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Best cable to overclock a monitor refresh rate

I know most people say that the cable that you use in your monitor doesn't really matter as long as it's digital signal and there are a lot unnecessarily overpriced cables out there that promises to deliver the "best quality possible" but a $10 cable would do just fine.

I'm buying the Ultra Wide monitor Dell UtraSharp U3415W which has a resolution of 3440x1440 and a refresh rate of 60Hz by default.

I've seen a lot o people getting to 75Hz with no problem with this monitor, using the Nvidia driver. I'm going to buy a cable for this monitor just to make sure I will not be limited by the cable.

After doing some reserch, I've found this post:

If you are too lazy to read, this guy says that the cable you chose DOES affect how much you can overclock and the shorter and the thicker the cable, the better.

 

This is a post of a lot of research i did a while back regarding DVI cables and the Qnix overclocking. The cable DOES make a difference along with the port and gfx card you put it on.

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This is more of an electrical argument than a research game. Any dual link DVI cable has a certain data rate that it is capable of and the size of the cable in terms of thickness is more about voltage over a distance. The thicker the cable the longer you can potentially send the data signal without data degradation. With overclocking you are pushing that data rate to its limits and cable quality does make a difference but it is not so much dependent of size, but is more on distance. The length of time the data is carried and the quality of the cable are the two main factors where size is a compensation for the length of time or distance the data is carried.

With this being said it is more important to get a very good quality short cable. If the thicker cables seem to have better results that would be worth considering in terms of how well the particular cables are made. The same could be said for a very short thin cable from a certain seller. This is why there are mixed reviews as no cable is equal(same as the monitor). The one thing that does show a very constant positive result is a shorter cable.

Over many of the tests i have done anything over 6ft seemed to have degraded results in stability per refresh regardless of the thickness. I originally bought 3 24AWG monoprice cables which had completely mixed results with one worse, one equal, and one better than the stock cable. After doing this i went up to work and tested about 30 DVI cables with the only constant positive factor being length.

After it was all said and done i found a random old DVI cable in a box at work that had no bells or whistles on ends, 24AWG and barely 3ft long that gave me the best results by a good margin(about 7hz over the best monoprice cable totaling 153hz). So go shorter than 6ft (as every cable i tried over 6ft barely hit 108hz) and get a few to try. Cables are not that expensive and if you have a few gamer friends there is likely several you can borrow and try to get the best overclock and don't worry too much about thickness.

The problem is, my monitor doesn't seem to have a DVI port. Here are it's inputs:

1 HDMI v2.0

1 MHL

1 Mini DisplayPort

1 DisplayPort (version 1.2)

1 DisplayPort out (MST)

So, what could be the best option for me? A DisplayPort cable? Which one?

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I think DP would be better

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Seems odd, as the panel is usually what matter when overclocking the monitor. 

 

If the cable is able to drive the res there shouldn't be a problem...

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Seems odd, as the panel is usually what matter when overclocking the monitor. 

 

If the cable is able to drive the res there shouldn't be a problem...

The HDMI cable that comes with the LG Ultra Wide Monitor for example, doesn't allow more than 50Hz, and the Monitor is 60Hz. That's why now I want to buy a cable, just to be sure.

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I have no personal experience but I assume that because most 144hz monitors use DP, that would be a good option

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Personally, i think you should either get the 200$ more expensive acer xr341ck, freesync 75hz one.... or wait till its price drops a hundred or two.

 

Overclocking the monitor never has satisfying results (apart from the korean 1440p`s). Ok, lets say you get VERY lucky and get to 75hz, you still wont really enjoy it unless you hold a minimum fps of 75fps 99% of the gaming time and even then you`ll always stuggle between vsync lag and stutters and tearing.

Ive been through this, trust me - you WANT your next monitor to have freesync or gsync, or you`ll forever have this disappointment fairy sitting on your shoulder.

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Personally, i think you should either get the 200$ more expensive acer xr341ck, freesync 75hz one.... or wait till its price drops a hundred or two.

 

Overclocking the monitor never has satisfying results (apart from the korean 1440p`s). Ok, lets say you get VERY lucky and get to 75hz, you still wont really enjoy it unless you hold a minimum fps of 75fps 99% of the gaming time and even then you`ll always stuggle between vsync lag and stutters and tearing.

Ive been through this, trust me - you WANT your next monitor to have freesync or gsync, or you`ll forever have this disappointment fairy sitting on your shoulder.

I would totally buy a Ultra Wide Monitor that had G-Sync and it was 3440x1440, but this monitor doesn't exist yet and I'm leaving United States to Brazil next week, so I can't wait for that monitor to be released.

People had recommended this Acer monitor to me before, but it's $300 more expensive than the Dell (I just bought it for $809), and I have a 980 Ti, so Free-Sync would be useless for me. Besides, with the Dell one, I have 3 year warranty with Dell,and I can use it in Brazil in case something goes wrong with the monitor.

Also, screen tearing never bothered me anyway. All my life I've been playing without V-Sync On and I barely notice any screen tearing.

In fact, believe it or not, the only time that screen tearing started bothering me, is precisely when I turn V-Sync On. I don't know why, but when it gets to 60 FPS, in all monitors that I had, it starts the screen tearing, but only when exactly 60FPS, 62FPS for example would be fine.

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I would totally buy a Ultra Wide Monitor that had G-Sync and it was 3440x1440, but this monitor doesn't exist yet and I'm leaving United States to Brazil next week, so I can't wait for that monitor to be released.

People had recommended this Acer monitor to me before, but it's $300 more expensive than the Dell (I just bought it for $809), and I have a 980 Ti, so Free-Sync would be useless for me. Besides, with the Dell one, I have 3 year warranty with Dell,and I can use it in Brazil in case something goes wrong with the monitor.

Also, screen tearing never bothered me anyway. All my life I've been playing without V-Sync On and I barely notice any screen tearing.

In fact, believe it or not, the only time that screen tearing started bothering me, is precisely when I turn V-Sync On. I don't know why, but when it gets to 60 FPS, in all monitors that I had, it starts the screen tearing, but only when exactly 60FPS, 62FPS for example would be fine.

 

Congratz!! thats an amazing monitor either way you look at it! 

And with a 980ti you`ll be fine then!

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