A display substrate and a driving method thereof as well as a display apparatus. The display substrate comprises pixel groups which are arranged repeatedly, each pixel group comprising a first sub-pixel group and a second sub-pixel group, each comprising four pixel columns. The present invention reduces the number of sub-pixels in the whole display apparatus. Therefore, on a premise of ensuring that the display apparatus achieves a relatively high resolution, the fabrication difficulty of the display apparatus is reduced, and the cost is lowered.