Refresh rate vs in-game FPS experience

[erek]

so was playing star wars - outlaws and noticed horrendous screen tearing

turned on fps counter via steam overlay.. hitting 30s

so i tweak my graphics settings and achieve 90+ fps but game still feels like trash

until a friend asked me if my display is really running at the rated 240 Hz

soon as i set it.. (must of reset to 60 after a recent fresh driver install and i forgot) buttery smooth as expected.

—-

now here’s where some questions come into play

another friend before swears the only way to se any benefit of that 240 Hz refresh rate is to hit 240+ fps

well i told him the refresh subjectively mattered big time for me even at low fps

even at 30 fps with 240 Hz is significantly more smooth than 60 Hz even if it doesn’t really impact input latency.. the visual experience is massively improved

he says that’s nonsense and my PC must be completely misconfigured

[note: i don’t use vsync or gsync mostly]

Quote:

is he right?

 

[MaZa]

In this day of Freesync, Gsync or just VRR the refresh rates of the game itself and the monitor are in always in sync unless you get out of its range. The maximum refresh rate of your screen only defines the maximum the screen can show but otherwise if your game runs in 40fps, then it is completely irrelevant if your sceens maximum is 60 or 240, the screen is running at 40hz speed.

Now, this is the case with Freesync and Gsync. Without those technologies we have to rely on the good old Vsync only if we want to be tearing free. Then the maximum refresh rate of your screen matters because that defines in what steps the FPS drops if you are unable to hit the maximum refresh rate of your screen. So if your maximum refresh rate is 120hz but you can only hit 100fps, in case of Double Buffered Vsync your FPS is automatically halved, the game runs at 60fps. If even that is too demanding for your rig then the performance gets halved again to 30fps and so on.

Triple Buffered Vsync has more steps, from 120 to 90 or something like that, at the cost of some judder because the FPS and monitor refresh rate do not divide evenly, and some extra lag, but performance drops are less tragic.

 

[TheHig]

I have a 240hz panel and set it at that in windows. Then I limit frames in game when supported to hold 60-90 or 120 or whatever depending on what this B580 can push. I always feel like a high refresh rate is much better in the desktop environment regardless of how my games run. So monitor is always cranked and each game is different. I agree with the OP in that things seem better running high refresh regardless of the frame rate in games. No vsync enabled or vrr of any kind turned on with my B580. I have used gsync and freesync with supported cards and I honestly don’t like seeing the refresh rate move all over even though it does sync the frames. 30fps synced at 30hz for example sucks to look at period.

 

[AVATARAT]

so was playing star wars - outlaws and noticed horrendous screen tearing

turned on fps counter via steam overlay.. hitting 30s

so i tweak my graphics settings and achieve 90+ fps but game still feels like trash

until a friend asked me if my display is really running at the rated 240 Hz

soon as i set it.. (must of reset to 60 after a recent fresh driver install and i forgot) buttery smooth as expected.

—-

now here’s where some questions come into play

another friend before swears the only way to se any benefit of that 240 Hz refresh rate is to hit 240+ fps

well i told him the refresh subjectively mattered big time for me even at low fps

even at 30 fps with 240 Hz is significantly more smooth than 60 Hz even if it doesn’t really impact input latency.. the visual experience is massively improved

he says that’s nonsense and my PC must be completely misconfigured

[note: i don’t use vsync or gsync mostly]

Quote:

View attachment 752951
is he right?

Short answer: he's wrong.

Long answer:
Get in the game, start turning constantly left-right-left, slowly at first, then start increasing your speed.
Do this with different Hz + FPS, and then I don't think you need any other tests.

Of course, you can always go to https://www.testufo.com/ and test all the scenarios you want.

 

[toast0]

I'm a low Hz casual, cause I really don't care. But... even if you see every frame the same number of times, with a higher refresh you could see the new frames sooner. If the game is rate locked to 30 fps and they've tuned everything to generate just in time, then it's not going to make a big difference; scanout of the changed frame is faster at 240Hz, but I doubt that's really noticable.

If the game is chugging and you're getting 30 fps average but frame times differ here and there, more refreshes means you catch a new frame sooner. Say you're running 60 Hz, no vsync and the new frame hits in the middle, you start seeing the new bottom right away, but it takes 1/60 for you to get the top half. On 240Hz same thing, frame is ready in the middle, but now it only takes 1/240 to get the top half. I certainly don't care, but if it matters to you, great... maybe it would make a difference for me if I invested in a monitor that can do it... I did notice that 20Hz is terrible when I found out my old van could only do 20Hz on the passenger displays with hdmi... Super Mario Bros is damn hard at 20Hz.

