Do people really need 60+ FPS?

60fps has a different feel to it than 30fps, aside from the speed difference. It looks more lively and smoother, kinda like the difference between watching a show taped on film like Seinfeld or Frasier, or on video, like Fresh Prince of Bel Air or Three's Company. 60 fps looks closer to the motion you would see looking out your window than 30 fps does....30fps looks more like watching a recording than the real world. In fact, Oblivion is one of the games where to really feel immersed and get a sense of being in the world, 60+ fps helps.
 
It wil lbe a definite upgrade. The x850 XT PE, (or the x800 GTO2 if you unlock it) can kill so hard. Up into the realm of the 7600GT in some cases. You'll enjoy it.
 
Minimum frame rate is the most important. I'll take 31 fps as long as it doesn't drop below 30.
 
To quote Jeremy Clarson: I know it's daft and pointless, but so is a tequila slammer. Doesn't stop you from enjoying one from time to time, now does it?
 
60 looks nicer for most kinds of games, but 30 is fine. As long as its consistent without drops. I shoot for 40fps+.
 
nhusby said:
Does your television screen flicker? thats 30FPS. Do florescent lights flicker? thats (I think) 60Hz. How about regular light bulbs? 120Hz.
Click to expand...
You got those last two reversed.

But yes. If you can't see a lightbulb flicker, than you don't need 60+ FPS. Yes, it makes it somewhat easier to play FPS', but in all honesty, it's really just for the "my d*** is bigger than yours" competition, especially when you get into the 120+ range.

In response to the article: Yes, the human eye can precieve up to ~200 FPS, but does that really mean anything? I guarentee in the average video game, that you would not be able to tell the different between 60 and 200 FPS unless you were told so. I think I might actually turn this into an experiment, seems promising. I'll get back with the results... :d Oh, and the article talking about "constant streaming video" or whatever to our eyes, is wrong, at least with artificial light. Remember, lightbulbs flash at 60Hz, so technically you're only getting 60FPS from your environment.
 
djBon2112 said:
You got those last two reversed.

But yes. If you can't see a lightbulb flicker, than you don't need 60+ FPS. Yes, it makes it somewhat easier to play FPS', but in all honesty, it's really just for the "my d*** is bigger than yours" competition, especially when you get into the 120+ range.

In response to the article: Yes, the human eye can precieve up to ~200 FPS, but does that really mean anything? I guarentee in the average video game, that you would not be able to tell the different between 60 and 200 FPS unless you were told so. I think I might actually turn this into an experiment, seems promising. I'll get back with the results... :d Oh, and the article talking about "constant streaming video" or whatever to our eyes, is wrong, at least with artificial light. Remember, lightbulbs flash at 60Hz, so technically you're only getting 60FPS from your environment.
Click to expand...

Lightbulbs flicker twice per cycle.
Mains electricity flows as a Sine wave which has a +ve and -ve part to the waveform.
Both of these cause the bulb to light, giving
2 x 60Hz = 120Hz US
This affects the theory you suggested.
Comparing with a lightbulb will tell you if you can perceive 120Hz.

Your experiment needs to have a large distributed set of test members to give an accurate result.
If you include only yourself, the results are valid for you.
 
It all depends on what you can stand basicly ..some people find 25 fps to great and totally acceptable. While many people prefer 60 fps or better ... infact if people didnt like 60 fps or better type of gaming ..the Video card industry would tank and basicly dissolve.. I couldn't game on anything less than 40 fps ..personally and i am at a point where that is a bit of a strech at 1600x1200.
 
Chernobyl1 said:
Lightbulbs flicker twice per cycle.
Mains electricity flows as a Sine wave which has a +ve and -ve part to the waveform.
Both of these cause the bulb to light, giving
2 x 60Hz = 120Hz US
This affects the theory you suggested.
Comparing with a lightbulb will tell you if you can perceive 120Hz.

Your experiment needs to have a large distributed set of test members to give an accurate result.
If you include only yourself, the results are valid for you.
Click to expand...

my head almost blew up while reading your post.
 
All I have to say is play Bloodrayne 2 for PS2 and spam a few rockets about 10 or 20 times.

Ask me how important framerates become then.
 
my experiance:

in fps you NEED 60-fps (at least 50) to keep up. (i like to be the top scorer in any game i play, CS's simple reflex gameplay is boring for me, thought that game needs higher fps than 60, its just that fast)

but fps isnt the only thing to go buy, you NEED a CRT or a response time of 16ms or less.

even after i had all these, i still had choppiness, very slight like 40 fps ish.

turns out that it was my mouse, i upgraded to a laser mouse, and fuck yeah, all movements became fluid.

----
fluidity is whats most important, beyond 60, it just serves as more of an e-penis and justifiably, i likely indicator of what action you can play at.

the only times you need the 60 fps is when action is happening, that probably runs congruent with have over 60fps on average.

but damn the mouse made a HUGE difference over just the optical one
 
Some people like to run things with vysnc while other poeple dont notice tearing much. You need a decent card to run vysnc with your monitors refresh rate in some games.
 
