What exactly is a playable framerate?

balkieb2002

Before I upgraded my PC around the start of the year I had an OK laptop that could play most modern games. I used to have to tweak these games to find a balance between playable FPS (frames per second) and how the game looked. There were some I definitely couldn't run due to a limited CPU (so I missed out on quite a few titles) though I did actually play/complete a few that shouldn't work by using a barely playbale framerate.

One that springs to mind is the last Driver game which I managed to play through with an average FPS of around 30. This dropped to single digits or low teens and then raced to 40+ depending on what was happening on screen. I actually used to play the game in the cockpit view as found this increased my FPS

Since my upgrade there has only been 3-4 games which have caused me to go tweaking those settings again though these are usually DX11 games (my current card is the lower-end of DX11 spectrum). The fancy new features of DX11 such as Tessellation are normally the first thing to go so I can keep a steady FPS between 40 and 60.

I feel that its game dependent what framerate you actually need i.e. your less likely to need a high FPS in an RPG then you are in a shooter for example but what is a playable framerate in your eyes?
At what point do you choose to sacrifice that pretty grass in order to add 5 more FPS?

Genghiz Cohen

Depends on the game type.

Shooters, racing games, fighting games and the like would need at least 30 FPS.

RTS's you could probably do with a bit less.

Turn based games less again.

RoyalMarine

I aim for 60. anything under and I tend to try fix it / upgrade.

ShadowHearth

60+++ is a nice to have, but if its more then 30, then i am happy out.

i am pure pc gamer and i love my 60 fps, i am lucky enough to have a system which has some grunt so i mostly have 60++ fps on maxed out games. saying this i would not make it a huge problem if i have 30-60 fps. anything lower then 30 will be pissing me off.

Retr0gamer

60 is what you should be striving for but a locked 30 FPS framerate is fine as well. It's jumps from high to low framerates that are the real problem. Then again it depends on the game. Some of the PS1 RPGs ran at terrible framrates, FFVII ran at 15 FPS, going as low as 12-13 FPS in the European version but the turn based nature meant you didn't really notice it as much.

CastorTroy

As someone who plays on Wii(including gamecube games), PS3 and PC, frame rate isn't a big issue to me unless it's really obvious.
But yeah anything over 30

Zillah

Completely depends on the game. Intense and highly competitive first person shooters need a very smooth screen to work properly - I remember being unhappy with anything less than 100 back in the old counterstrike days. A modern fancy lookin shooter I'd want at least 50-60. Other games you can get away with a lot less, but I'm gonna hate anything that drops below 30. Also as Retr0gamer said, consistency is very important.

Duggy747

Heh, Atari Jaguar in the poll with it's piss poor framerates. :pac:

Anyways, I'm not too fussy as long as the framerate is stable and doesn't jump from butter smooth to choppy frequently and drop below 30.

The smoother the frames are on a first-person shooter the better but wouldn't care if I couldn't get 60fps, just as long as they were consistent.

kowloon

I can't say I notice anything once it passes the 30s. It's tearing that really annoys me.

Magill

Like others have said it depends on the game. For cs anything less than 100 would anoy me. Whereas i can play console games np at 30 and less.

K.O.Kiki

30fps or 60fps, but as long as it's constant it's fine.

Pity poor Shadow of the Colossus (PS2): one of the greatest games we will ever see... on a console that would dip to 15-20fps.

saiint

i have a very decent pc now
and for some reason only on counter strike source
i get lag spikes
like my ping drops from lets say 200 down to 20 back up to 200 my ping is mostly at 20 but keeps jumping high then low cause me to **** up when shooting then i die
i think this is due to frammrate because my connection and frammrate on any other game is great with no lagging

Creamy Goodness

saiint wrote: »

i have a very decent pc now
and for some reason only on counter strike source
i get lag spikes
like my ping drops from lets say 200 down to 20 back up to 200 my ping is mostly at 20 but keeps jumping high then low cause me to **** up when shooting then i die
i think this is due to frammrate because my connection and frammrate on any other game is great with no lagging

internet connection or ping for that matter has nothing to do with with what frame rate you run at.

ScumLord

I remember reading that the eye is equivalent to around 25fps, so theoretically you shouldn't need anything above that. Film has a standard rate of 24fps. Anything above 30fps shouldn't really be all the perceptible to the human eye. Motion blur like that seen in film would have a better effect of the quality of movement on screen.

Overheal

I've played shooter games successfully under 15 frames per second, and won.


It's not always about how many frames you get but how consistent they are. You can change this in most games, by setting a cap, or by enabling vsync. Your max fps will diminish but you play will be far steadier. Its way more jarring to play at 20 frames, spike to 70 frames, back down to 30 frames, skirt to 40 then go back to 20, then it is to simply say "**** it" and cap it at 20 frames.

