Lower refresh rate = higher performance?!?!?

[MWink]

This does not make any sense but when I upgraded to Win ME and was playing with 3D Mark 2000 I noticed that it looked a lot smoother. I also noticed that I had not set my refresh rate above 60Hz. After setting the refresh rate to 85Hz I found that it looked like it did in 98 (not as smooth). I was running the demo at 1024X768 on an Athlon 715/Geforce DDR. When I ran the benchmark both ways the 85Hz came out slightly ahead. What is causing this? How can I make 85Hz look as smooth as 60Hz? Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me. 🙂

 

[Kowan]

Look in the help section on the top tool bar menu in 3DMark.

"Other Notable Facts
Different 3D accelerators may have different internal (hardware or driver level) implementations of buffering modes, refresh rate and VSync on/off. This means that one accelerator may, in comparison, perform better using a certain setting, but perform poorly with other settings.

Even with VSync off, comparing two accelerators, one using for example 60Hz refresh rate and the other 120Hz, may bias the performance toward the accelerator with 60Hz refresh rate. The lower refresh rate consumes less internal memory bandwith on the 3D accelerator, leaving more bandwidth for rendering purposes. Theoretically best results should be achieved with VSync off, using 60Hz refresh rate. For absolute accuracy, remember to use the same VSync setting and refresh rate on all accelerators."

 

[obeseotron]

Perhaps it is a similar thing to a 640x480 image looking much better in 640x480 on a 19" monitor than doubled in 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor. Assuming it was running at 60fps exactly, only 14 of every 20 frames at 85Hz would be new vs 60/60 at 60Hz. That might account for some hard to see choppiness.