Gaming at 240Hz With the AOC AG274QZM + RTX 4090 – Worth it?

Final Thoughts

I must admit I thought that I would be able to easily max out absolutely everything and still hit those big refresh rates, as this is easily one of the fastest gaming PCs money can buy. I have the best graphics cards, one of the world’s fastest gaming CPUs, storage, memory and more. Alas, the devil is in the details, and how each game utilises the hardware provided obviously varies.

Of course, given the overall hardware advantage, any compromises that were made were subjectively pretty minor, and all the games were left looking absolutely stunning, but even more so, they all managed to hit some big FPS figures too.

240 Hz

Gaming at 240 Hz is demanding. From Full HD 60, you’re asking your system to render 4x the number of frames per second. Plus, as 2560×1440, you’re rendering double the resolution of 1920×1080 too, so it’s a big ask. As I said before, it’s broadly similar to rendering at 4K120 or even 8K60 so don’t be overly shocked to see some games not max out on this level of extreme PC gaming.

Admittedly, this is complete overkill for most gamers, even for me, I think 240Hz is too much. However, having spent a few days playing at 240Hz vs my usual 165Hz, which I don’t think there’s much more smoothness to be seen short of some extremely fast-moving scenes, the reduction in latency is certainly noticeable. I’m hitting more headshots, I’m evading more attacks, and just generally playing a little higher overall. I’m no pro, but I wish I was, and I could really take advantage of such power.

Is It Worth It?

So is it worth it? Sorry to say to AOC, who lovingly sent me this monitor, but… no, it’s not. The monitor is extremely expensive, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get one. If you just want your games to look their best, a good quality 2K or 4K monitor that supports 120 to 165Hz is going to be cheaper, and just as good for a bit of Hitman 3, Skyrim, League, Apex, or whatever you play, and you’ll be very very happy.

Honourable Mentions

Some games are an absolute joy to play at higher frame rates, and can often be done on much less extreme hardware. One of the best examples to try is CS:GO, which gamers have been playing at hundreds of FPS for years, not on high refresh monitors though, but just in a bid to get low input latency. Of course, with a fast monitor, you can see those frames render too, win-win. Other good high refresh rate games are Minecraft, great for those fast parkour challenges, Rainbow Six Siege, Rocket League and pretty much all the MOBA games like League and DOTA all benefit from high frames, but don’t need a flagship GPU to do so, which is great.

Getting The Best of the Best

However, as I’ve said before, if you want to get the absolute limits of modern PC gaming, the lowest latency, the highest refresh rates, and more, you can certainly get that with the AOC AG274QZM. If you want to play competitively, and you want hardware that makes you actually perform better, this is it, now open your wallet. But if you’re wondering, can I max out the most popular FPS titles with an RTX 4090, the answer is largely yes, and it’ll run so fast that doing so without a high refresh rate and high-resolution monitor would be a complete waste.