A Question on Frames per Second...

[Raphthesquirrel]

hey guys, if a game is running smoothly, how many fps is it running at???
when i say smoothly, i mean running at a respectable rate, and not being very jerky...
thanks, Raph

 

[cleeve]

An average framerate in the 40s or 50s is ideal, assuming the framerate never drops below 25 fps when things get messy.

 

[Raphthesquirrel]

kk thanks

 

[cleeve]

anything higher than 20 should be fine if your using D3D or OGL. if its a movie you want it around 30

That's kind of backwards.

A movie is good at 24fps because it has motion blur which compensates for the low rate.

Games don't have motion blur (and the ones that simulate it don't do it accurately), So you need a higher framerate for smooth motion with D3D or OGL...

Like I said, ideally it shouldn't dip below 25 fps, and should average over 40. That's smooth gaming.

 

[-hooked-]

Aren't you ultimately limited by your monitor refresh rate? Ie there would be no discernable difference between 60fps and 160fps in gameplay (though I guess the data making it to the monitor is a little bit newer). Is that the only difference?

 

[prozac26]

Like Cleeve said, if it never drops below 25fps, it's good.

 

[Valtiel]

oh no not another one of these threads :roll:
It varies from person to person but generally anything below 25 is starting to look jerky.

 

[cleeve]

Aren't you ultimately limited by your monitor refresh rate? Ie there would be no discernable difference between 60fps and 160fps in gameplay (though I guess the data making it to the monitor is a little bit newer). Is that the only difference?

In theory you are, but that's not much of a limitation since anything above 60 fps is pretty much perfect andf definitely playable.

It's the low spots and average that matters, not the max framerate.

 

[enforcer22]

30fps is generaly the "playable" minimum but for me i can see the FPS till it hits the 50 to 60 rang. and i have absolutly no clue what beer is talking about. Never played any game that looked remotly good at 20fps unless your so use to game sutter that is. and yes he also has it backwords. want totaly smooth game play? keep it at and over 50 fps. 40 might be ok depends on how much you can personaly see.

 

[Blacken]

Aren't you ultimately limited by your monitor refresh rate? Ie there would be no discernable difference between 60fps and 160fps in gameplay (though I guess the data making it to the monitor is a little bit newer). Is that the only difference?

You are ultimately confined to your monitors refresh rates though 60 Hertz is said to be painfull on your eyes while 75 is prefered.

30fps is generaly the "playable" minimum but for me i can see the FPS till it hits the 50 to 60 rang. and i have absolutly no clue what beer is talking about. Never played any game that looked remotly good at 20fps unless your so use to game sutter that is. and yes he also has it backwords. want totaly smooth game play? keep it at and over 50 fps. 40 might be ok depends on how much you can personaly see.

IMO, 35fps really is my prefered bare minimum. If it goes below that, I'm turning something off. :? Fluxuation really kills the gameplay. A steady 45 - 50 wouldn't hurt. I'd take 60 in every game I ever bought for life and after about 70 it's all icing. And call me a judgemental bastard but I can see a difference from 60 to 70 8O Though it's not sufficient enough to make a difference within the gameplay.

 

[FeareX]

If you always play 60fps, then you maybe notice a difference. I always play around 30's and its fine for me, but above 50-60 i cant see the difference either , this depents on the game to. enemy territory and cs1.6, i DO see a differense between 50 and higher.

But i always aim for 25fps, except in online shooters.

 

[engrpiman]

playing above 60fps?

Doom3, Prey, quake 4 are limited at 60. also playing games like HL2 there is no difference between 40-50-60 fps i mean come on .. even with a 7900gt it's hard to do it and it's not worth it anyway because you are limited by the refresh rate.

