FRAMERATES DEFINED

salman327

Senior member
Jun 4, 2001
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Okay, I hear everyone talking about framerates this, and framerates that, but exactly when do framerates fall into the law of diminishing returns. I mean, around how many frames do you need per second to actually play a game smoothly, w/out jerks, and have good visual quality (Probably dependant on the card). The reason I ask, is because my computer's too junky for me to actually play a game that runs right.
 

sohcrates

Diamond Member
Sep 19, 2000
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there's definitely a sense of "fluidity" that develops at 60 fps and beyond, but framerates that high are certainly not necessary to enjoy playing most games
 

salman327

Senior member
Jun 4, 2001
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Okay, thanks a bunch for the replies. Looking forward to making this new rig as good as I can get it, and I wanted to know what was actually playable.
 

Poncherelli

Senior member
May 28, 2001
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I play with 30-35 fps in cs most of the time and its alright, not entirely visually pleasing, but it allows for fine gameplay.
 

salman327

Senior member
Jun 4, 2001
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What kind of card are you using poncherelli (sp). I would think that when you tax a graphics card that high to produce 35 fps, that would be a result of you upping the eye-candy and resolution. So shouldn't it look nice then?
 

merlocka

Platinum Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Ahhh. the framerate thread. Beware my long postij.

Just remember that there is a big difference between the framerate you see on your screen, a timedemo average, and the "minimum" framerate you will see.

Minimums are really what kill the fluidity of a game, and usually occur during the most fun (i.e. action packed) part of the game.

Now, there are typically 3 views on this... and it all depends on your own opinion, but I've experiences that the opinions tend to fall into 3 categories. The first say a timedemo of about 30fps is fine, the second say a timedemo of 60fps is whatcha need, and then there are the people who insist on +2000fps.

There is no correct answer, of course. It's all subjective. If framerate remained at a constant 30fps the game would be smooth. A constant 60fps has been argued (3dfx wrote an excellent article about it but it's not posted anymore) to be the best framerate for 3d games.

Depending on the game, however, the minimums can be severe (or not). A flight simulator generally doesn't need the high fps of a first-person-shooter game like Quake3 or UnrealTournament. The latter at 30fps aren't alot of fun. This is why many hard core first-person-shooter (too many fps's around here) multi-player gamers tweak their systems such that they spit out hunderds of fps. This is in effort to make sure the minimums are never below 60 (and is the case of quake engine games, better movement is possible with more fps).

There is no right answer. More is better, there is a point of diminishing returns, but it's different for each person and each game.

Here is my realworld example. Tbird 1Ghz, Geforce2 GTS (everything overclocked to the brink of stability). In quake3 if I run at 1024x768x32 w/S3TC, my timedemo's are 100+ fps and the fps counter can see ~140's. When playing on servers, the game often gets choppy when alot of peeps are in the same room shootin, I've seen framerate drop as low as 35-40. 800x600x16 timedemo's in the 150's, and the fps counter can go into the 200's, and it's always smooth.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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I aim for 120 FPS. I can easily see the difference between 120 FPS and 60 FPS; in fact 60 FPS seems like a slide-show after seeing 120 FPS.
 

kmmatney

Diamond Member
Jun 19, 2000
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As another poster said, its the "minimums" that kill you (literally, in a FPS game).
 

dfloyd

Senior member
Nov 7, 2000
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Am I wrong or doesnt fps affect ping? I mean if you get too many fps going then (depending on connection) you could actually start lagging. That is why most people set a max_fps. In fact with many fps's that I used to play I would set my max_fps at 30 just to make sure i did not lag (Which would be far worse than dropping a couple fps imo).