24 difference when you have 3 digit FPS is not a huge deal. Save your money, gamer.

roody buys single songs for $1000, money is of no concern

just don't cap at 120 fps
120 fps does look better on 120hz than 144hz but you can set 144hz monitors to 120hz if you want

edited for clarity

this is objectively wrong, unless your eyes are fucked up a higher framerate will always look and respond better

144 hz > 120 hz usually. In your situation you're only getting 120 FPS so unless you plan on getting a new pc/uncapping your fps(?) soon you might aswell buy a 120 hz monitor as kevin said your fps is so low that the 24 difference isn't a big deal.

I notice a difference on 144hz vs 120hz

120 fps is 120 fps regardless of your refresh rate

more hz is just gonna give tearing

I misread the question. I thought it was asking if he should upgrade from 120hz to 144hz. If you are currently on a 60hz monitor and want to upgrade, definitely go for the 144hz.

If I'm not mistaken, even on 120fps, each frame is displayed quicker on 144hz so it would make it feel more responsive

I'd think so but from empirical testing 120fps looks noticeably worse at 144hz than at 120hz

Yeah but it is more responsive objectively. Whether you care more about the tearing than the few ms of better response time is subjective.

#1
You can set a 144Hz monitor to 120Hz.
Getting a monitor that can do 120Hz but not 144Hz will be difficult.
Behold: 120Hz monitors
How many of those are available? A grand total of ZERO.
>=144Hz monitors
How many are available? All except 3 that have been replaced by newer models and the monoprice one.

To the rest:
Have you ever played with 50fps on 60Hz?
120fps on 144Hz is the same. So yes, if you can't get 144fps you shouldn't use 144Hz. If you can get >=144fps and use 144Hz then capping to 120fps is just plain stupid.

response time is not determined by refresh rate. If you're talking about the time it takes to display a frame, the difference is <2ms at most, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're talking about?

Yeah that 2ms is what I'm talking about

deetr, 120fps at 144Hz is objectively a worse experience than 120fps at 120Hz, because frames are being duplicated which causes stutter. There is no true upside as any slight input lag reduction is completely nullified by duplicated frames.

Of course, you could always just get 144fps and them have a better experience.

you should not cap your fps in tf2, gives some nasty input lag (for me atleast)

Capping your FPS does help. Wildly fluctuating frame rates both above and below your refresh rate will throw off all your timing for projectiles.

To add to this most 120Hz monitors (where 120Hz is the highest refresh rate) are a bit old, and don't have nearly as good color quality and/or gtg response times.

Thanks for all the replies, I will probally get a new 144 HZ that has 120hz setting, I will also look into the tf.tv monitor thread to guide me!

quicker? 120hz means a refresh every 8,3r ms, 144hz means a refresh every 6,94r ms. Now 8,3r - 6,94r = 1,38r ms, my question is, how can it be quicker if it doesn't receive anything to refresh for? it'll refresh 24 frames of nothing new. So if you use a certain Refresh Frequency, you need to have at least the same amount of FPS, in order to see differences, doesn't matter if you have more, it'll be capped at 144 (in case of 144hz monitor), this is how theoretically works, but if you use a 60hz and put 60fps cap, and then switch to 100 for example, you'll notice something is different, that's probably related to how the game works, and to other stuff, so basically it's always better to have a certain FPS amount above the monitor's max frequency, in order to be sure you're using that refresh rate.