How low can the Framerate be "Playable"?

bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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The anandtech's review of the upcoming Z3770 Tablet featuring the following hardware:

Intel's Bay Trail Form Factor Reference Design.10-inch, 2560 x 1440 display, 2GB of LPDDR3-1067 memory and a 64GB eMMC solution. Windows 8.1 (32-bit)

It reached 14 FPS at Grid 2 - 720p

14 FPS is really low, but is it concidered "not playable" for a casual Tablet?
 

robvp

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Aug 7, 2013
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i played wow on a netbook once, hit around 10-15fps, it was hardly bearable for anything other than gathering or checking mail/ah
 

videogames101

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Aug 24, 2005
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I've played world of tanks at 8 fps before while my PC was having issues. Technically I was "able to play" so I say 8 fps is playable.

But when I'm using a real GPU, I won't accept less than 40 fps, prefer 120+
 
Aug 11, 2008
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I dont play multiplayer so my requirements are probably lower than most. I prefer 40+, and can tell a difference if it drops into the upper 20s, but I would consider that still playable.

Any lower than that is not worth it though.

Honestly, the resolution of tablets with small screens and weak (relatively) cpu and gpu performance is somewhat puzzling to me. Something like 1440p on a 10 inch screen seems unnecessary except as a marketing point, and increases demands greatly for any type of gaming. I have a 600p 7 inch early android tablet, and the screen is the least of the annoyances, and seems actually fine to me.
 

Durvelle27

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Jun 3, 2012
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I've played world of tanks at 8 fps before while my PC was having issues. Technically I was "able to play" so I say 8 fps is playable.

But when I'm using a real GPU, I won't accept less than 40 fps, prefer 120+

but were talking about a racing gamen (Grid 2). I've played this game and anything below 30 FPS is just unbearable. Almost like a slideshow
 

epidemis

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Jun 6, 2007
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Average min 20 FPS, but it might get choppy with just a little strain and dipping into the 10's
 

CuriousMike

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Feb 22, 2001
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In racing games, I tend to notice the stutter effect at about 17-18 fps.

I'm not saying that 20fps is great, but you're not in the 'stutter' mode yet.
 

SPBHM

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2012
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for racing games I tend to think going under 60FPS is a bad idea!

but for more casual gaming, like the codemasters racing games as low as 30-25FPS can still feel good... 20 is almost there, 15 is bad.
 

Elcs

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Apr 27, 2002
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Depends on the game and personal preference.

One game that stands out for me is Star Wars: Republic Commando. It was smooth and enjoyable from 22 frames per second upwards but as soon as it went down to 21 FPS or lower, it went to hell in a handbasket.
 

Juddog

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Dec 11, 2006
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It depends on the game; turn based games can handle single digit framerates; racing games are really close to unplayable with anything under 30 fps, same goes for first person shooters. RTS games can be playable in the 15-20 range.
 

BrightCandle

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Mar 15, 2007
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The genre and the games blur really make a difference as others have said. The perception of fluid motion tends to occur around 24-25 fps so long as there is sufficient motion blur in place to make it work. Without motion blur the feeling of smooth motion is more around 30 fps. But many people can bare figures quite a bit lower than that in certain games, especially when immediate action aren't required. You can play a turn based game at quite a bit lower FPS than Call of Duty.

The control input makes a big difference as well, a mouse allows quite rapidly movements and adjustments whereas a controllers analogue stick doesn't. A tablet touch screen is even less responsive and less accurate and hence allows even lower frame rates to be perceptibly OK and feel like your input is translated correctly.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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16fps was used for a lot of early films, so I'd say that's the absolute bare minimum to be playable. For a decent experience, the minimum is 24fps, same as modern film. Depends on the game though. An FPS that requires a lot of fast panning benefits from a faster frame rate.
 

darkewaffle

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Oct 7, 2005
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I tend to say 15-20. Below that the choppiness goes from annoying or unpleasant to actually tangible.
 

bergami

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Apr 15, 2012
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I have to agree with you guys, I think anything bellow 30 is annoying, but I'd accept 20-30 although bellow 20 is really painfull.

Either the final version of this tablet gets better results or I am going to stick with ultrabooks.

Grid 2 is just a base game and it seems to be really light, even though, the results were really low.
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
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Depends on the game. Low-action games can maybe go as low as 20fps, but action-heavy games should have at least 30fps.
 

Agent11

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Jan 22, 2006
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if the transition is smooth and there isn't a demand for a lot of action low fps can be tolerable. Like walking around in a heavily modded skyrim.
 

futurefields

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Jun 2, 2012
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Depends on the type of game and genre and all that.

GTA style games are perfectly playable averaging 25fps which is about what they average on console. RDR dips down into the teens at times (Tall Trees area) and that borders on unplayable especially if you are getting chased by a bear.

Racing games like Burnout or Need For Speed should be run at 60fps, ideally with plenty of additional headroom to handle explosions and all that. Ideally racing games should have no framerate dips.

Single player first person shooters are playable anywhere from 30fps on up, with these games for me its more a matter of locking the framerate down and avoiding fluctuations than it is running at the highest possible framerate at all times.

For example, in Far Cry 3 I was getting a lot of stuttering because depending on what I was looking at, it would render anywhere from 150 fps looking at the sky or an indoors scene, and be 35 frames per second on a really busy outdoor area with tons of grass and trees.

I was able to remove all stuttering by locking it down to 36 frames per second. So in this situation, less average fps made the game much more playable.
 

Via

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Jan 14, 2009
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I remember playing Oblivion on my 7600 GT and getting teen frame rates is some outdoor areas. I don't remember it making it unplayable in the least.

I might not be so forgiving nowadays, though.