Like many others have said, it varies from people to people. Some can tell the difference and some just can't. Personally, I can tell the difference because of the type of games I play: Twitch-type shooters that require precise accurate tracking. If you were to play some old school Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer with 40fps, you'd get steamrolled because you wouldn't be able to keep up with the fast movements. Sure 40fps is bearable, but you will certainly feel a difference when you're playing at 60+fps.

In slower paced games like Battlefield or Splinter Cell, it doesn't really matter all that much, it's all in the kind of game you play and what type of performance you're accustomed to getting. So while you may or may not be able to SEE the difference, you will certainly FEEL the performance boost.
 
Yeah it sure does depend on the game. Some games are fine at 30-40fps whereas others need 50+
 
The saying or whatever "Ignorance is bliss" plays a key. When I started out on the pc I think I was on a tnt or somthing and I played cs and ut1. Everything was great, I didnt even know what AA did for a while. Once I moved up to a 3dprophet4500(think it was around a GF2) I started seeing some eye candy and got power hungry for it. Then I moved to a GF4ti4200 and I wanted everything on max and with 60+fps on everything, then jumped to a 9800pro. This card lasted for a while because it was one beast of a card. After wanting to run source with full eye candy I purchased a 7800gt that ive had for over a year. I'm still really happy with it and probaly wont upgrade for a while because school and getting an apartment so I dont bust out the $$$ as easy now haha, and source engine seems to have some goodies left (hl2 episodes, tf2, mods) :) .

Well this post was a lil longer than expected, but ya ... a ham sandwhich is alright but put a slab ribs right beside it and it doesnt look so good anymore.
 
Speaking on memory, when I upgraded from a machine that was running 50 FPS to a machine that was running 75 FPS, I could clearly tell a difference. Unreal and UT were my games, which was fine when there weren't heavy firefights. However, once I was dealing with TDM's or heavy CTF battles, the older machine would really cause me problems.

So yeah, ignorance IS bliss ;) Unreal was my very first FPS and I ran it without an accelerator card. I thought it was amazing then *L* However, once I picked up a vid card and enabled acceleration, I was floored. Once UT came out and I realized I needed a faster machine, I hit 75 FPS and realized what I needed.

If people are into FPS games, they really need to stay above that 60 FPS threshold to keep the playing field even.
 
When I play Oblivion I am quite satisfied when my card can draw an average of 30 fps with HDR and 4xAA running (using the chuck patch). It is quite sufficient for this type of game, and beyond 30 fps things feel "nice". But when gaming BF2, I would be feeling the pain when fps dips below 50. All depens on the action I guess.
 
Ive become acclimated to low FPS... hell i used to play the halo demo on a celeron 533 witha geforce 2... and i could live with the 1oish FPS it gave me... so FPS doest really bother me... hell, i used to play games in a fleet at liek FIVE fps because the engine wasnt efficient past a certain point and i was the best... (i shit you not sirs. :p i just grew used to it...)
 
due to the engine in quake 3 arena i like to keep a steady 333fps. That creates a nice slow but high bounce as opposed to 125fps shorter and faster bounce. This is the only game that 60+fps are vital to the game.
 
I think it is more important to ensure that your min FPS stays in a reasonable area. For example like you said, when you get a lot of eye candy on the screen a bit of jerkyness occurs. It changes the way a game feels altogether when you can float through the game and not have to worry about jerking around.
 
It's necessary for 3-D online multiplayer games, especially first-person 3-D shooters or any other fast-action games especially racing games or online third-person perspective 3-D games.
 
I hate less than 60, I can deal OK to about 50, any lower than that and I get irritated.....period.

It's very subjective, but for PC use, I think a MINIMUM is 50fps, and 60fps or more is fuggin' gravy. 35fps sucks for gaming IMO.
 
Using a CRT with a refreshrate of 100 I can tell differences between 25-40-60-80 and even 100fps in games. 60+ is fine but I really prefer 80+ in fast-twitch games. I can stand lower in something slow-paced like an RTS game but not a shooter. I don't have the sharpest eyesight in the world but I have really good motion detection (I guess that's what comes into play here). LCD and DLP TVs look really jerky to me in action scenes, one reason I haven't bought one yet.
 
Like most people with common sense, it varies from game to game. I dont need 60fps for games such as Oblivion, but for games such as Q4, its much easier to play.

So its a trick question, yes, and no.
 
It's like most other things, once you've seen it you can't go back.

Like playing Oblivion on a 9250 at a friends house, no bloomshading, low framerate. At the time I was saying, "This looks alright, I can still play it". Then he got his X800 GTO, what a difference. Sadly, it seems that card has died. Three days later.
 
Yes.

That is like asking if I would like steak and a bj.
 
i went from playing unreal tournament 2004 on a gf2 at 20fps and lower...and now i'm playing on a 7800gt. i can understand your point of view, but once you get a better card you won't want to go back.
 
