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Capping FPS

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
36,067
Hello. Another noob thread by me, sorry.

Whilst reading about GPUs and monitors and seeing everyone trying to push high FPS on hardware review websites, it's dawned on me that there is surely no point in having FPS faster than the refresh rate on your monitor.

Is it common to cap your FPS to, say, 120 fps? Or whatever your refresh rate is. Even when gaming competitively, I still don't understand how running at higher FPS could be any more beneficial!

Also, beyond 120hz, surely it's not even perceptible?

Cheers.
 
I cap mine to 120fps, even on a 144hz screen. I can’t really see the difference in the 24fps, everything runs a bit quieter and cooler (where it would otherwise run over 120fps) and it’s lovey and smooth, especially with FS/GS enabled.

I’d advise not to cap at the refresh rate, if you want to, cap to 1 or 2 under the refresh rate instead to ensure you don’t get any glitchy lag. Though not sure if that’s still an issue.
 
Nitefly said:
Hello. Another noob thread by me, sorry.

Whilst reading about GPUs and monitors and seeing everyone trying to push high FPS on hardware review websites, it's dawned on me that there is surely no point in having FPS faster than the refresh rate on your monitor.

Is it common to cap your FPS to, say, 120 fps? Or whatever your refresh rate is. Even when gaming competitively, I still don't understand how running at higher FPS could be any more beneficial!

Also, beyond 120hz, surely it's not even perceptible?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I can see why you'd think this, but it's not true. Your display will show the frame - albeit sometimes only part of it - and it can really help with feeling more connected with the game, which is huge in competitive FPS. Just try it and you'll see. If it was imperceptible then screen tearing wouldn't be a thing.
 
Zefan said:
I can see why you'd think this, but it's not true. Your display will show the frame - albeit sometimes only part of it - and it can really help with feeling more connected with the game, which is huge in competitive FPS. Just try it and you'll see. If it was imperceptible then screen tearing wouldn't be a thing.
Click to expand...

This is true, if you're on a 100hz monitor but churning out 300fps the frame displayed with each refresh will be more upto date at 300fps than 100fps.
 
Minstadave said:
This is true, if you're on a 100hz monitor but churning out 300fps the frame displayed with each refresh will be more upto date at 300fps than 100fps.
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Exactly. If anyone's having trouble visualising it, it can help to draw out dots or lines on a bit of paper. A quick Google does seem to indicate that frame capping is now a thing people do in competitive circles in order to ensure consistent input latency (as with mismatched fps/hz, your frame pacing will be inconsistent) but I can't see that being too much of a problem unless you're an absolute Chad noscoper.
 
Thanks chaps.

Zefan said:
I can see why you'd think this, but it's not true. Your display will show the frame - albeit sometimes only part of it - and it can really help with feeling more connected with the game, which is huge in competitive FPS. Just try it and you'll see. If it was imperceptible then screen tearing wouldn't be a thing.
Click to expand...

Of this I understand this bit:

Minstadave said:
This is true, if you're on a 100hz monitor but churning out 300fps the frame displayed with each refresh will be more upto date at 300fps than 100fps.
Click to expand...

... but not the bits I've underlined. Could you kindly expand? I thought screen tearing only occurs when you are pushing more FPS than the monitor can handle (i.e. glitching and showing half-frames). With my lack of understanding, you seem to be suggesting that half frames is beneficial?
 
For the average gamer, a (high) cap will give a better gaming experience than unlimited, as will enabling highest graphics settings.

If you’re serious at competitive gaming then turn all graphics down low and don’t limit your FPS and squeeze all the tearing potato frames you can get out of it to give you as much of an edge as you can.

High FPS won’t make the average gamer good. But it will make a great player a bit better.
 
For most games I put a call on the FPS for the reason of the post above. My 6800xt hits the 75fos rate on my monitor no where near 100%. This'll in turn means less power and noise as the fans barely go above 900 rpms
 
A good explanation of my point for you @Nitefly



:edit:

However, this video muddies the waters WRT input latency and maxed out framerates. It seems some games act weirdly, although it doesn't seem clear what this is is down to from what I can see.

 
@RossGReds @Zefan

Thanks for the videos, that was very helpful :)

My follow up question is this - in what situations is it worth having g-sync on? Presumably whenever you are playing non-competitively?

Thanks for the help.
 
Depends on the individual, nothing stopping you having a go and making the judgement for yourself. That's all that really matters anyway. For me, I've played too much CS/arena fps games to feel right with anything but as crazy high an fps as possible now, the only time I'd think about turning on adaptive sync is if I were playing a 3rd person game using a controller. I've never turned it on, probably helps that I don't really notice screen tearing.
 
Zefan said:
Depends on the individual, nothing stopping you having a go and making the judgement for yourself. That's all that really matters anyway. For me, I've played too much CS/arena fps games to feel right with anything but as crazy high an fps as possible now, the only time I'd think about turning on adaptive sync is if I were playing a 3rd person game using a controller. I've never turned it on, probably helps that I don't really notice screen tearing.
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See I always though adaptive sync is better for lower frames, where a 100fps/10ms frame won't get displayed for 2 cycles of a 144hz/6.9ms monitor refresh rather than doing anything about tearing. It does help I also don't notice tearing since ascending for 60Hz 7 years ago.
 
Nitefly said:
Hello. Another noob thread by me, sorry.

Whilst reading about GPUs and monitors and seeing everyone trying to push high FPS on hardware review websites, it's dawned on me that there is surely no point in having FPS faster than the refresh rate on your monitor.

Is it common to cap your FPS to, say, 120 fps? Or whatever your refresh rate is. Even when gaming competitively, I still don't understand how running at higher FPS could be any more beneficial!

Also, beyond 120hz, surely it's not even perceptible?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Unless you are a competition gamer then no, there is no point, and NVIDIA even recommend with G-Sync monitors setting your graphics card FPS cap ( in the NVIDIA control panel ) to about two FPS lower than your monitor. So with a 120Hz G-Sync monitor you set the max FPS of your card to be 118fps.
A competition level gamer though may want to set the FPS higher because there is a chance that any new information on the screen will be displayed faster if it just happens to be passed on to the monitor at the right time. But it's only a chance and even then the benefits are debatable. For the average player, display defects are more important than absolute crazy speed so it's better for them to follow NVIDIA's advice.
 
MrPotato said:
My monitor can do 144, but I cap at 60. Not playing anything that I, mere mortal, can notice improvement going over 60. GPU runs cooler, easy.
Click to expand...

Can you really not tell the difference between 60 and 120? It's a night and day difference to almost everyone, outside of those who use a controller for everything.
 
Zefan said:
Can you really not tell the difference between 60 and 120? It's a night and day difference to almost everyone, outside of those who use a controller for everything.
Click to expand...

I agree, lol. There is a huge difference between even 90 and 60. The difference gets less noticeable the higher you go but I think most people would top out at about 120. Play for a while at 90 then going back to 60 is really noticeable.
 
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