It’s now 2021, and in these glorious days of ray tracing and DLSS technology and such, it’s relatively easy for the average gamer to build a rig, grab a 4K display, and be on their merry way. But more pixels isn’t necessarily the winning move when thinking about what to look for in a gaming monitor, and all the graphical horsepower in the world doesn’t mean much if you can’t display it in its full glory. There’s an entire alphabet soup of monitor technologies to consider when choosing the display that’s going to be your new best friend going forward, and prettiest or more advanced doesn’t always mean best for your experience or your wallet. If you’re looking to buy a new monitor in 2021, here’s what you should know about monitor technologies in order to find the best display for you.

Screen resolutions and sizes

Screen resolution is perhaps the most obvious feature of any monitor panel, and it’s likely the first setting many PC gamers go running to as soon as they start a new game. A monitor’s screen resolution represents the number of horizontal pixels x the number of vertical pixels they display. Now, as most PC gamers know, PC games support a slew of potential resolutions ranging from 640×480–i.e. your average, ancient CRT monitor, and probably what you played Oregon Trail on in grade school–all the way up to 8K (7680×4320)–which will probably be awesome when there’s more than just random nature documentaries on YouTube running it natively. Despite the wild list that comes up when starting a new PC title, though, there are four benchmark resolutions you’re most likely to see when choosing a gaming monitor:

These screen resolutions perfectly conform to the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio that the vast majority of monitor panels are manufactured under and that the vast majority of modern video content–gaming or otherwise–is formatted with. Even among these resolutions, there are some considerations to make Come from Sports betting site VPbet . 720p monitors aren’t long for this world, but those displays are definitely still out there. For one, they’re relatively cheap, and more than that, for folks running super low-spec PC rigs, 720p is a perfectly viable step down to give your CPU/GPU some breathing room while still producing a high-definition image. On the opposite end, 4K resolution is the current gold standard–for now–but running a game at 4K requires a lot of horsepower, and not all 4K monitor technologies are up to the task. Right in the middle is 1080p, which is currently the most common resolution for desktops and laptops the world over.

There’s a bit of legwork involved in even hitting that respectable mark and making it look good, however. New in-game technologies like NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX are able to squeeze a bit more power out of even modest GPUs, but even then, pairing a beast of a monitor with a GPU build for a lower resolution can create some weird visual hiccups. The same caution should apply when considering the actual size of your monitor. While larger-sized display panels in the 30 inch and up range do exist, most PC users are doing their gaming on a display that’s only an arm’s length away. Your mother was right as a kid: Sitting too close to a large display doesn’t do your eyes any favors, nor is it particularly kind to a low-resolution image. Scaling your monitor size appropriately to your resolution is just as important as horsepower, and for a 1080p image that’s going to be a few feet in front of your face, 24 inches is the absolute ceiling for how large that image should be before you start literally seeing diminishing returns. A similar scale goes for a 720p image, which peaks on a 13- to 15-inch display, and 4K, which stops playing as nice once you hit 32 inches.

Ports and cables

For starters, before even connecting your rig to a monitor, you need to make sure the connectors will carry the signal you’re planning to aim for. You can certainly use HDMI cables to connect your rig to a monitor; just make sure your ports and cords are HDMI 2.2 compliant for the best performance up to 4K. However, the best monitor technology for PC gaming will support DisplayPort 1.4 or better, which can carry up to an 8K signal and a 60Hz (or higher) refresh rate (more on why that’s important later). Having DisplayPort support also makes the process of extending monitors–as in making a second or even a third monitor an extension of your desktop–so much simpler, allowing you to simply use input/output DisplayPorts to daisy chain monitors together instead of hoping you have more than one HDMI port on your computer. (See our breakdown of DisplayPort vs. HDMI for the pros and cons of using either display cable).

Of course, you can also avoid that problem altogether by looking into an ultrawide monitor: a single-monitor panel that displays a 21:9 widescreen image–roughly the same screen space as a dual monitor setup, but without the gap between the two images. While either setup has advantages for productivity purposes, for gamers, ultrawide monitors can take things to a whole new level. Titles that fully support the oddball resolutions can feel like a whole new game with the expanded field of vision, especially with curved ultrawide displays. However, the expanded image does demand a bit more from your graphics card, so you definitely want to do your homework before diving in.