[amluto]

> Many years back (we were on CRTs), I was in similar shoes, convinced my friend couldn't tell the difference between 60 Hz and 90 Hz when playing video games.

That’s a silly experiment. I could look at a CRT with a completely static image and tell almost immediately whether it was at 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz. Flickr at 60Hz was awful, 90Hz was clearly perceptible, and even 120Hz was often somewhat noticeable. And most CRT/graphics card combos would become perceptibly blurry in the horizontal direction at 120Hz at any reasonable desktop resolution, so you could never truly win. Interlaced modes made the flicker much less visible, but the crawling effect was easy to see and distracting.

[andai]

The effects you describe are specific to CRTs only, right? Caused by the electron beam effectively illuminating one pixel at a time?

[pvg]

Yes this a (computer) CRT thing. The commenter might be misremembering the exact numbers, 60 Hz baseline is a flat panel thing, by the mid to late 90s, 75 Hz was something a typical computer CRT would generally aim for and was part of various standards and recommendations.

[amluto]

I’m fairly confident I remember the numbers right. And VESA DMT indeed has 1600x1200 at 60, 65, 70, 75, 85 and 120Hz, and IIRC my old CRT would sync at 144Hz as well with somewhat dubious performance.

https://glenwing.github.io/docs/VESA-DMT-1.12.pdf

[ptramo]

> 60 Hz baseline is a flat panel thing

It's so many things, starting with the North American electric grid, NTSC, etc.

Yes my graphics card + monitor could theoretically run at more than 60 Hz. When I got to choose between resolution and refresh rate, I picked resolution. Hence 60 Hz.