Frame latency, monitor refresh, and FPS

[Ben90]

A 1000 Hz mouse reduces tearing
If you love VSYNC OFF gaming and are sensitive to tearing, then you definitely WANT a 1000 Hz mouse running at a full 1000rps (not 250 or 500rps), something far beyond your display Hz and GPU framerate. This avoids any stutters caused by aliasing between the mouse rate and the Hz rate / framerate. For example, a cheap mouse (125 Hz) on a 120 Hz or 60 Hz, you will get about five microstutters per second. This is the harmonic beat frequency where the mouse gives you two bigger movement steps during one frame. This is noticeable during fast panning motion and when you have software based mouse smoothing turned off -- you don't want software based mouse smoothing, because that increases input lag.

Mark, that was a really helpful post, that answers some of the questions I did not even post yet!

This is the first time I hear about mice causing microstutters. Input lag from mice is easy to understand, but I am afraid that I am not quite getting what you say here. Do you have some more information I could read on this topic?

I feel microstutter is getting misused as the term "lag" did when people started using it for low framerates instead of internet problems.

Essentially Mark is talking about maximizing continuity between the mouse and game engine. There are a couple of errors in the context being used to explain it, but on a whole the message is true. A higher polling mouse increases fluidity of movement. It doesn't have anything to do with microstuttering though.

 

[Final8ty]

Mark, that was a really helpful post, that answers some of the questions I did not even post yet!

This is the first time I hear about mice causing microstutters. Input lag from mice is easy to understand, but I am afraid that I am not quite getting what you say here. Do you have some more information I could read on this topic?

Anyway, I think I have finally convinced myself that my money is better spent on a new monitor than a next gen graphics card! Now I just need convince Her...

Update: Solved.

my problem was solved by replacing my ps/2 wireless keyboard and mouse- bought a http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support... keyboard and http://www.teamscorpion.net/design3.php mouse - problem solved. only stuttering i get now is down to bottlenecking of the cpu or the 5770 struggling to keep up with newer games. must of been lagging due to the wireless or the ps/2 port conflicting with usb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgM2O8Ci4SU

 

[UaVaj]

fps get blamed for alot of things. when in fact fps has nothing to do with it.

carry on.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Allow me to introduce myself...

Do insane framerates really look better?
Yes, if frame render times are consistent. That's if you prefer VSYNC OFF -- then believe it or not, 500fps (consistent frame rendertimes) at 60 Hz can looks much better than ~60fps at 60 Hz. You get many MUCH-smaller splices of many different (fresher) frames into one refresh. The tearline offsets become very tiny as a result. (top part of refresh being almost 16.7ms ago, bottom part of refresh being nearly 0ms ago). Here, this is a situation where a 1000 Hz mouse makes a quite noticeable fluidity difference; since the more accurate mouse position updates result in more consistently and smaller offset splices during insane-high framerate VSYNC-OFF gaming.

This is something I've advocated for many years now, if you're a pro FPS player and smoothness and responsiveness matters then vsync=off and very high frame rates are the way to go, you can simply feel that it's smoother, well...any good player can.

I've always forced vsync off for this reason, because the tear lines are helpful they're giving you mid-refresh updates to the game state and they can convey information mid-frame that you can't get otherwise.

For example if an object is moving across the screen horizontally very fast (sub frame) you might miss this entirely with a vsync'd frame rate, if you're rendering at a few hundred FPS with vsync off and you happen to tear through the object then the relative positions above and below the tear actually indicate direction of motion within just 1 full refresh of the screen.

I think this is a wildly mis understood topic, glad to see posts like this helping dispel some of the myths like FPS > Refresh Rate is pointless, it's just not true.

 

[omeds]

This is something I've advocated for many years now, if you're a pro FPS player and smoothness and responsiveness matters then vsync=off and very high frame rates are the way to go, you can simply feel that it's smoother, well...any good player can..

100% agreed. :thumbsup:

 

[Unoid]

Great help to me. Running 680s in sli, I've been trying to get rid of stuttering even though my 60fps cap is on my 1440p.