Widescreen Gaming Forum

Also take note.. WoW isn't the most demanding game out there, Games like Oblivion can still bring my rig to it's knees going as low as 40fps. Once you experience 60fps, dipping below it just feels weird. I used to game at 20fps, never over 30fps.. Your missing out.

I've gotta say that 40fps is in no way 'bringing your rig to its knees'... it might be pushing it harder than normal, yes, but I don't consider a game a system killer until it refuses to break 15fps. For me, anything less than 25fps is jerk-city, and I'm a lot happier with framerates over 40, as that means even complex areas will still remain playable.

While some games had coding bugs that meant you could do things that others with lower framerates couldn't if you broke a certain level (I'm thinking of Quake 3 Arena, here... if you had 100fps+, you could jump higher/further than those with lower framerates...) I do not believe you will see any advantage in a modern game if you keep framerates absurdly high.

As far as fps goes, the only number that really counts is what the lowest fps is.

Exactly. It doesn't matter what average or maximum framerates are if the minimum is in the single figures...

Generely people upgrade hardware to get that number as high as possible. WoW runs at around 240fps on my 8800gtx rig at the momenyt, anf I have to actually enable vsync to keep a smooth play rate, because it's too fast for my monitor to handle without tearing.

So you're thinking your getting 240fps, but in actual fact your GPU is rendering all of those frames, and then dumping 180 of them and sending that 60 to the monitor... so in reality you're getting 60fps.

So you're thinking your getting 240fps, but in actual fact your GPU is rendering all of those frames, and then dumping 180 of them and sending that 60 to the monitor... so in reality you're getting 60fps.

In all technical regards I am getting 240fps. I'm only visibly seeing 60 of those frames. I was trying to show having higher than 60fps was actually a good thing, and not as pointless as some people make it out to be. It is actually more of a safety net in regard to smooth frame rates.

As far as the comment of bringing it to it's knee's I believe that was a bit exaggerated, but to be honest, if you are used to running at 60fps, as low as 40fps is unacceptable to the point enjoyment is lost. At least by my standards, I'm sure that is an opinion.

Since I'm certain that I pwned more in Counter-Strike at 200+ FPS than at 100 (back then it was on a 100Hz monitor), I wrote a little explanation of why (I think) this is, for myself and for people like skeeter... :p

Crudely speaking, there are delays between the last polled mouse position, the last frame rendered by your GPU, and the last frame displayed by your monitor, and these delays impact how up-to-date the stuff you see on your screen really is.

Your monitor will display whatever your GPU last rendered at a fairly constant rate ("refresh rate"). Your GPU renders new frames as fast as it can, but generally not at a constant rate, especially if the scene it renders is sophisticated and ever-changing, as is the case in computer games. In a first person shooter, what exactly your GPU renders depends on your mouse's position, and mouse position updates aren't instant either – they too have a delay (inverse of polling rate).

With a good gaming mouse which has a polling rate of 500Hz or more, mouse delay is fairly insignificant, though. What is somewhat significant in "pro" games, and what I'll try to explain, is what I call the frame delay:

Frame Delay: Delay between last frame rendered by GPU and last frame displayed by monitor.

Say your monitor's refresh rate is a constant 60Hz, and your GPU renders stuff at 60Hz (frames per second, frame rate, or FPS - same stuff), with some random variance. The maximum possible frame delay is the delay occurs when the GPU renders a new frame JUST after your monitor refreshes.

Time X: Monitor refreshes
Time X + 0.0000000001: GPU renders new frame
Time X + (1/60): Monitor refreshes
…

In this case the frame delay would be nearly 1/60th of a second, or 16.67ms. That's the worst case. On average, the frame delay will be between (virtually) 0 and the maximum possible frame delay, i.e. half of the latter. So in this case this would be 1/120th of a second, or 8.33ms.

Now, with the same monitor, but a GPU which outputs at 100 FPS (again, with some random variance), this delay will be smaller. Now the maximum frame delay is:

(60/100) / 60 = 10ms

And the average frame delay is:

((60/100) / 60) / 2 = 5ms.



By increasing the FPS above the monitor's refresh rate, one decreases the frame delay. Even though the monitor still displays frames at the same frequency, the delay between the last rendered frame and the last displayed frame is reduced.

