Is 8ms Good for Gaming in 2022? Our Take

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Asen Stoyanchev

Owner | Content Writer at Maximum Tech

Asen is a Microsoft Certified Professional turned blogger with 10+ experience working in the IT industry as a hardware and software support engineer.

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Whenever it comes to naming the high-performance activities on your computer, gaming comes at the creamy layer. Many of our readers would be experts in this realm, and even now would be thinking of ways to boost their performance in major leagues.

As a field, gaming is equally influenced by hardware and software parameters. The following important factors come under the area of specific interest:

• Hardware configuration, like graphics card, motherboard, CPU, memory sticks, and others.
• Resolution settings.
• Graphics card performance. And here’s a nice guide on how to make your graphic card quieter.
• Code optimization of the game. 
• Response time towards frame refreshing. 

In our previous articles, we had explained predominantly the first four points. In today’s topic, we would be covering the fourth important point i.e. response time and if 8ms is good for gaming. You would also see benchmarking against 1 and 5ms, do’s and don’ts under 8ms response time, and how could you decide the optimal response time. 

Why Response Time is Important for Gaming?

Yes, response time is very critical to gaming performance, especially for the ones involved within the competitive circuit. Over there, every millisecond counts and sometimes even becomes the winning or losing factor for the player.

When we say response time, it should not be confused with the refresh rate. The latter is measured in Hertz and shows the number of times per second an image is refreshed. 

As a suggested read, check out our article “Is GameRanger Safe“.

Understanding Display Response Time

Response time in a gaming monitor, also called Display Response Time is the time taken by the monitor to change from one color shade to another. Generally measured in Milliseconds (ms), a lower value is considered to be ideal. In such cases, you would have very minor chances of witnessing image blurring or ghosting. 

It is determined by the time taken to go from black to white and then again black. Sometimes, it is also measured by black to white only and Grey to Grey transition. The following points define the significance of the reading:

• Black to white to black shows the time taken by pixel to change colors during the cycle of active to inactive to back active. 
• Grey to grey covers the 256 gradations of grey and is measured by averaging several small-time sequences. It is the parameter that decides on high-performance activities, like gaming, editing, video making, etc. 

Difference Between Different Response Times

The following list defines the benchmarking criteria amongst different response times:

• Response, which shows the action time for transition between colors, or even GtG changeover. In simple words, you can imagine this as the duration for updating the images on your game screen.  

As obvious, the baseline starts with 1ms and is considered to be the fastest possible duration. Accordingly, you can imagine 5ms and 8ms to be slower by five and eight times respectively.

• Refresh rate, which defines the smoothness with which the images get loaded per second. When you go into one of the best gaming experiences at 144 Hz, there would be minor differences in the response times. 

For example, in 5ms, you would notice some minor blurs that are not prominent. But when it comes to 8ms, the blurs intensify and you need to counter the effect by choosing a higher version of GPU. 

• Screen resolution, that is more important when you are having higher response times. With 1ms and 5ms, you can expect decent performance with normal GPUs, whereas in 8ms, you need to have higher versions of the GPUs. 

The higher the monitor response time for gaming, the greater would be the hardware requirements. 

Is 8ms Good for Gaming? 5 Ways to Justify

It has been a great and debatable topic on choosing 8ms for gaming. On a superficial level, when you compare 8ms vs 1ms, the response would be negative- as it shows that 1ms monitors are eight times faster in changing the colors of the pixels than 8ms monitors. 

But, a detailed analysis will show you a different picture. The following reason scan justifies how 8ms will turn out to be good for your gaming:

• When we say 8ms response time, it means that the pixel changes its color every 0.008 seconds, and it can run at 125 Hz (reciprocal of 0.008 seconds). On average, every gaming computer runs between 60 Hz to 120 Hz.

Going by that analogy, 125 Hz goes beyond the upper limit and you would not notice that many blurs or slowness in response. Hence, there would not be any major issue in running your games at 8ms.

• It is said that greater response times result in ghosting i.e. phenomenon where you can see trails of moving objects due to greater time for pixel switching. So, yes 8ms will have a greater risk of producing such results.

