FPS question

epoxy5

epoxy5

epoxy5

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30 Jun 2004
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247
First of all I hope this is in the right section :)

I have a question regarding frames pr. second. In good old crt days, fps were everything, and with a good monitor you could actually use the +100fps for something.

Now with my new 24" tft running @ 60hz, is that just the max number I should aim for?

I mostly play CSS, and do feel that +100fps gives a smooth movement, just a little more snappy, but it seems to me that I get some odd waving lines in the middle of the screen when I make some moves.

So is the ultimate goal just to get 60fps when using a DVI/TFT monitorsignal?
 
It's a bit wierd at times FPS.

Those lines you're experiencing is graphical tearing, as the monitor will be trying to finish drawing one frame, when another comes in to be displayed, as it's not in sync with the refresh rate.

If you turn vsync on, then you'll get 60fps on the screen, and it'll defeat tearing issues.

Ultimately, you want a constant framerate than a super high one. I'd rather have a game running at a constant 60fps than jumping up and down from 30 to 100, as you notice the drops in frames a lot more when it's always changing.
 
Yeah I figured it was something with the high fps count that made the issues with the tearing, although it looks more pronounced in CSS compared to Q4 for instance?

But I will aim for a constant 60fps instead - almost there with 1gb ram, p4 3.2ghz and 6800gt, tommorow I'll install X2 4400, 2gb ram and X1900XTX, so hopefully it will succed :)

In CS_militia I still hit 20-40 in some areas with heavy fight..
 
Tearing varies a lot in some games. It could just be the engines and rendering systems, but I'm no expert, as Quake4 uses OpenGL, Source engine uses Direct3D.
 
BoomAM said:
lol. With that sort of upgrade, its not a 'hope' that it'll work. Its a definatelly. :p
Click to expand...

With the Source engine everything can happen really, also really bad stuff :)
So I just hope it will work, perhaps even add a few more details..

Davey I am not expert either but I reckon it also got a lot to do with the engine. And perhaps tearing is just more visible on a tft?
 
BoomAM said:
lol. With that sort of upgrade, its not a 'hope' that it'll work. Its a definatelly. :p
Click to expand...

Bear in mind that CS:S doesn't really benefit from dual core, so an X2-4400+ (2.2ghz A64) won't be massively faster than a p4-3.2. It's quite possible that the slowdown he currently experiences could be due to cpu limitations, in which case it wouldn't suddenly jump straight up from 20fps minimum to 60fps minimum.

Anyway moving back onto the more general overview, yes, if you are running a 60hz monitor there isn't much benefit from having a framerate over 60. The only exception would be in games with framerate-dependent physics such as quake1/3 engined games.

Note that some TFTs can do 75hz as well as 60hz - no harm in trying it, you can always switch it back if you run into problems. Incidentally the low refresh rate is one of the reasons why I haven't considered buying a TFT yet - for hardcore gaming, even 60/75fps is suboptimal :)
 
Cheers for the input..
The dual core is not really bought in the light of gaming, I normaly work a lot in Photoshop, Painter and various web related software in one go, so I figured it would suit me better.
But the ATI should from what I have heard be better to handle 1920x1200 resolution compared to the 6800gt.. or else I would feel really stupid :)
 
Yes the graphics card is a huge improvement, it will let you use much higher resolution with AA and AF with max details without it slowing things down. The point I was making is that while you will be able to make the game look much better, the minimum framerate might still be under 60fps if its down to cpu limitations.
 
Aah ok :)

I tried looking for some AMD x2 vs P4 HTT benchmarks, and it seems that the X2 is doing really well compared to the P4 (also in gaming) - are there some good and well documented tests I could look at, just to get a clearer picture of my upgrade - would be very happy to see some good tests (most of the ones I found did not include my old Northwood, so it almost seemed like it was not really interesting in terms of performance any more).
 
HangTime said:
Bear in mind that CS:S doesn't really benefit from dual core, so an X2-4400+ (2.2ghz A64) won't be massively faster than a p4-3.2. It's quite possible that the slowdown he currently experiences could be due to cpu limitations, in which case it wouldn't suddenly jump straight up from 20fps minimum to 60fps minimum.
Click to expand...
Disregarding the second core, a 2.2Ghz A64 will still outperform a 3.2Ghz P4 by quite a bit.
 
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