FPS Rant

[VolvoR]

Ok, so this is a PC rant.

I play a lot of COD4 Freeze Tag. The other night some guys asks what kind of frames per second I was getting, so I told him about 250. He says "That's IT?" I asked what he was getting he said something like 350. I asked what resolution, he said 1024x768. I told him I was running 2560x1600. He said "So my computer's faster than yours!" So I asked him which video card he was running, and he said an 8800GTX. He asked what I was running, I told him (in sig). He said that I wasted all that money because I get lower frame rates than he does....sheesh.....He also started to try and help me with settings, which is where I stopped listening.

However, this happens all the time, someone mentions FPS in a certain game, and suddenly, everyone is getting 300+fps. No one ever mentions resolution. The two go hand in hand. I'm getting 100fps at _____ resolution, now that's something we can all understand, but stating your FPS without resolution means pretty much nothing.

These "hard core PC games" are getting on my nerves. Know a thing or two about your hobby before you start shooting your mouth off.

I went into COD4 and did a test...the nice thing about COD4 is when you go to the Options, you point of view doesn't change, so you get accurate FPS readings when you change the resolution.

Here's what I came up with...
With everything on high, 4xAA, 16xAF...This was a custom map with lots of smoke and a very long draw distance.

1280x768---550fps
1600x900--450fps
1920x1200--320fps
2560x1600--180fps

That's about 1/3 the fps from 1280 to 2560!!

When I turn AA off, I gain another 60fps at 2560x1600. (this was a surprise, I figured about 20fps max difference)

Fortunately, most of the people I play with have their frame rates capped, it makes for a much smoother game play in COD4 (as do I at 125 which is twice the refresh rate of my monitor).
Sorry, just ranting.

 

[sickwookie]

I feel your pain man. I used to be a "pro" gamer back in the glory days of CS 1.6. I any case you have to remember that to the "pro" gamer resolution and quality are irrelevant. In fact I met many people that preferred to play at lower resolutions because they thought it was easier to hit heads that appeared larger on their screen. Some people would even do the maths to adjust their mouse sensitivity to have pixel perfect accuracy. This entails taking the mouse dpi and scaling that your screens pixel resolution. I am pretty sure that most of these tweaks are more placebo than anything else. At a high level of play milliseconds make the difference so why not try to get every advantage possible?

Even now that I am just a casual TF2 player I still run a custom fps config that basically turns off all eye candy so I can get a steady 75fps at 1080p, and increases all fov values to the max allowed. I would never expect anyone else to use the same config that I do because it is really all about running what you are comfortable with.

 

[Mafi0So]

I l0l3d... you got trolled on interweb gamingz my friend...

 

[Riftsaw]

I l0l3d... you got trolled on interweb gamingz my friend...

I agree.

I also agree that the guy mentioned in the rant knew jackshit about enthusiast performance and setups.

You should've dropped your res to his for a second and noted your FPS or even better, made him bring his res up to yours(or as close as he could atleast. I'm guessing he'sprobably sitting on either a CRT or a 19inch LCD) and laughed as his game locked up.

 

[Vlad_13]

He is a kid, isn't this obvious?
I hate kids... that stick their noses in to a grownup world.

 

[radiatinglines]

lol the grownup world of online videogames

 

[VolvoR]

wasn't a kid, he was an adult (I've played with him a few times)

He just wasn't knowledgeable. I wish people who spouted off on topics at least had a clue what they were talking about.

 

[Proxy]

In my own testing, I have found that with out SLi, the Max FPS tends to be higher than with SLi. However, with SLi, even though the Max FPS may not be as high, the Average FPS is a little higher and is not all over the place as things change (explosions, smoke, gunfire, etc.) and does let me use much higher levels of AA/AF without feeling sluggish or choppy.

I remember on my sig rig I had disabled SLi for something, the next day I sat down to play a game and it didn't feel right and sure enough I still had it off. I can tell the difference, mainly by the way the mouse movements feel.

Again this is just me though, maybe different for others.

Edit: BTW OP, I noticed you had the Gene Mobo. What case do you have? I was gonna do an SFF build soon.

 

[aaronearles]

Does it matter? You now have the joy of knowing he's playing on an old 4:3 CRT while you enjoy 30" of hi res goodness.

 

[Eagle156]

he just asked you to say that he was getting about tree fiddy FPS.

 

[jedisme]

He is FOS!! PB kicks for FPS capped over 333...I do believe.

 

[noobman]

Here's something absolutey astonishing for you:

Your LCD monitor can display a maximum of 60 frames per second. Every frame over that is overkill since you're not actually able to see it!

IF you have a true 120hz LCD or a CRT you might have a higher maximum displayed FPS. Most idiots leave their CRTs at 60hz, while the smarter people will push it up to 85hz or even 100hz+ (depending on the monitor's capabilities). That being said, I have never been able to tell the difference between anything over 85hz (85 frames per second) on a CRT monitor.


