Why does 30 FPS look better on consoles?

[Rutvik_2]

Hello!
I have a laptop with GTX 1050 and i7 7700 HQ. I saw gameplays of games like GTA 5 on youtube for that setup and at high-very high, it easily achieves about 35 FPS.
So, I bought this laptop as 30 FPS was enough for me. I thought that consoles usually play games on 30 FPS too so I would get the same result.
I used to think is 30 FPS is the point where all the games start to look smooth.
However, when I actually tested the games, I saw that below 50 FPS or so, even at 45 FPS, the games looked laggy. The camera movements were especially laggy.
However, on 55-60 FPS, it was smooth as butter again!

My friend has a PS3 and I have played GTA 5 on it a lot. I used to sit at the distance of 2 meters from the TV and I did not used to notice any lags at all. Why is that so?
Is it something with my laptop?

 

[jaslion]

Hello!
I have a laptop with GTX 1050 and i7 7700 HQ. I saw gameplays of games like GTA 5 on youtube for that setup and at high-very high, it easily achieves about 35 FPS.
So, I bought this laptop as 30 FPS was enough for me. I thought that consoles usually play games on 30 FPS too so I would get the same result.
I used to think is 30 FPS is the point where all the games start to look smooth.
However, when I actually tested the games, I saw that below 50 FPS or so, even at 45 FPS, the games looked laggy. The camera movements were especially laggy.
However, on 55-60 FPS, it was smooth as butter again!

My friend has a PS3 and I have played GTA 5 on it a lot. I used to sit at the distance of 2 meters from the TV and I did not used to notice any lags at all. Why is that so?
Is it something with my laptop?

Almost all tv's do some image enhancements to make the picture look and feel better. Youtube adds a bit of motion blur in it's video's to make them feel smoother. Also most if not all games on console have a lot of motion blur to hide the lower fps. Just connect your laptop to any newish tv and you'll notice that it feels smoother at the same fps just because of it's image processing.

 

[atljsf]

if you play those games on your tv you will feel that 30fps at 30hz is adequate, i am doing that same thing right now

it also depends on the console optimizations thinking on working at a specific resolution on a specific technology, tv on this case

the tv can expect to get 30hz signal

the laptop surely is set at 60hz, so you need more fps to try to mach the refresh rate of the laptop

you can use vsync on the laptop, set it to work at 30hz if laptop screen allows it, you might get the same experience

and for some reason you might get brighter images, i do in my tv, no idea why, 60hz gives me warmer colors, shouldn't be like this afik, just weird tvs are i think

 

[danielthegreate]

The reason is that frame times are more consistent on consoles. So for example, if you get 30fps, you get 30 frames in 33ms time spans. However, on your laptop your average 30fps might not have consistent frame times in 30fps. For example, in one second you get 10 frame in 33ms each, then you get one frame in 99ms and then one in 66ms and 18 frames at 28ms each. This will still show you an average fps of 30, because it has shown you 30 frames in one second, but your 11th and 12th frame will feel like a hiccup or lag.

The frame times on consoles are more even due to the optimisation, so they feel smoother at the same fps. Gamers usually do not care about frame times mainly because tech reviewers only focus on average frame rates. This usually results in less than optimal choices in gaming hardware. One example are the average frame rates of intel i5 and Ryzen 5 CPUs, you will see that tech reviews show the i5 to have higher average fps, but when you play on Ryzen it actually feels smoother due to more consistent frame times.

 

[atljsf]

well, that many cores and threads have to make ryzen overly capable of offer constant smoother results!