 

[AVATARAT]

I'm a low Hz casual, cause I really don't care. But... even if you see every frame the same number of times, with a higher refresh you could see the new frames sooner. If the game is rate locked to 30 fps and they've tuned everything to generate just in time, then it's not going to make a big difference; scanout of the changed frame is faster at 240Hz, but I doubt that's really noticable.

If the game is chugging and you're getting 30 fps average but frame times differ here and there, more refreshes means you catch a new frame sooner. Say you're running 60 Hz, no vsync and the new frame hits in the middle, you start seeing the new bottom right away, but it takes 1/60 for you to get the top half. On 240Hz same thing, frame is ready in the middle, but now it only takes 1/240 to get the top half. I certainly don't care, but if it matters to you, great... maybe it would make a difference for me if I invested in a monitor that can do it... I did notice that 20Hz is terrible when I found out my old van could only do 20Hz on the passenger displays with hdmi... Super Mario Bros is damn hard at 20Hz.

If you are watching static images or very slow scenes, then 30 FPS is enough.
When watching a video or something with a dynamic scene, you will see not flawlessly moving objects, but a big gap between each frame of the moving object you are watching. This is where a high refresh rate comes to help. It's very easy to be able to see this, and it all comes down to whether someone wants to spend more money on a better monitor or not. It has nothing to do with whether you can see it or whether you care.

 

[LukeTbk]

240hz can change latency even in a lower than that game FPS I would imagine, has the monitor will be ready for your new frame faster. And tearing will be very short lived has many "good" frame for each that had tearing will exist

30 fps at 240hz more smooth than 60@60 sound bizarre to me, but maybe something strange is happening (are you sure you are really running at 30 fps when you think and achieve to lock 60fps when you think you do ?...) like a monitor in 60hz mode having terrible latency even for 60hz... I think those bad if not use in X mode do exist.

 

[XoR_]

You should enable VRR so G-Sync on Nvidia cards or FreeSync on AMD cards. On Nvidia some monitors might need to enable on G-Sync page option to enable it for unsupported displays. Also enable it for all application, windowed and full screen.
Second thing always run highest refresh rate.

Eyes can definitely see difference between frame rates because even at very high frame rates (note: something like 60 is not that fast) you still can see improvements in fludity/smoothness and motion blur.

Where it comes to input lag and refresh rates - even if your game runs e.g. 60 fps you still get slight benefit from higher refresh rates because
1) at 60Hz you get 16.6ms for screen to be sent to the monitor and drawn while at 240Hz it is quarter of that. The difference is your input lag improvement.
2) at 60Hz if you make it not tear (which imply you had VRR disabled) you use VSync - it adds lots of lag

Also where it comes to lag you should avoid running at frame rate equal to refrehs rate or VSynced. Less relevant for 240Hz monitors because any additional lag from VSync is miniscule but still a good idea to set maximum frame rate to slightly less than 240fps e.g. 230fps.

Lastly running faster than refresh rate without VSync can improve lag but it is only really helping at frame rates much higher than refresh rate, say 2x and more. In this case you also get tearing and lag is inconsistent. For 240Hz monitor I would not recommend it.

 

[Armenius]

In this day of Freesync, Gsync or just VRR the refresh rates of the game itself and the monitor are in always in sync unless you get out of its range. The maximum refresh rate of your screen only defines the maximum the screen can show but otherwise if your game runs in 40fps, then it is completely irrelevant if your sceens maximum is 60 or 240, the screen is running at 40hz speed.

Now, this is the case with Freesync and Gsync. Without those technologies we have to rely on the good old Vsync only if we want to be tearing free. Then the maximum refresh rate of your screen matters because that defines in what steps the FPS drops if you are unable to hit the maximum refresh rate of your screen. So if your maximum refresh rate is 120hz but you can only hit 100fps, in case of Double Buffered Vsync your FPS is automatically halved, the game runs at 60fps. If even that is too demanding for your rig then the performance gets halved again to 30fps and so on.

Triple Buffered Vsync has more steps, from 120 to 90 or something like that, at the cost of some judder because the FPS and monitor refresh rate do not divide evenly, and some extra lag, but performance drops are less tragic.

There is scanline sync, too, if your display doesn't have VRR, which you can enable with RTSS.