How to Make Your Monitor Run at 144Hz
Modern monitors come in a huge variety of display sizes, supported refresh rates and resolutions. A lot of people, particularly those who often play games at a competitive level, will opt for high-end monitors that allow much higher refresh rates than the usual. However, you may often run into issues when trying to make your expensive new monitor run at its advertised high refresh rate.
If you bought a new gaming monitor that supports 144Hz and you are having trouble getting it to run at that refresh rate, this article will give you a few tips on how to solve this issue.
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Install the official drivers provided by the monitor's manufacturer
A lot of the time the default driver Windows 10 installs for your monitor will work just fine. This is usually not the case with monitors that work at high frequencies.
Even if you have a 75Hz monitor you might discover you need a specific, manufacturer-built driver to get up to 75Hz. This is also true for higher refresh rate monitors.
Make sure you check your monitor's packaging for a small disk that would usually contain the driver. If you lost it or it's not present, visit the website of the company that manufactured your monitor and look for driver downloads for your specific model on there.
Make sure you copy the exact model number of your monitor and download and install the proper driver for your hardware. In a lot of the cases, this will take care of struggles with high refresh rates.
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Make sure you are using a signal cable that supports your desired frequency and resolution combination
You cannot simply connect any monitor to any GPU using any signal cable and expect your monitor to output 144 frames per second. For example, as a general rule of thumb, you will not be able to get more than 60Hz out of your monitor if you use a VGA cable, no matter what your monitor might support.
In order to get the best refresh rate your monitor supports, it is recommended to use a DisplayPort cable. As a standard, DisplayPort was developed to be the successor to DVI, which in turn was a successor to VGA.
You might want to check if the specific resolution you want to run your 144Hz monitor at is supported. DisplayPort 1.4 supports 120Hz at 4K resolution, for example.
Using the right cable is the second most likely way you will get rid of any refresh rate issues.
Updated, manufacturer-supplied drivers and the proper signal cable that can deliver the refresh rate your monitor advertises are the two most common ways to solve any high refresh monitor issues you may be struggling with.
