As we continue this, would someone care to explain the whole refresh rate vs. frame rate thing? I've never had anyone elaborate that to me, and it sounds interesting... something to do with multiples?
Refresh rate is how many times the screen refreshes. Thus no matter how hight your fps is, you won't be able to see past the refresh rate. For ex. 60Hz refresh and 90fps. Thos extra 30fps are pretty much wasted because you aren't seeing them, just 60.
Vsync On, locks the fps to the refresh rate. Meaning that your graphics card will not render more than more than the refresh rate and it will show the frame as the refresh of the monitor is happening, then it waits for the next refresh to do the same. This gets rid of tearing in the picture with Vsync Off, but not only is your framerate capped, but it now only displays multiples of your refresh rate. If your graphics card can't draw 60fps, the next number will be 60 / 2 = 30fps. If it can't do that, then it will divide by 3 and so on. So if you're not seeing 60, your seeing 30.
High refresh rates are cool with Vsync On such as 120Hz because you are able to see 60fps, 40fps, and 30fps. Acceptable and each one isn't too distanced from each other, giving you more consistant motion, less noticeable slowdown.
High refresh rates however hurt the resolution that you can display. Like I can only have 120Hz with 1024x768 or below. Higher than that I can only get 100Hz up to 1280x1024. Then it's 85Hz at 1600x1200.
I've read LCDs are less prone to tearing because they display the picture all at once unlike CRTs. In that case Vsync might be better of being off, and now you can advantage of the extra fps. LCDs are also capable of displaying a higher resolution flicker-free picture, as I consider flicker-free 100Hz. Meaning you don't even have to worry about refresh rates, which is good.
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