Question on High Refresh Rate/FPS and the "smooth motion" effect

[Fa11ou7]

Back in 2012 I picked up a 27" Planar as my main gaming monitor and other than coming with one faulty pixel it has been a great monitor. A few months ago I picked up a GTX 970 for Batman AK, Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. Now, looking at the manual for the Planar it says it is rated 60hz @ 1080p so that means it caps at 60 fps. I'm pretty sure that my 970 can do better than that with the games I'm playing and I know that many gamers appreciate gaming at closer to 100 FPS. My high FPS ignorance was fine until recently when my parents picked up a 4k Vizio with the "smooth motion" high refresh rate trick. I have to say that I love that look of video on their Vizio. In general I'm pretty happy which my rigs performance but there are a couple of questions that hopefully you can help with.

1. With a higher refresh rate/Hz (and theoretical FPS) will my gaming experience look like the "smooth motion" effect of todays TVs?

2. My Planar says that it can do 75Hz at 1440x900, would that be a noticeable enough difference to the eye to see if it's something that I would like?

3. What FPS do you prefer?

 

[BadActor]

Ideally, you want the monitor refresh rate and your FPS to match. This is the concept of VSync, GSync, etc. and helps to reduce screen tearing. The downside is that it increases input lag. If your 970 consistently runs above 60 FPS, enabling VSync will make your game looks smoother. If you run higher FPS than what the monitor refresh rate it is without using VSync, it will still look more fluid, but you might run in to micro stutter, because your monitor isn't rendering full frames. So to answer your question, you want as many FPS as you can get and a monitor with a refresh rate that matches. This is why 144 hz GSync monitors are becoming so popular.

 

[Fa11ou7]

Ideally, you want the monitor refresh rate and your FPS to match. This is the concept of VSync, GSync, etc. and helps to reduce screen tearing. The downside is that it increases input lag. If your 970 consistently runs above 60 FPS, enabling VSync will make your game looks smoother. If you run higher FPS than what the monitor refresh rate it is without using VSync, it will still look more fluid, but you might run in to micro stutter, because your monitor isn't rendering full frames. So to answer your question, you want as many FPS as you can get and a monitor with a refresh rate that matches. This is why 144 hz GSync monitors are becoming so popular.

Hmm, I'm not sure that answered any of my questions but thanks for the additional info. Yes, I would love to get a Gsync gaming monitor but they still seem kind of hard to come by and I don't know if the additional expense will give me enough of an observable difference from what I am used to. I know there is a big split with people that say 60FPS is just fine and those that can't stand anything less than 100FPS(etc).