Can Better Gear Help You Play Better?

Does better gear really make you a better player?

- Phil Iwaniuk

Whenever there’s technology involved in a feat of skill, we’re bound to wonder. If you slid into Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 car, would you win races? And if you sat in the gaming chair of an esports pro, using their exact framerate, refresh rate, mouse settings, and precise mousepad friction levels, would you suddenly become S1mple?

The tacit implication from gaming hardware and peripheral manufacturers is that you just might. We’ve been sold everything from gaming mice to sound cards on the basis of gaining an advantage over the competition, and that’s only been amplified by esports’ mainstream ascendancy. In 2019 it’s de rigueur to fill your desk with RGB-emitting kit that all promises to up your game, but those promises often go unchecked.

There’s no doubt that at the elite level, variables matter. The difference between 60Hz and 144Hz might be the difference between being carried on your cheering allies’ shoulders, and having them enter your room with bars of soap in pillowcases. But for a journeyman multiplayer gamer who’s happy just to break even on his K:D (hi there), is there any sense in it?

Weary of my own shortcomings in online shooters, I decided to undertake a deeply scientific experiment. An A/B test for the ages, an Erin Brockovich moment in PC hardware, a… okay—fine. I sit and play games using the different kit and then record my stats.

THE TEST RIGS

First I need to establish the variables, and the frame rate is the logical start point. As any pro gamer will tell you, more frames are always better. With this in mind, it feels only right that my esports-level rig should harness the RTX 2080 Ti’s heft. For the B setup, a GTX 1070 with a frame cap at 60fps using Nvidia Inspector will do the job.