 

[cleeve]

I always recommend 30 for movies because if you are using 60Hz refresh rate you will want to have the movie play in the same phase as the ref rate. other wise like you said it can get blurry and stuff

That's what Inverse Telecine (pulldown) is for...

with the 3D games I have noticed most of them look ok when its higher than 20 FPS. there are some that have problems at ~20 FPS but not allot of them. I have also seen some games that look ok below 20 FPS. but then again only a few

I can't imagine a good experience playing a first person shooter at 20fps. Unless maybe you mean 20fps minimum and an average framerate higher than that.

You can get away with games that aren't 'twitch' based, like RPGs, at lower framerates though...

 

[Blacken]

If you always play 60fps, then you maybe notice a difference. I always play around 30's and its fine for me, but above 50-60 i cant see the difference either , this depents on the game to. enemy territory and cs1.6, i DO see a differense between 50 and higher.

But i always aim for 25fps, except in online shooters.

Oh hell ya, for top downers 20fps would work fine.

Doom3, Prey, quake 4 are limited at 60. also playing games like HL2 there is no difference between 40-50-60 fps i mean come on .. even with a 7900gt it's hard to do it and it's not worth it anyway because you are limited by the refresh rate.

Dude, can you say head room? Say you get 100fps at tops, well when something in the game happens that is demanding upon your GPU, you could drop to 20fps. 200fps tops may hit 60fps minimum and thats the true focus, the minimum.
40fps is smooth, it's ture. Though you need head room, even though your monitor doesn't display over 60 - 75fps. When you play Doom 3 at 20fps and jump to 60, you'l notice how much easier it is to play the game. Your reaction time gets better also, probably because we don't have to use the high bandwidth 'gap filler' option within our jello filled brains. :?

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

As a FPS player, I find 100 is the magic number to shoot for. Its not hard on the eyes, and many cards can obtain that for older games like doom.

The minimum as blacken says, is the most important spec as that will make or break the playability of a game.

 

[randomizer]

Is that 100fps average? If its minimum, then for newer games either you need 2 8800s or nice low graphics. My 9800 pro can get over 200fps in FEAR, when I play at everything minimum and 640x480 res :lol: Wow is it smooth, but wow does it look bad. If it wasnt for the resolution I would say that FEAR still looks "good" (relatively) at low graphics than other games do at the same relative graphic level. But anything lower than 1024x768 is not acceptable, even with 4xAA.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

I was talking average...

The game I play is Sof2 (soldier of fortune 2) and I lock the fps at 100, though I have tried many different fps. The 8800 will push the game to 2000 fps.. .which is stupid fast.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

R E D R U M
  N O R T C E L E

 

[randomizer]

Stop "murder[ing] electron" its setting a bad example for other sub-atomic particles.

 

[randomizer]

I was talking average...

The game I play is Sof2 (soldier of fortune 2) and I lock the fps at 100, though I have tried many different fps. The 8800 will push the game to 2000 fps.. .which is stupid fast.

2000fps............ I should dream more often. The tearing would be so bad you wouldnt be able to see.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

naw, not really, I didnt play at that rate very long cause you can only do it in single player mode. Multiplayer servers wont send you info that fast and your game will just lock up.

 

[qwazzy]

Has anybody here played games where they had 10 FPS? Am I the only one? Lol, I guess I was the only idiot who bought Intel integrated graphics on my old Dell.

 

[sirheck]

Has anybody here played games where they had 10 FPS? Am I the only one? Lol, I guess I was the only idiot who bought Intel integrated graphics on my old Dell.

yes i play f.s.x. it will tax a gpu.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

ya. I think Oblivion got about 10fps on my previous card. annoying isnt it?

 

[geofelt]

A crt monitor at 60 refresh rate WILL bother your eyes. 75 will mostly fix it, and 85 is best. This is because a crt monitor needs to redraw everything each cycle. Most lcd monitors are at 60 cycles, and look fine. They only need to redraw changed pixels.
I play few motion based games, and am surprised that 30fps seems adequate. I learn something new every day here. It also seems to me that those VGA cards and systems able to deliver over 60fps on a CONSTANT basis might be a bit of overkill.