On a PC, use DisplayPort. On a PS5 or Xbox Series X you have no choice — the console only has HDMI, and you want the monitor to have HDMI 2.1 rather than 2.0. That one sentence resolves almost every version of this question. The rest of this guide is about the version numbers, because “it has HDMI” and “it has DisplayPort” tell you much less than people assume.
Here is the failure this guide exists to prevent. You buy a monitor rated at 240Hz, plug it in with the cable in the box, and Windows offers you 60Hz. Nothing is broken. You are either in an HDMI 2.0 port on a panel whose 240Hz only runs over DisplayPort, or you are using a cable that cannot carry the bandwidth, or the refresh rate is simply still set to its default. All three are common, and all three look identical from the desk.
What actually differs between the two
Both carry video and audio down one cable. The differences that matter for gaming are narrow:
- DisplayPort is the PC standard. It is published by VESA, and it is the connector monitor makers wire their highest refresh rate to. If a panel can only do its headline Hz on one input, that input is almost always DisplayPort.
- HDMI is the television standard, published by the HDMI Licensing Administrator. Consoles, streaming boxes and TVs use it exclusively. It also carries CEC and eARC, which are television features you will not miss on a monitor.
- DisplayPort can daisy-chain multiple monitors from one port via MST, and HDMI cannot. Useful if you run three screens off a laptop; irrelevant otherwise.
- USB-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode is DisplayPort in a different plug. A single cable carrying video, data and power to a laptop is DisplayPort doing the video part.
What does not differ: image quality. Neither connector is sharper or more colorful than the other at the same resolution, refresh rate and color depth. Both are digital, and a correct signal is a correct signal. Anyone selling you a premium cable for better color is selling you nothing.
The version table is the whole answer
Bandwidth is what decides whether a given resolution and refresh rate fit down the cable, and bandwidth is set by the version. The published figures from the DisplayPort and HDMI specifications, in the terms that matter at a desk:
- HDMI 2.0 — about 18 Gbps.4K at 60Hz, or 1440p at around 144Hz. This is the port that caps a console at 60Hz and the reason “it has HDMI” is not reassuring.
- HDMI 2.1 — up to 48 Gbps. 4K at 120Hz, and 1440p at very high refresh rates. This is the version a current console needs to show you what it can do.
- DisplayPort 1.4 — about 32 Gbps. 1440p at 240Hz, or 4K at 120Hz with compression. The most common port on gaming monitors today.
- DisplayPort 2.1 — up to 80 Gbps. Headroom for 4K at very high refresh and beyond. Still uncommon on both monitors and graphics cards.
So the comparison that matters is never “HDMI vs DisplayPort.” It is HDMI 2.0 versus HDMI 2.1, or DisplayPort 1.4 versus 2.1. A monitor listing that says only “HDMI” without a version is a listing to be suspicious of.
DSC: why a 4K 240Hz panel works at all
4K at 240Hz with 10-bit color needs far more raw bandwidth than DisplayPort 1.4 provides, and yet those monitors exist and work. The mechanism is Display Stream Compression, a VESA standard that compresses the signal at a ratio low enough that VESA describes it as visually lossless.
In practice DSC is a non-event: you will not see it, and it does not add input lag you can perceive. The one thing worth knowing is that both the graphics card and the monitor have to support it, which modern cards from NVIDIA and AMD do. If you are running an older card into a new high-refresh panel, that is one of the places the refresh rate quietly drops.
Adaptive sync: it works on both now
This used to be a real differentiator. G-SYNC was DisplayPort-only, FreeSync was better supported over HDMI, and the advice depended on your card. That era is over: HDMI 2.1 includes variable refresh rate, and both vendors support adaptive sync across both connectors on current hardware. Our G-SYNC vs FreeSync guide covers which badge means what; the connector is no longer part of that decision.
Consoles: HDMI, and check the version on the monitor
A PS5 and an Xbox Series X have HDMI out and nothing else, so the only question is what the monitor offers. PlayStation and Xbox Support both document their supported output modes, and the practical summary is: into HDMI 2.1 you get 4K120 and VRR; into HDMI 2.0 you are capped around 4K60. There is one console-specific wrinkle worth knowing — the PS5 does not output 1440p at high refresh on every monitor, where an Xbox Series X handles 1440p natively, which is why our PS5 monitor page exists as its own page rather than a footnote.
The practical checklist
If your refresh rate is wrong, work through this in order. It solves it almost every time.
- Use DisplayPort on a PC unless you have a specific reason not to. If the monitor has both, this is the port its headline Hz is wired to.
- Use the cable in the box first,then suspect it. A cable that works at 1080p60 can fail at 1440p240 — and failure looks like a lower available refresh rate, not a dead screen.
- Set the refresh rate manually. Windows frequently defaults to 60Hz even when 165 is available. Our how to check your refresh rate guide has the exact steps.
- Check the monitor's own menu. Some panels ship with DisplayPort set to an older version, or with the high-refresh mode disabled per-input, and will not offer the full rate until you change it.
- If the screen says no signal at all, that is a different fault — our monitor no signal guide is the right page.
Which monitors to buy with this in mind
Having read the above, the port list on a listing stops being noise and becomes a filter. These four cover the common cases: the cheapest 1440p 240Hz panel if you are on a PC with DisplayPort and nothing else matters; the do-it-all 1440p panel with HDMI 2.1 if a console shares the desk; the 24-inch competitive standard where HDMI 2.0 carries the full refresh rate anyway; and a 32-inch 4K screen if you want the resolution. The wider fields are on best monitors for FPS, best 32-inch monitors and best 1440p monitors.