By having a lower frame delay, what you see on your monitor is more "recent". You’ll see more up-to-date images of what is going on. For high-precision twitch games like Quake or Counter-Strike, this is a good thing, as the stuff you see corresponds more closely to your last mouse movements.

If you game on a 60Hz monitor and get an average of 60 FPS, you'll have a frame delay of 8.33ms. If you would get 40 more FPS (100 in total), you'd reduce your frame delay by 3.33ms. If that doesn't sound like much, think of network latency, or "ping" as gamers tend to know it by. A 3.33ms delay between what's really going on and what you see is similar to a ping of 33. First-person-shooter junkies tend to want a ping of under 50 and consider anything over 100 to be "laggy". So there you have it: having a higher FPS than your monitor's refresh rate makes a difference.

Note: frame delay has nothing to do with how smooth the graphics look. If your GPU is rendering stuff at around 100 FPS, and it's outputting to a monitor outputting at 60Hz, you’ll still only see 60 frames per second. But, on average, the frames you see will be more up-to-date than if your GPU would render at 60 FPS.

PS: I'm not really sure how V-Sync fits into this all. I know it syncs the frame rate to the refresh rate to reduce "tearing", but I don't know what effect it has on frame delay. I guess a good V-Sync system could force the GPU to render each frame right before the monitor refreshes, minimising frame delay, but in practice it seems to me that V-Sync increases frame delay quite a lot. *shrug*...

My definitive gametype FPS list!

FPS = 40
RPG = 30
RTS = 25
MMO = 15

Ofcourse the IDEAL for all of them is 60fps. Pointless above that for all the reasons of the monitor's refresh rate and the limit of the human eye etc

I played WoW on my old, old PC at 15fps for about 6months and it was totally playable. In an FPS on the other hand, it's completely un-manageable (e.g me on R6Vegas atm!) ((PS. I've got to the Dam level and have had to stop playing because its about 8fps and impossible))

Holy no way, i notice a differnce in ALL games when the fps drops below 40, And it all depends on the engine Doom 3 feels choppy at 60fps where as the source engine is fine at 30-40fps.

I really hate it when ppl compare movie framerate to the framerate in games it just not the same thing...

At no time did I make a direct comparison. It was just a fun way of pointing out one of the oddities of framerates.

But hey everyone has to take everything way too seriously on the internet.

Wee.

I mean the fps rates i posted was the absolute minimum for the game to feel playable.
I've found that to be correct across the board really.

Maybe it differs for different people who maybe suffer from certain things like motion sickness or slight epilepsy and everyone has their own preferences, but i find those frame rates manageable.
I've always had a "mid-range" PC, so have gotten use to it, i feel its a bit of a waste of money to have a PC that goes at over 100fps, except of course if you're future proofing.

For "twitch" games online, 60fps really is a min, to compensate for lag.

_________________
Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

[quote]I really hate it when ppl compare movie framerate to the framerate in games it just not the same thing...

At no time did I make a direct comparison. It was just a fun way of pointing out one of the oddities of framerates.

But hey everyone has to take everything way too seriously on the internet.

Wee.

Sorry if it seemed that my comment was directed at you it was'nt (if it was id have quoted you)its just that the 24fps film framerate thing always seems to get raised in almost every frame rate thread ive ever read & i was just stating that i think the two have no real base for comparison as one is passive the other active

I dont think im taking things To seriously I just like you im furthering the discussion you made a point i addressed it,after all is'nt that what these forums are for?

If anyone's still interested about the whole FPS thing between film and games and the human eye, read

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Sums it up nicely.

_________________
Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

Wow wont run over 60fps if you're using a dual-core cpu. If the guy is using an FX amd singlecore and a gforce 8800, i doubt 180fps would be much of a problem ^^

Wow wont run over 60fps if you're using a dual-core cpu. If the guy is using an FX amd singlecore and a gforce 8800, i doubt 180fps would be much of a problem ^^

Try running windows media player (or iTunes in my case) in the background with a blank visualization screen. You will notice WoW is able to get past that little hitch. I listen to music while I play, and noticed this fixed it for me.

However as said before, if your getting anything that high in fps, it doesn't even matter, because screen tearing is a serious issue with the high sensitivity free moving camera.