FPS That big a deal?

[Annoyingrob]

I have a huge question here. What's with all of these people buying amazing vid cards so they can go to q3a, and run it in a little tiny box, with no effects, so they can have 125fps??

Now, when I buy a video card, I do so, so I can enjoy a rich visual experience (eg, 1024x768x32 full effects) and still get good fps. Now, the threshold for the human eye to notice choppiness in a moving image is about 24-30fps. So when I'm running my game maxed out, and running about 60-80fps, there is no noticable difference from 40, or from 1000. So, why would people be purposely making their game look crappy just for the bragging rights of having a really fast, crappy looking game?

[Daniel ~]

Moved post to "Video and Sound cards"

[Valid]

I started a thread like this before that also related maximum monitor refresh rates, but I don't think many people really got the point of that thread. So your guess is as good as mine.

[funnyperson1]

weird....i normally hear that argument from people who have radeons (they look better, but are slower).....the thing is even though you may not see the diffference with 40fps , you can feel the difference, the game plays a lot faster and smoother with more fps, for example on my rage fury pro i can play unreal decently well, and when i play on my friends gts i get whooped cuz i cant keep up with the speed, but it is mpore fun....im getting a geforce 2 pro through ups....and itll have the same graphics quality as your mx...with many more frame rates......i really should of gotten the radeon, but didnt want to dish out the extra 20 dollars or so.....i agree quality is more than quantity, but quantity still counts for something....

[Über~PhLuBB]

The reason is simple. You CAN see a difference between 25 and 125 FPS. You say the eye sees at 24 FPS. That's all fine and good, but what if some of the frames the computer renders don't corrospond with the exact frames your eye sees? You see jitters then.

The more FPS you can get, the less chance your eyes and the display will get out of sync, I.E., you less chance you'll see jitters.

You see? There is a method to GPU overclocking madness!

[Nagorak]

Radeons are not noticeably slower than GF2s, it's absolute nonsense and they do look better.

Anyway, people like having higher FPS in my opinion, not to run at 640*480 with everything off, but to run at higher resolutions (even up to 1600*1200) with all of the eye candy on.

Basically a faster card never hurts you, because if you are getting high enough FPS you can always bump up the resolution or something to make better use of your cards power.

BTW: Your eye can see well more than "24 fps". This is just some nonsense someone came up with because movies run at 24 fps. The majority of people can see a monitor flickering up to 75 HZ (and I can see a difference until 85 HZ), so obviously people can see at least 75 fps or even more. That said, anything above 50 is probably fine, as long as it doesn't tank down to a really low number sometimes.

[Staz]

I would rather Play at 640x480x16 with everything set to high I want to play everything at 1024x768x32 with everything set to high.

20 FPS is playable
30 FPS is acceptible
anything over 60 is overkill
30 to 60 is the sweet spot

Low detail sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mord-Sith]

I would also like to confirm that the 24 fps is a total myth as well. People have been reported to have been able to identify objects in 1/100th of a second I at last thought this stupid concept was laid to rest but somone always has to bring it up when defending a radeon. I dont know why people need to start agruments over which is better radeon or geforce. When it comes down to it its all self justification and a waste of time. Read the reviews and look at the technical data (in other words try to find an unbias opinion and take a guess).

I run counter-strike at 1024x780 with most details set to low and no shells or smoke puffs. With all my tweeks and things I usualy get arround 125fps. Why do I do this you ask? Well to me I have more fun when I win then when the game looks nice but thats just my personal experience. Also if by some freak accident all 20 people on a server come together in one room and all throw smoke bombs (cs_speedball) I still get 30+ fps.

Now when I was playing max pane I bumped up the eye candy and played at almost a constand 35fps. Why? because its a single person game and if I screwed up I could go back to my last save point.

To me its all a matter of the type of game.

[maha_x]

The 24fps myth is actually from somewhere ancient times when some fellows were developing a TV. They wanted to have least amount of data in the air to get most TV channels into some given frequency band. So they made little research and came to a conclusion that most folks find 24fps the least fps that looks like continous animation. So actually the 24fps is the SMALLEST fps that generally is found "moving pictures". Or mayby it was 12fps but they doubled it to make it half decent...

I myself have got very used to that some 60fps speed of Q3A and find fast phased scenes irritating at movies cos it looks so choppy. I usually tone down game GFX to get atleast some 40fps.

However, I have to agree to the statement about monitor Hz. If yer monitor is at 85Hz and yer board makes 125fps U get plenty of "cut half" pictures of last and next frame. At 85Hz U propably cant notice it much. But to have any sense in such 125fps U need to have yer CRT at 120Hz atleast. Most CRTs get 120Hz at 640x480 and many boards can only get to 125fps at that reso also, so sometimes it might go "hand in hand". But to play Q3A @ 1600x1200@100fps with yer GF3 U need a CRT that can shoot 100Hz at 1600x1200 to have any sensible advantage. Othervise Id recomend using vsync to spare U from tearing...

[funnyperson1]

well i hae looked at tons of reviews, and the radeon still get at least 80-120 fps, and it beats the georce2s when you turn up the resolution and the color, and it looks better.....i would probly get one if i could afford it.....and yeah my card can get like 35-60 in Q3A with everything maxed out....and it skips a lot, kinda pauses for a sec then goes back to full speed...cant wait for that new card to arrive....

[Blue Jester_2112]

24 is the MINIMUM number of frames needed per second to create the illusion of fluid, lifelike movement. You will notice a difference if you see more becuase it will add to how fluid the images are. The sweet spot is indeed probably around 40-60fps. Yes, your eyes will detect more and your brain will process them, but you begin to get diminishing returns after a certain point. It's like putting a 512 megs of ram in a 98 machine. Will it make a difference? Yes, in a small way Will you notice? Not really. Your better off throwing in 256 megs and tweaking the system to make the most of them. I see vid cards the same way. Why turn everything down and run around at 640 x 480 at 125fps when you can turn everything up and run around at 60fps? I'd much rather risk the possibility of some slight, and most likely, infrequent imperfections to have a good quality picture. If 125 fps meant staring at a smooth running eyesore than it isn't worth it IMHO.

[Annoyingrob]

Well, thanks for the info,

[AKDUDE]

LOL! How did the Radeon Get dragged into this? Uh, if you look at the persons profile that posted it, he clearly has a Geforce MX in his computer.
AKDUDE

[FunkyTechnician]

You know, hearing how so many people base their video card purchases based solely on FPS sounds a whole lot like the ignorant argument of "Intel runs at 1.7 Ghz so it must be better than an AMD 1.4 Ghz".

Sure, more FPS translates to the ability to push the graphics up accordingly but there are many more subjective ways to decide on what video card to buy. Select a video card that will run well at the resolution(s) that you use, do a visual test, and don't get caught up in the higher number= better performance; it's not always true.

Amiel

[two_dope2000]

i think that the only reason that ppl turn everyhing down for good fps is just to tell ppl how they got 125 fps in unreal but what they dont say is how all of the visuals suck! personally i could care less as long as im over 40 with ALL the new visuals im good. I mean whats the point of developing new 3d effects and all of that if everyone wants to just buy that new $400 geforce 3 and then turn all of the new effects off?!?! It all makes no sense to me.