weird question or too much time to think??

[D14JEFF]

ok...i run my monitor at a 100hz refresh rate and i believe lcd's are good for like 60 hz or 70 hz .its my understanding that a refresh rate is the ammount of times a second a image is drawn/projected/displayed on the monitors screen.its also my understanding that a monitor can be damaged buy using too high of a refresh rate.now,assuming (i know,i know)i understanding correctly my question is........
how can a graphics card deliver sometimes hundreds of frames per second when the max refresh rate is only 100hz or even 60 hz??for an example..if im playing the original unreal or quake 2 and my 9800 can do it at 300 or 400 frames a second but my refreshrate is only 100hz am i going to have a max 100 images per second on my display because of my refreshrate and therefore all that extra horse power is wasted/averaged out. or......will my card send the max frame rate to my monitor despite the limiting of the refreshrate even if my monitor can supposedly be damaged by too high of a refreshrate.?
on the other side of the coin if my game is intense and my card only does 25 frames a second and my refresh rate is 100 hz is the displayed pic being sent 4 times in a row before the next frame comes up?
so am i thinking too much/have too much free time ......lol
i guess the short version of this question is how do refresh rate and actual fps from a video card work together?

 

[D14JEFF]

ummmmmm...........................BUMP!!!!!!!!!

 

[GeForceX]

I thought the same until I understood that FPS and screen display refresh rates are actually independent of each other. If only you'd understand what the purpose of disply refreshing is. The purpose of display refreshing is to refresh color pixels so using the same stray doesn't burn it off and thus destroying your monitor's output capability. The frames per second has nothing to do with that purpose. It only outputs as much as it can before every refresh, which you are thinking correct. It does output 4 frames per refresh (for 400 fps). But you will suffer 'tearing' which means the image will seem to lag and rip. Try in Quake 3-- /com_maxfps 120 or so. You will experience a much smoother game and movement. This is because the refresh rate is synchronized with the frames being outputted every second and your eyes will view only 120 perfectly.

400 FPS with 120 hz =
[] [] [[ [[[ . [] [] [[ [[[ . [] [] [[ [[[ . [] [] [[ [[[ ...

120 FPS with 120 hz =
[] . [] . [] . [] . [] . [] ...

[] = images being outputted (frames)
. = image restarting colors (refresh rate)
[[, [[[ = images being stretched/lagged...

Now which seems more acceptable to you?

About lower frames per seconds and high refresh rates, you will experience a rather neutral yet negative effect. The refresh rate will only refresh what is on the monitor, thus if you have such low frames per seconds, it will at times, repeat that frame, much like as if you were on a regular desktop viewing this forum, it will continue to refresh the same screen over and over 120 times.

Now, does higher refresh rate damage monitors? Not always. The thing is you have to realize that upping your refresh rate is more like *overclocking* your monitor. You're pushing it past the optimum specs (which is usually 85 hz or so). This isn't to say the monitor can't go anything above that. It indeed can, but it will only shorten it's life out. Much similar to overclocking a CPU which would reduce it's life from 10 to 7 or 5 years of life. The reason why it reduces the life of your monitor is because you're forcing more power into replacing each and every color pixels and what the monitor's tolerance is per refresh is really in question. Some high quality monitors such as NEC, Sony, Viewsonic can accept that high level of refresh rates. Some low quality monitors will burn out very quick. In fact, one of my Quake friends has a monitor at 19 inch, he runs it at 200 hz and it hasn't been dead at all yet (for 2 years straight now).

-J.

 

[Dunamis]

The video card cap the maximum fps anyway depending on the refresh rate, so it's prolly rid of the extra frames in between.

Now, does higher refresh rate damage monitors? Not always. The thing is you have to realize that upping your refresh rate is more like *overclocking* your monitor. You're pushing it past the optimum specs (which is usually 85 hz or so). This isn't to say the monitor can't go anything above that. It indeed can, but it will only shorten it's life out. Much similar to overclocking a CPU which would reduce it's life from 10 to 7 or 5 years of life. The reason why it reduces the life of your monitor is because you're forcing more power into replacing each and every color pixels and what the monitor's tolerance is per refresh is really in question. Some high quality monitors such as NEC, Sony, Viewsonic can accept that high level of refresh rates. Some low quality monitors will burn out very quick. In fact, one of my Quake friends has a monitor at 19 inch, he runs it at 200 hz and it hasn't been dead at all yet (for 2 years straight now).

-J.

In my experience, if you force the refresh rate to go above its rated capabilities it will shut off the display completely unless you have one of those really old monitors that hasn't got the refreshrate protection and will display very distorted-unreadable-garbled image.