I've learned all the human eye fps **** is bogus. There may be truth in it but you can definitely see differences between say a video shown to you at 30 frames and one shown at 60. Which, is actually the difference between DVD and Blu Ray.. It would all be down to how your eyes fps matches the videos:

---

..........................

in the above example not every . lines up with a -, some .'s both see the same - and give the appearance the image is not changing. With higher frames you can effectively guarantee each time your eye registers a frame it will always be a new frame not an old one, improving the quality of your viewing experience. But as far as gameplay goes, its far less distracting to choose steady frames over other factors.

Retr0gamer

ScumLord wrote: »

I remember reading that the eye is equivalent to around 25fps, so theoretically you shouldn't need anything above that. Film has a standard rate of 24fps. Anything above 30fps shouldn't really be all the perceptible to the human eye. Motion blur like that seen in film would have a better effect of the quality of movement on screen.

It's a little more complicated than that. 30 FPS games feel a hell of a lot more sluggish than 60 FPS games and there's lag on controls that you can definitely feel.

ScumLord

Overheal wrote: »

I've learned all the human eye fps **** is bogus. There may be truth in it but you can definitely see differences between say a video shown to you at 30 frames and one shown at 60.

The eye supposed captures images a bit slower but the fact is you have two eyes and one could be recording while the other is being processed. Of course your eye isn't built to match up with a series of static images, it all depends on how much your brain buys into the illusion. If you believe the image isn't fluid you won't see it as fluid.

Dcully

Minimum of 60fps for FPS,Racing sims,fast paced RTS etc, basically any game that needs real precision.
I dont go in for this naked eye seeing only 25fps, theres a massive difference between 25 fps and 60 fps.
If we are talking about a low frame count 30 or below then consistant framerate is important.
If we are above 60 the difference between 60 and 90 for example is not so noticeable and even fluctuations between the two is nowhere near as noticeable as with a low framerate of 30 or below.

Magill

Ya, while its not as noticeable as 30-60fps, theres quite a difference between even 60fps and 120fps (On a 120hz monitor anyway). I could easily tell which is which if 3 identical setups were in front of me with just different FPS caps.

tuxy

Eyes do not see in frame rates. Also take into consideration peripheral vision is much more sensitive to movement than centre vision.
Games need higher fps than movies because they are dependant on feedback.
In most cases 30 fps is perfectly playable but 60 seems to be the sweet spot where the game will feel really smooth for most people.

weemcd

fixed at 30fps without jumps should be fine, unless its quake 3, 125 fps necessary

Blazer

At the bare minimum 60 but much prefer 100+.
Games are way smoother and running BF3 on 2x 6970s gets me about 120fps on average @ 1920x1200 on ultra.
The fps takes a massive hit on explosions etc but still stays around the 80fps mark so it all looks perfect to me as it never drops below the monitor refresh.
You can say your average fps is 60 but it's constantly changing depending on how much is going on around you so ideally you want your fps as high as possible.

C14N

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

30fps or 60fps, but as long as it's constant it's fine.

Pity poor Shadow of the Colossus (PS2): one of the greatest games we will ever see... on a console that would dip to 15-20fps.

I played the HD PS3 version. Can't say I noticed any frame rate problems on the port.

ScumLord wrote: »

I remember reading that the eye is equivalent to around 25fps, so theoretically you shouldn't need anything above that. Film has a standard rate of 24fps. Anything above 30fps shouldn't really be all the perceptible to the human eye. Motion blur like that seen in film would have a better effect of the quality of movement on screen.

Not sure about that. I have a video camera which I can set to 30fps or 60fps and there is a noticeable difference in the video quality when it goes up.

Is there any way on PC to check the actual FPS of a game you're playing?

balkieb2002

C14N wrote: »

Is there any way on PC to check the actual FPS of a game you're playing?

I usually use FRAPS to see my in-game FPS.

Overheal

FRAPS itself usually diminishes framerates by virtue of observation. most games have their own utility build in for it.

cherryghost

60fps for Racing and FPS games for me. Anything around 30 is for any other genre is grand, though again 60fps minimum would be ideal.

C14N

Overheal wrote: »

FRAPS itself usually diminishes framerates by virtue of observation. most games have their own utility build in for it.

How is it usually accessed? Is it through console commands?

cherryghost

C14N wrote: »

How is it usually accessed? Is it through console commands?

It's a seperate program that displays an overlay of your frames per second in the corner. Works on videos too, ie it will display the movie frames per second.

C14N

cherryghost wrote: »

It's a seperate program that displays an overlay of your frames per second in the corner. Works on videos too, ie it will display the movie frames per second.

