The Refresh Rate Most Graphics Cards Can Actually Feed

165Hz occupies the part of the market where the screen and the graphics card are roughly matched. Sixty frames a second is the floor nobody goes back below, and 240Hz upwards only repays you if your machine holds those frame rates. A 165Hz panel is the tier a mid-range card saturates at 1080p and comes close to at 1440p, which is why it has been the standing recommendation for years.

The number itself is usually a factory-lifted 144Hz specification, and the extra 21Hz is not the reason to buy. What you are really buying is the panel and the electronics around it: pixel response, overdrive behaviour, the adaptive-sync window and the input list. Two 165Hz monitors at the same money can be very different screens once you look past the headline figure.

One bandwidth catch trips people up at 1440p. Driving 2560x1440 at 165Hz in 8-bit RGB needs roughly 17.8Gbps, more than HDMI 2.0 can carry, so the connection falls back to a lower refresh rate or to chroma subsampling that softens fine text. Use DisplayPort 1.4 or an HDMI 2.1 input, and check your card has the matching output before ordering.