I recently wanted to start playing CS again and have not used my desktop PC for a while.

When looking that my refresh rate is still 144hz on the screen it says that it is 120hz and I cannot pick anything else except 60 and 120.

Now granted there is not a huge difference between 120 and 144hz, but if I have a 144hz monitor I should be able to have it.
Before when playing and overall using my PC I always ran 144hz without a problem.

Now both in Advanced display settings on Windows, NVIDIA control panel and in CS2, my refresh rate is locked at 120.

Monitor I have: Acer XF240H. If you do some research you will indeed see that it is a 144hz monitor.

Please someone help!

Are you using a cable from PC to monitor that supports the refresh rate?

This.

# HDMI

* HDMI 1.4: Supports refresh rates up to 120Hz at 1080p resolution and 60Hz at 4K resolution.
* HDMI 2.0: Supports refresh rates up to 240Hz at 1080p resolution, 144Hz at 1440p resolution, and 60Hz at 4K resolution.
* HDMI 2.1: Supports higher refresh rates, including 120Hz and even 240Hz at 4K resolution, and up to 8K resolution at 60Hz.

# DisplayPort

* DisplayPort 1.2: Supports refresh rates up to 240Hz at 1080p resolution, 144Hz at 1440p resolution, and 60Hz at 4K resolution.
* DisplayPort 1.3: Supports higher refresh rates, including 240Hz at 1440p resolution and 120Hz at 4K resolution.
* DisplayPort 1.4: Supports refresh rates up to 240Hz at 1440p resolution and 120Hz at 4K resolution. It also introduces support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) at higher refresh rates.
* DisplayPort 2.0: This version, introduced more recently, offers even higher refresh rates. It supports refresh rates up to 240Hz at 4K resolution, 144Hz at 5K resolution, and 60Hz at 8K resolution. DisplayPort 2.0 also supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) at higher refresh rates and higher resolutions.

This post was edited by x_h on Apr 12 2024 09:13am

There are mainly two options, both are related to something that is capping the refresh rate:

• Your cable, because it's not supporting higher frequencies --> Check cable certification and eventually change cable
  
• Your monitor, even if it supports 144hz maybe it changed configs --> Access the control panel of the monitor and check if there is any lock refresh rate option (it could be tricky if the monitor has preset profiles)

Last consideration, it may happen that you changed your resolution to a higher one through SW and not HW upgrade, so that the same HW at an higher resolution can have an output at lower frequency.

This post was edited by NomadJe on Apr 12 2024 09:22am

So I just tried with a new HDMI cable and even if it's 1.4 it should still be able to do 144hz @ 1920x1080 right?

I also tried a DVI-D and it did NOT work. Still only getting 120hz.

I guess last option for me to try is DisplayPort?
Also, my drivers seem up to date both for my screen and NVIDIA, so what else could be the cause?

I know for a certain fact that I've been rocking 144hz before on this same exact monitor

Could be a cap in bios or uefi settings, or in cs directly. Have you tried running a gpu benchmark to verify settings are correct in supporting it?

Just wanted to say, I solved this by getting a DisplayPort 1.4

Solved all problems, and now running 144hz without issues like before!