An interesting question today from 'Snake' - "I was told that gaming on a computer can significantly reduce the life of the computer monitor. Is this true?"

You know, until today I've never actually given that idea any thought. Is gaming really a major cause of monitor failure?

In short: it's doubtful. While there are some factors of gaming that might lead to the premature death of a monitor, they are shared by general computer use as well as gaming.

I suspect this idea comes from the notion that since there are a lot of fast-moving objects on the screen during a gaming session that the monitor has to work harder in order to display everything quickly, and that's just not true: your monitor is going to update the screen whether you're playing a game or writing an article for a small website ... and it's going to update at the same speed in both instances (consumer LCD monitors generally don't come with the ability to adjust their response rate).

What will slowly kill your monitor, though, is extended use. Eventually the backlight - the light behind the screen that lets you actually see the screen - is going to die ... but in a properly built monitor that shouldn't happen for years (or possibly decades).

Will tearing hurt your monitor? In a word: no. Tearing occurs when the game is trying to update the monitor screen faster than the monitor can actually draw the image. The only thing that happens is you get two halves of a picture: the old image on the top and the new images on the bottom. It's certainly not an enjoyable experience, but tearing isn't going to damage your monitor, either.

So, does gaming hurt your monitor? Only as much as word processing does.

Do you have a question you need answered? E-mail me! lordkat@gmail.com

Click here to check out How to Build a Gaming Computer for Under $1000.

Be safe,

Jason