What's a good Frame rate?

I often hear people go on about 300+ frame rigs and I can’t help but think 2 things.

  1. At what point does the human eye just fail to register the additional frames, i.e. the maximum effective framerate?

  2. When do diminishing returns really make it all a bit moot. Like obviously if your only managing sub 50 frames then every frame counts, but if your at 200 how big a deal is jumping up to 220?

Like I’m stable at about 150 with no real effort really made to boost it higher and for me that’s totally fine, like how much better can it get and how much more do I need for it to be a real noticeable improvement?

About 180 is the point where more frames stops being beneficial for most people.

It’s not that your eyes can’t see the extra frames, rather that your brain doesn’t process the information fast enough for it to be useful to you.

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Humans aren’t machines, so any additional frames have diminishing returns as we struggle to keep up. I’d say 150 is a pretty good amount of frames, you’d rarely notice much of a difference beyond that unless you’ve got to superhuman senses.

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That’s what I’ve always felt, like I found it funny when people bragged about mad frame rates (I’ve seen people pop over 400 in plat) and just thought I’ve been in that rank on a laptop that was doing well to hit 60, so you either your terrible at the game or after a certain point it doesn’t matter and your just wasting your time and money.

Higher framerate = less input latency even if the framerate exceeds the monitor’s refresh rate. There is also reduced tearing and micro-stutter as the framerate goes higher, although I would argue that for all but the most competitive gamer, adaptive sync tech (GSync/FreeSync) gives you a better return on investment once you climb above 120 fps.

Battle (non)Sense has a great channel for this sort of stuff. Check it out.

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A good framerate is anything above your refresh rate. I.E. if you have 144hz monitor aim for like 150 or more fps otherwise you will not be taking advantage of the free frames

And yes you can 100% see the difference up to 240fps/240hz, although from 144 to 240 it’s diminishing returns and not as serious as a jump from 60 to 144

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While the human eye can only function at a maximum “framerate” (this varies between people naturally), we can distinguish a visual framerate as smoothed movement as the result of higher framerates on a monitor/screen in a controlled context.

For me personally I saw the most difference going from 30fps to 60fps, 60fps to 90fps, and 90fps to 120fps. While my monitor does go to 160fps overclocked I personally don’t see any difference past 120fps, that goes for 240fps monitors as well. But everyone is different.

Another thing to consider is ‘response time’ in this context. When I was locked at 60fps visually due to monitor hardware, I noticed a huge difference in my personal performance between capping my game at 60fps, tuning the FPS for higher stable framerates (the best option), and allowing the framerates to run wild.

Just because your monitor is unable to process the higher framerate doesn’t mean your PC isn’t operating fasting. More frames might mean more visual input for a monitor that can handle it, but it also means that your PC is processing a much higher amount of data at a time resulting in a better perception of the game’s real-time progression. This is typically registered by the body as less input latency/quicker response time for keystrokes, mouse movements and general mechanical input.

Linus actually explains all of this in a video from about a year ago:

I personally climbed to Diamond capped at 60fps visually, but my framerate was about double what my monitor could actually handle.

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Id say you shouldn’t be concerned about if the eye can see it, cause even if you can’t a higher framerate still makes your input smoother.

I’d say you should have a framerate thats as high as possible if you’re willing to be constantly hearing your PC fans, or have it as a bit more ( i dont remember how much exactly) than your monitors refresh rate ideally at least.
I personally cap mine at 70 so my room doesnt turn into an oven

What kind of a rig are you running that would result in that kind of heat production?

I havent cleaned the dust in a while tbh, but the cooling is pretty poopoo, its an old fart prebuilt, and my room is also very tiny. The parts are very old its a 1060 and an i7 4790.
I plan to eventually buy parts to build an entire new PC myself and while im at it try to learn as much as I can about PC internal hardware.

OVER 9000!!!

I think it depends on how smoooooth it looks.

As someone running a 4790k and 980ti, I will say that a cheap hyper 212 heatsink made a huge difference in heat transfer as my room is small too. Proper case air flow is also ideal, pack those case fans on for a cheap temporary fix.

Clean that dust out and get some new thermal paste brosef lol.

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It depends more on your monitor. 300 frames on 60 fps monitor will look as bad as 100 frames on a 60 fps monitor. 120-144 hz is a fairly competitive range for monitor and frame rate, but 240 hz will give you an even smoother view but not necessary for most people.

Of course it’s still good to have a higher frame rate to reduce input lag since that’s usually how it works too. Not sure if that’s with OW too.

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i stop seeing extra at 30 idk why

It depends on your refresh rate.
I have 60Hz monitor and I locked them at 70FPS.

There’s some weird advice in this thread…

Running at the highest FPS results in the lowest input lag, there’s no reason to cap your framerate. If your rig has inadequate cooling that’s the issue you should address.

There is no point, that is a big untrue myth

At some point the human brain just has a hard time seing the difference because the differences get so much smaller, but this doesnt mean you dont register it

Let me explain it that way: Your body cant tell tge difference between 30°C water and 31°C water, does this mean your body is not able to register temps above 30°C? Obviesly not, the difference is just too small

the frames you can see are unlimited, the differences just get smaller and smaller

The diff from 60 to 144 is 100% noticable, the diff from 144 to 240 is a nice to have, the jump grom 240 to 360 doesnt change much in most situations

A stable one. Thats the best framerate.
With that being said, go as high as you can for sure but generally it is around 120-144 FPS. Beyond that point the changes are not that impactful or relevant.

The jump from 60 to 144 is astronomical compared to the difference between 144 and 240. The higher your fps, the less noticable any further jumps in frames will be.