Quake 4 btw is capped at 60. I guess the developers didnt see much merit in going above that.
 
I personally don't see much difference in most games beyond 30 FPS or so. If I get dips below 30 I get pissed off and lower settings like mad until I never dip below that point though. 30 and up is for me.
 
i actually PREFER less framerate when im playing a game like oblivion, because its looks more cinematic. around 40-50fps. but for games like quake, gotta have 85 constant.
 
nhusby said:
Does your television screen flicker? thats 30FPS. Do florescent lights flicker? thats (I think) 60Hz. How about regular light bulbs? 120Hz.

Lets estimate that you have a ping of about 100ms. Thats basicly 10Hz.
unless your framerate drops to 10FPS your internet connection is the bottleneck... if your ping is more like 50 (yeah, right...) then 20FPS would be the limiting number....

I personally think 30 FPS is good. 40 fps is better.... but its your worst fps drop that you should worry about.... so to get that around 20, you'd probubly need 60FPS most of the time...
Click to expand...

Erm...

1) Televisions work much differen't to computer monitors, the film that is shown on them is captured with a finite shutter speed so the film is recorded onto pictures which are taken over a small amount of time, this produced motion blur in the picture and when played at full speed the motion blur is enough to make 30fps appear smoothly.

2) You completely mis-understand the meaning of ping, ping is the measure of how long it takes for data to be sent to a location and back, it is NOT the frequency at which it is sent. So no, 100ms is not the same as 10hz because the next packet to be sent doesn't wait for a reply it is sent straight away after. With a ping of 100ms you don't only send 10 packets in 1 second, you send far more than that.

3) Most games predict movement of bodies in a virtual world so that a large amount of updates is not required to provide smooth appearing movement, ping has absolutly nothing to do with frame rate for the most part.

4) Your last point actually makes some sense, the minimum frame rate is actually quite important (but often underestimated) and you need a much larger average frame rate to gurantee 60FPS as a minamum, probably around 80-90fps although it depends on how well the mapper balanced the eye candy in the maps.

*edit*

As for my own personal preference with games, I usualy play good looking singleplayer games in as low as 30-40FPS (average), such as oblivion which I prefer to look good at the expense of frame rate.

For faster paced single player games where reaction time and aim is important I tend to prefer 40-50 FPS (average) such like F.E.A.R

For online FPS games such as CS:S I prefer 60FPS Min (average)

For online twitch aiming games, or any game where I want to play competitivly frame rates closer to 80FPS (average) are required, this ensures min frame rates don't dip below about 40-50.
 
For some reason, I need at very minimum 60 frames per second for fps games, because otherwise it seems too jumpy for me. 80 frames for a fps is the sweet spot for me. As far as driving games go, Im happy with 40, because I dont think its really that critical.
 
I feel a difference over 60. Hell yeah.

But see, I dont aim to get a 60FPS average. I am for the system that will play my games and never ever drop below 60FPS.
 
I'm accustomed to 10-30fps on my LCD screen. But anything above 30fps is good. I can't tell the difference between 30fps and anything higher.
 
Chernobyl1 said:
Bon2112 said:
You got those last two reversed.

But yes. If you can't see a lightbulb flicker, than you don't need 60+ FPS. Yes, it makes it somewhat easier to play FPS', but in all honesty, it's really just for the "my d*** is bigger than yours" competition, especially when you get into the 120+ range.

In response to the article: Yes, the human eye can precieve up to ~200 FPS, but does that really mean anything? I guarentee in the average video game, that you would not be able to tell the different between 60 and 200 FPS unless you were told so. I think I might actually turn this into an experiment, seems promising. I'll get back with the results... :d Oh, and the article talking about "constant streaming video" or whatever to our eyes, is wrong, at least with artificial light. Remember, lightbulbs flash at 60Hz, so technically you're only getting 60FPS from your environment.
Click to expand...

Lightbulbs flicker twice per cycle.
Mains electricity flows as a Sine wave which has a +ve and -ve part to the waveform.
Both of these cause the bulb to light, giving
2 x 60Hz = 120Hz US
This affects the theory you suggested.
Comparing with a lightbulb will tell you if you can perceive 120Hz.

Your experiment needs to have a large distributed set of test members to give an accurate result.
If you include only yourself, the results are valid for you.
Click to expand...

Your "experiments" aren't going to work unless you use fluorescent lights that use older, non-high frequency ballasts. Incadescent bulbs don't flicker. Fluorescent lights with high frequency ballasts don't flicker at 120Hz - they flicker at a high frequency depedent on the design of the ballast.
 
A lightbulb does not go from completely on to completely off instantly, the brightness (like a TV) drops slowly and is refresh (turned back on) after a tiny amount of time.

It's harder to percieve the flickering because it's not going from 100% to 0% on.

Try if for yourself, look near a lit lightbuld (DO NOT stare straight at it otherwise you risk damaging your eyes) then flick a lightswitch and watch the bulb go dark, it doesn't happen instantly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top