I currently play Dota 2 at around 144 FPS on a 144Hz, 1080p monitor. I usually use low-to-medium graphics settings and care more about performance than visual quality. My system has a Ryzen 5 3600X, ASUS PRIME B450M-A motherboard, GTX 1650 SUPER, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive, with a smaller SSD used for my system drive. I'm considering a Lenovo Legion R25F-30 24.5-inch 1080p monitor with a 280Hz refresh rate. Would my current hardware be able to take advantage of it, and would upgrading to a higher refresh rate provide a noticeable improvement over 144Hz?
3 Answers
For consistently high FPS in Dota 2, a faster CPU may eventually help more than a monitor upgrade. A newer Ryzen chip with extra 3D cache can improve CPU-limited performance, but it’s a much bigger upgrade and you’d need to verify BIOS support for your B450 motherboard. With your current setup, I’d test performance first, then consider an SSD, and only buy the 280Hz monitor if your FPS and budget justify it.
I’d prioritize an SSD before buying a 240–280Hz display. It won’t dramatically increase average FPS, but installing Dota 2 on an SSD can improve loading times and may reduce hitching compared with running it from an older mechanical hard drive. A 120GB SSD could work for just Dota 2, although 240–512GB gives you much more room and is usually a better value. Keep enough free space for Windows and updates if you use it as the system drive.
First test what your system can actually produce. Uncap Dota 2’s FPS, watch the average and especially the 1% lows, and see whether the GTX 1650 SUPER can stay near 240–280 FPS at your settings. A 280Hz monitor will still work, but it won’t automatically make the game run at 280 FPS. If your frame rate mostly stays around 144–180, the improvement over your current monitor may be fairly small.
That makes sense. I’ll test with the FPS cap removed before deciding whether the monitor upgrade is worthwhile.
My current SSD is only a little over 200GB, so I avoided installing Dota 2 there. I’ll look into getting a larger SSD or using a smaller one just for the game.