FPS (for FPS video games)

[Buff]

So, I got my new PC yesterday. Wow, it is sweet. The specs are listed in a thread a few games back, but it is a Dell XPS 720 with an GeForce 8800 GTX. I love it. The first thing I did was put Call of Duty 4 on it and I was impressed with how smoothly the game ran. Nice.

I was asked what I got for FPS on COD4 but I didn't bother to check it out. FPS is one thing that I never really bothered to learn about. What kind of FPS should I have? I am going to assume that a higher FPS is good. How high can/should I get? Is there such a thing as too high FPS?

[BlackArcher101]

Personally I adjust settings to get a minimum of 25fps, anything lower and it annoys me. As for what you should have, you can do a benchmark and compare your number to computers of the same specs. 3dmark does this I believe. Oh, and no such thing as too high FPS! Unless of course you don't have the settings set for max visual quality which means you should crank them higher!

[llama64]

Your eye cannot perceive any difference much past 40-50fps. Most monitors (LCD especially) don't refresh more then 60 times a second either (as I understand it). So any number of FPS past the 60 mark doesn't have any visual effect.

That said, the more FPS you can generate, the faster the response time of the game. This is generally regarded as the "feel" of a game. Many people can tell the difference between 45fps and 80fps, primarilly in how fast it responds to input. This is why many guides will tell you to turn off V-SYNC options.

V-SYNC will cap your games FPS at the refresh rate of your monitor, so for most LCD's that would be 60fps. Your computer may be capable of running a game at a FPS of 300 but the extra frames would be discarded. This ensures that each refresh tick of your monitor will be showing a complete and non-malformed image. If you generate more FPS then your monitor can handle, "tearing" can occur where part of one frame is drawn over top of another frame resulting in some odd graphical artifacts. This isn't much of an issue in games where most of the screen doesn't change, but in fast moving FPS games, it can be distracting.

Personally, I usually turn on v-sync so that everything looks pretty

But then, I don't play competitive FPS games much.

edit:
Just some additional thoughts:
TV is broadcast at a rate of 30 frames per second. Film is shown at a rate of 24 frames per second. The comparison isn't a direct linear relationship but it does give a decent guide line to why you might notice differences between frame rates. And to why 25fps or less is irritating.

Apparently many incandescent light bulbs also run at 60Htz. Interesting.

[worth]

don't really need to check FPS. If it's running fine and you don't see any stutter or lag, then keep on playing. If you do then you might want to check using fraps or something like that and if it's below 30 for any length of time, you may want to turn some settings down.

Generally though, 25-30 FPS or higher and you're fine.

[Hack&Lube]

You might want to check FPS if you are playing Crysis on high settings, that game can bring even a GTX to its knees.

But checking your frames per second really is just a point of curosity or interest for seeing if you are making your computer faster through optimizations, different game settings, graphics settings, or overclocking. It's like checking how much horsepower your car is after working on the engine.

All games have a built in FPS counter that can be accessed via the console but the command is different for most games. The easiest thing to do is get a program called FRAPS.

[Bobblehead]

The Quake 2 engine had a known bug where you could cap the FPS at certain limits and get some physics benefits. Bunnyhops would go a bit further and long jumps would go a tad further. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory had some people who could take advantage of this in a couple places and jump to places in maps they shouldn't have been able to get at.

[JayP]

25-30 FPS is standard for most console games. 60 FPS is essentially as good as it gets.

[Buff]

I went home at lunch and I played a bit of Call of Duty to check what my fps is. For those wondering how to do so press the tilde the squiggly character ~ next to the 1 key. This will open up a console line. Then type /cg_drawfps 1. This will display your frame rate in the upper right corner. I was getting as high as 91, but usually around 80-82 frames per second. I didn't see any lower than 76.

I believe my monitor is set at 60Mhz. So does it really make much of a difference that my in game frame rate is exceeding it by quite a bit? The game runs smoothly and I don't notice any performance issues so I'm not worried about it. Just curious. In fact the game runs so much more smoothly that I find my game play has improved a bit.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Buff

I went home at lunch and I played a bit of Call of Duty to check what my fps is. For those wondering how to do so press the tilde the squiggly character ~ next to the 1 key. This will open up a console line. Then type /cg_drawfps 1. This will display your frame rate in the upper right corner. I was getting as high as 91, but usually around 80-82 frames per second. I didn't see any lower than 76.

I believe my monitor is set at 60Mhz. So does it really make much of a difference that my in game frame rate is exceeding it by quite a bit? The game runs smoothly and I don't notice any performance issues so I'm not worried about it. Just curious. In fact the game runs so much more smoothly that I find my game play has improved a bit.

As long as you're not seeing any tearing, you're fine.
Enjoy it, I'm jealous.

[worth]

COD4 is actually a really smooth game. They did a really good job making sure it looked beautiful and ran on well on most machines.

If you're getting high FPS's and you're not seeing any problems, then you're golden!

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Buff

I went home at lunch and I played a bit of Call of Duty to check what my fps is. For those wondering how to do so press the tilde the squiggly character ~ next to the 1 key. This will open up a console line. Then type /cg_drawfps 1. This will display your frame rate in the upper right corner. I was getting as high as 91, but usually around 80-82 frames per second. I didn't see any lower than 76.

I believe my monitor is set at 60Mhz. So does it really make much of a difference that my in game frame rate is exceeding it by quite a bit? The game runs smoothly and I don't notice any performance issues so I'm not worried about it. Just curious. In fact the game runs so much more smoothly that I find my game play has improved a bit.

Refresh rate (60Hz) doesn't matter with LCDs and it doesn't matter unless you get screentearing in which case you turn on V-Sync.

[Buff]

Thanks guys. As an IT guy I should really know all of this, but I just never had to learn much for graphics for my job and until recently I never had the funds to get a decent gaming PC.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Buff

Thanks guys. As an IT guy I should really know all of this, but I just never had to learn much for graphics for my job and until recently I never had the funds to get a decent gaming PC.

Yeah... it's in the manual

How's your Star Trek trivial knowledge?

[Buff]

Originally Posted by llama64

Yeah... it's in the manual

How's your Star Trek trivial knowledge?

Horrible. I've only ever watched TNG and I didn't follow it too closely. I'm not a trekkie, I'm a Jedi.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Buff

Horrible. I've only ever watched TNG and I didn't follow it too closely. I'm not a trekkie, I'm a Jedi.

Good. Gooood! Feel your anger growing in side you. Strike down the trekkie in front of you and take your rightful place as Lord Nerd!

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Buff

Horrible. I've only ever watched TNG and I didn't follow it too closely. I'm not a trekkie, I'm a Jedi.

Doug McKenzie: I am your father, Luke. Give in to the dark side of the force, you knob.
Bob McKenzie: He saw Jedi 17 times, eh.