But, if you counter this by installing a GPU of the best specifications, then the problem gets resolved. It is because you will be given the option to change screen resolution that would make these blurs or trails insignificant. 

• The behavior of response time varies based on the type of colors changed by the pixels. In the case of black to white transition, 8ms may be considered slower. But, when it comes to a mix of complex colors, greater response time is appreciable for a smooth transition. 

In such cases, Grey to Grey transition is considered and many gamers have testified that 8 ms response time for gaming under GtG transition isn’t that bad. You may refer to the time monitor graphs to gain some confidence.

• These days, there are multiple monitor response time testing tools available for tracking BTW and GTG pixel changeovers. Under these, you can find other factors that can influence your gaming performance. 

Even with a response time as high as 8ms, you would still be able to improvise the screen quality by playing with the resolution, refresh rate, VRR, aspect ratio, and anti-motion blur settings of the GPU. The bottom line is, there are many other factors connected with a response time that can help in keeping up with 8ms gaming.  

• If you are not into competitive gaming, then probably you should not waste your time bothering about 8ms or how to bring it closer to 1ms. On an average monitor, the human eye would not be able to perceive the differences between response times. 

Small arcade games will also not show any major difficulty with the varying times. 

Summing up all of these points, it is clear that 8ms is a decent enough time for gaming under some circumstances. Instead of calling for unnecessary complexity, you may think of going with the flow. 

Reasons to Reconsider AMD FX 8350 For Gaming

Now that we have brought the discussion towards using higher versions of GPUs, you would be wondering about the list of the best. To be specific, there would be one particular question in mind- Is AMD FX 8350 good for gaming?

The following would highlight the reasons for combining AMD FX 8350 with your 8ms monitors: 

• There are 8 cores in the processor, and you can easily plan multi-tasking. Even heavy games like Battlefield would not ask for more than 4 cores, and you would gain the chance of playing such games with medium settings.
• The cache division amongst L1, L2, and L3 is planned optimally to not show any major change on gaming or refreshing. It would not impact your FPS, and you can enjoy the games at the touch of your mouse. 
• With its perfect cooling mechanism, you can choose to overclock to meet the higher requirements of gaming. No need of worrying about overheating.
• The price-quality ratio of the processor stands at 96.1%, which is much above the average value of other named processors. This indicates the faster I/O processing, clock speed at 4.2 GHz, cooling mechanism, and proper gaming engagement.
• It is compatible with 2K, 4K, and VR games. Its octa-core technology, greater clock speed, and fast processing provide testament to the fact. 
• Its overdrive system allows you to limit the power and lower the dissipation of excessive heat that might damage sensitive components.   
• The processor has a proven record of working with lower latency values i.e. much lesser than 30 ms and even lower than 8 ms latency. 

So, go for AMD FX 8350 without any second thoughts. 

Which Games Aren’t Best Played at 8ms?

If you are into competitive gaming and require high levels of precision, then do not target 8ms gaming. It is because, in this domain, your performance is decided by even milliseconds. You can think of the never-ending list- Battlefield 3, The Witcher, DOTA, CSGO, Assassin’s Creed, Overwatch, and many more. 

So, you cannot afford any ghosting, minor blurs, or even pixel switching that can jeopardize your chance of winning something big in the tournaments. Many blogs have also recommended the ideal response times to be a maximum of 5ms for competitive gaming. 

Also, if you want to own a budgeted gaming setup, then also it is not recommended to settle for 8ms. As highlighted previously, any major challenges by this response time can be countered by owning a high-end GPU that asks for loads of money!) 

In response time test monitors with popular PCs, you would also see recommendations for competitive gaming in between 1ms to 4ms. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Words 

Therefore, our main motive was to make you aware of the exact details of 8ms gaming. On an overall basis, it is quite easy to judge its slowness when compared to 1ms gaming.

But, we often tend to forget the exact areas of application where you would be indeed needing such low response times. If you are a serious gamer, then yes you should target for lower response times (below 5ms). But if you are not, then avoid thinking too much about this.

Keep following our website for more of such contents- like best surface for optical mouse, d-sub vs HDMI, and many more. Till then, happy reading and stay safe!