bottom the guy's you know legs are kind of here and it's not quite synced up not quite right so what a 120 HZ refresh rate allows you to do in I mean in this case I'm running at 1080p I have the details absolutely maxed on my uh GTS 56 uh GTX 560 ti so there's no way I can turn up the details higher in order to get a lower FPS but by having a higher frequency higher refresh rate monitor I'm able to properly enjoy the game with no tearing regardless of how high my frame rate goes and I don't have to turn on vsync which in my perception anyway causes the game engines to sometimes feel a little bit um a little bit less responsive a little bit laggier I personally hate playing with vsync on and very much prefer to just have a higher overall refresh rate so this is a great example of when that would be useful another example of when it would be useful is if you want to play in 3D so this is a 3D Vision certified monitor it is fully compatible with that so remember not all 120 HZ displays be they TVs projectors LCDs are necessarily certified to work with Nvidia 3D Vision but this particular one is and you can actually tell from the little badge that's not on the front of the box for whatever reason but is actually up here so this is a 3D Vision ready monitor so thank you for checking out our episode on the BenQ XL 2410 T and I hope youve found something informative about this particular little episode and don't forget to subscribe to NC Tech tips after watching this what are your thoughts on 120 HZ displays so whether you want 3D or not would you consider a 120 HZ display knowing what you know nowyou should have dual link DVI you also need a dual link DVI cable which means it has the full complement of pins inside the cable as opposed to only half of them in a single link DVI cable okay now I'm going to show you guys what happens if you try and set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 this is an HD full HD 1080p Monitor and if you try to set it to 120 HZ without a dual Link cable this is more just for entertainment value than anything else but here is what happens I accidentally did this it looks like the monitor gives us a nice little error message incorrect cable please use the dual link DVI cable that came with your monitor and check out what happens to all of our text now it is running at 120 HZ right now but as you can see the display is uh completely broken so give me a moment I'll swap the cables and then I'll talk a little bit more about 120 HZ so all I had to do was SWA the cable now our text is crisp and clear and here is the first benefit that I personally notice when I sit down in front of a 120 HZ Monitor and it's going to be really hard to demonstrate this given that we're shooting at 24 FPS or whatever it is that we're shooting at with that camera but when you're using a 12 120 HZ monitor versus a regular 60 HZ LCD you are going to notice much more crispness in the overall motion of everything on the screen now you'll hear people talking endlessly about how many FPS the eye can perceive but I can tell you personally and from everyone I've talked to who's sat in front of a 120 HZ display versus a 60 HZ LCD display that it is a very perceivable difference even with something as simple as minimizing and maximizing a window it looks smoother it looks sharper dragging a window around it feels more responsive because remember if you start an input to the computer at exactly the the beginning of displaying a frame there is going to be a one 60th of a second leg between you moving your mouse and anything actually moving on the screen you canot feel it normally but as soon as you replace that and you make it so that the absolute maximum possible leg is only half that period of time you are all of a sudden going to say oh wow this is so responsive compared to 60 HZ now yeah so what you're going to buy a 120 HZ monitor so that you can drag Windows around on your desktop really responsively no this SK is all about gaming so you can actually see they've got a couple pictures of as far as I can tell a couple famous Gamers Heaton and spawn I think are their uh are their gaming handles and um 120 HZ is far more important for gaming than it is for anything else so not only does it give you that extra little bit of responsiveness remember this is a very very quick response time panel because in order to operate at proper 120 HZ uh frequency it's going to have to resp respond very quickly in terms of the pixel response times as well but it also gives you a much smoother gaming experience just like dragging those windows around when you're looking around in a game you're going to be far less susceptible to tearing at high FPS rates and you are also going to get that quicker response to movement on the screen so this LCD also has very low input leg which is another gaming oriented feature and I will show you guys the non-gaming features in just a moment so let's talk non-gaming oriented features the first thing that I noticed about this LCD and I did mention this in my unboxing video is that honestly the stand isn't the most robust it's a plastic stand um it's not really you know a great piece for your fancy office with your mahogany desk and all that kind of stuff this is a functionality piece so you've got all of the features you want but I would go as far as to say that the industrial design is not quite up there with something that you you put on a on a $4,000 desk okay so let's just be upfront about that done but you've got features like pivot okay you have swivel you have tilt you have height adjust which is huge I cannot stress enough how important height adjust is to me personally I use my height adjustable monitor at home I use it from time to time depending on whether I want to slouch in my seat or whatever I want to do I might hide adjust and use the Tilt in order to get a better viewing angle and I also use it at work or I have little monitor stands as you guys have probably seen in my office in some of my unboxings so it's got all of those different adjustments I mean pivots a cool one too because if you wanted to buy three of these and game at 120 HZ so nice smooth gaming experience in with triple portrait mode you could do that using Nvidia surround okay we've also got an HDMI input which I mentioned in my unboxing 1080p 120 Herz I've mentioned those as well and this is one that I'm really happy to see too matte finish I am not a big fan of glossy screens it can make the images look a little bit brighter but instead of or rather brighter more vibrant but instead of taking that approach to get a more vibrant image out of this panel BenQ has also implemented LED backlight technology so it makes it fairly slim although it's not by any stretch of the imagination the slimmest LCD monitor out there but it also gives it a very even backlight as well as great overall Vibrance to the colors so they've included pretty much every feature that you could want on a marketing tick boox list except for one and I'm going to explain why they haven't done that now this does not use a VA or an IPS panel and the reason for that is that VA and IPS panels while they do offer better color reproduction are not really optimal for Elite Gaming because they don't have the pixel response times that that are able to match up with a 120 HZ refresh rate so for a gaming scenario that is not an ideal option so they've included everything in here that does make sense two one so I'm playing some Battlefield Bad Company 2 and I want to demonstrate why this is a perfect example of a game that will benefit from a 120hz display now the reason for that is you can see right now my frame rate is in the is in the pretty much 60 FPS or so arrange you can see that up here in the top now see there right there so it popped up a little above 60 FPS now what happens when your frame rate goes above the refresh rate of your monitor is that the game is actually the video card is drawing more frames than your monitor can display so what happens is sometimes in the middle of a screen refresh rate in the middle of a screen refresh the video card actually will be drawing a slightly different image so you see what's called tearing where you might see a line down the middle of the screen where on the top the guy's body is kind of here and on the bottom the guy's you know legs are kind of here and it's not quite synced up not quite right so what a 120 HZ refresh rate allows you to do in I mean in this case I'm running at 1080p I have the details absolutely maxed on my uh GTS 56 uh GTX 560 ti so there's no way I can turn up the details higher in order to get a lower FPS but by having a higher frequency higher refresh rate monitor I'm able to properly enjoy the game with no tearing regardless of how high my frame rate goes and I don't have to turn on vsync which in my perception anyway causes the game engines to sometimes feel a little bit um a little bit less responsive a little bit laggier I personally hate playing with vsync on and very much prefer to just have a higher overall refresh rate so this is a great example of when that would be useful another example of when it would be useful is if you want to play in 3D so this is a 3D Vision certified monitor it is fully compatible with that so remember not all 120 HZ displays be they TVs projectors LCDs are necessarily certified to work with Nvidia 3D Vision but this particular one is and you can actually tell from the little badge that's not on the front of the box for whatever reason but is actually up here so this is a 3D Vision ready monitor so thank you for checking out our episode on the BenQ XL 2410 T and I hope youve found something informative about this particular little episode and don't forget to subscribe to NC Tech tips after watching this what are your thoughts on 120 HZ displays so whether you want 3D or not would you consider a 120 HZ display knowing what you know now\n"