I mean the in-built one if FRAPS does slow it down.

weemcd

C14N wrote: »

How is it usually accessed? Is it through console commands?

FPS counters are usually built into most pc games. You are correct, accessible through console commands ie 'cl_showfps 1'

Cuddlesworth

Magill wrote: »

Ya, while its not as noticeable as 30-60fps, theres quite a difference between even 60fps and 120fps (On a 120hz monitor anyway). I could easily tell which is which if 3 identical setups were in front of me with just different FPS caps.

You do know that a 120hz monitor runs at 60fps right? And 60hz LCD's are running at 30fps.

For pretty much everything in a visual aspect, a solid 30fps is more then enough.

With serious twitch timed gaming(near-pro level FPS etc), control input lag is a subconsciousness thing which I myself have experienced. But I don't believe anything above 60fps really makes a difference regardless of what people think happens. As Humans we just can't operate at a reaction speed below 150ms for anything.

ScumLord

C14N wrote: »

Not sure about that. I have a video camera which I can set to 30fps or 60fps and there is a noticeable difference in the video quality when it goes up.

Frame rate doesn't affect the quality of the image as such, if anything the quality could drop as your not going to let as much light through to the sensor. Your software and display is probably not displaying the video at 60fps either. I have a camera that can go up to 120fps and you need specialised software to take advantage of the 120fps (and loads of light) and the advantage of the extra frame rate is in slowing down the video. If the video looks like it's playing normally it's more than likely playing at the PAL rate of 25fps as far as I know.

Magill

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

You do know that a 120hz monitor runs at 60fps right? And 60hz LCD's are running at 30fps.

Im pretty sure 120hz is 120 scans per second.. which would obviously mean 120fps. Hence why Vsync will lock the FPS at 60 on a 60hz monitor and why it locks mine at 120fps.

With serious twitch timed gaming(near-pro level FPS etc), control input lag is a subconsciousness thing which I myself have experienced. But I don't believe anything above 60fps really makes a difference regardless of what people think happens. As Humans we just can't operate at a reaction speed below 150ms for anything.

Really.. im no expert on how the human brain works.. but i do know that the difference between 60fps and 100fps makes a big difference in games like CS, from how smooth it feels, to practical things like recoil control and bunny hopping.

tuxy

Magill wrote: »

Really.. im no expert on how the human brain works.. but i do know that the difference between 60fps and 100fps makes a big difference in games like CS, from how smooth it feels, to practical things like recoil control and bunny hopping.

This is a quirk of quake and games that use quake's game engine.
In game physics are linked to fps.
http://www.funender.com/quake/articles/fps.html (scroll down to documentation)

Half life and half life 2 are based on the quake engine.

Cuddlesworth

Magill wrote: »

Im pretty sure 120hz is 120 scans per second.. which would obviously mean 120fps. Hence why Vsync will lock the FPS at 60 on a 60hz monitor and why it locks mine at 120fps.

2 hertz is equal to 1 frame in a progressive scan. Its a really common misconception in the gaming and TV world since LCD's became a standard, one which is really funny after all these years.

If we were talking about CRT's, its a 1:1 ratio. But since it only updates half the screen, its not really worth talking about.

tuxy

Magill wrote: »

Im pretty sure 120hz is 120 scans per second.. which would obviously mean 120fps. Hence why Vsync will lock the FPS at 60 on a 60hz monitor and why it locks mine at 120fps.

He must have been taking about 60hz per eye in 3d mode.
The very definition of hertz has always been cycles per second regardless of what you were talking about.

Edit: actually Cuddlesworth's explanation also makes sense.

Magill

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

2 hertz is equal to 1 frame in a progressive scan. Its a really common misconception in the gaming and TV world since LCD's became a standard, one which is really funny after all these years.

If we were talking about CRT's, its a 1:1 ratio. But since it only updates half the screen, its not really worth talking about.

Ahh my mistake... im talking about true 120hz monitors here. Which do infact equal to 120 frames per second.


This sort of explains it.
http://www.overclock.net/t/662628/60hz-vs-120hz-explained

C14N

ScumLord wrote: »

Frame rate doesn't affect the quality of the image as such, if anything the quality could drop as your not going to let as much light through to the sensor. Your software and display is probably not displaying the video at 60fps either. I have a camera that can go up to 120fps and you need specialised software to take advantage of the 120fps (and loads of light) and the advantage of the extra frame rate is in slowing down the video. If the video looks like it's playing normally it's more than likely playing at the PAL rate of 25fps as far as I know.

Well it isn't better "quality" per se but the motion looks much more fluid. It's a little odd too look at at first but there is a definite difference. I first noticed when watching back some of the videos because I thought they looked odd and I found that I had accidentally set it to 60fps mode.