So the next time your friend brags about having a higher FPS, just reply by telling him that his monitor can only display 60 frames per second (therefore he isn't seeing the others) AND that your game looks much crisper and sharper than his.

 

[shurcooL]

Yeah, I see this quite often too. People talk about frames per seconds without mentioning the resolution/AA. It's stupid.

 

[G0M3S]

he just asked you to say that he was getting about tree fiddy FPS.

LOL. South Park rocks!!

 

[spine]

Here's something absolutey astonishing for you:

Your LCD monitor can display a maximum of 60 frames per second. Every frame over that is overkill since you're not actually able to see it!

Not strictly true...

It's not so much about the number of frames you're seeing, but the input lag. The higher the fps, even if you can't see it, reduces input lag provided vsync is off (which it should be if you in any shape or form give a shit about input lag).

I can't be bothered to explain in any depth, but it's a basic fact that if you have 2 machines using an LCD screen @ 60hz, but one is putting out 200+ fps where the other is just keeping 60; the first machine will provide a MUCH smoother and tighter play experience. Any pro gamer would instantly be able to feel the difference. Again, this is assuming vsync is off.

 

[zoobaby]

Not strictly true...

It's not so much about the number of frames you're seeing, but the input lag. The higher the fps, even if you can't see it, reduces input lag provided vsync is off (which it should be if you in any shape or form give a shit about input lag).

I can't be bothered to explain in any depth, but it's a basic fact that if you have 2 machines using an LCD screen @ 60hz, but one is putting out 200+ fps where the other is just keeping 60; the first machine will provide a MUCH smoother and tighter play experience. Any pro gamer would instantly be able to feel the difference. Again, this is assuming vsync is off.

Well stated. I can 'sense' a difference at the different frame rates of 60 and 100, but that's about it. I don't think you'd be able to tell a difference in frame rates from 200 to 300.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

You probably got trolled, but what the hell it's an interesting discussion anyway.

2560x1600 is a decieving resolution, it's actually twice the resolution as full "HD" which is 1920x1080, multiply together and 1080p pulls about 2Mpixels, 2560x1600 pulls just over 4Mpixel, we're talking twice the number of pixels as full HD, thats a lot.

The performance characteristics of most modern effects scale with number of pixels, its pixel shaders doing a lot of the work and AA and AF is still more taxing with more pixels, so in general the more pixels the slower the performance. Looking at 1024x768 we're talking about 0.75Mpixels

So you're pushing over 5x more pixels, if you got 5 of his screens and put them side by side it would be still a lot less pixels than you're rendering.

The simple solution is to change res to match his and re-measure your fps and put the smacktard in his place, you'll probably be cpu bottlenecked at that point if you've got the hardware to power 2560x1600, but its bound to be quicker.

 

[spine]

Well stated. I can 'sense' a difference at the different frame rates of 60 and 100, but that's about it. I don't think you'd be able to tell a difference in frame rates from 200 to 300.

Beyond 200fps I'd say is pretty pointless, especially considering how many games are inherently laggy anyway.


Here's a little test that might shock all of you...


Fire up Quake2, pick a gun, any gun, railgun or pistol work well. Then close your eyes, and every 2 seconds or so tap the mouse fire button hard. You'll hear quite a delay between the finger tap and the gunfire sound.

The first unreal was probably the tightest game I've seen, modern games vary alot. All the Quake sequels games are shit for this, especially 4.

 

[zoobaby]

Beyond 200fps I'd say is pretty pointless, especially considering how many games are inherently laggy anyway.

Was kind of my point. The OP was complaining about the difference between 250 and 350 fps. I doubt he'd, or anyone would be able to even sense a difference.

Here's a little test that might shock all of you...


Fire up Quake2, pick a gun, any gun, railgun or pistol work well. Then close your eyes, and every 2 seconds or so tap the mouse fire button hard. You'll hear quite a delay between the finger tap and the gunfire sound.

The first unreal was probably the tightest game I've seen, modern games vary alot. All the Quake sequels games are shit for this, especially 4.

I'll have to check that out.

 

[Atech]

LDC's adds lag.
USB mouse adds lag.
Multi-GPU add lag.
Vsync (due to those crappy LCD's) adds lag.
Those are facts.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/lcds-images-delayed-compared-to-crts-yes.html

It's not the games (eg Quake 4), it is your poor choice in hardware.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Beyond 200fps I'd say is pretty pointless, especially considering how many games are inherently laggy anyway.


Here's a little test that might shock all of you...


Fire up Quake2, pick a gun, any gun, railgun or pistol work well. Then close your eyes, and every 2 seconds or so tap the mouse fire button hard. You'll hear quite a delay between the finger tap and the gunfire sound.

The first unreal was probably the tightest game I've seen, modern games vary alot. All the Quake sequels games are shit for this, especially 4.

I think you'll find that anyone hears a big delay will be down to their audio hardware, unless you're running a very high spec professional sound hardware then you'll have some apreciable delay.

 

[spine]

LDC's adds lag.
USB mouse adds lag.
Multi-GPU add lag.
Vsync (due to those crappy LCD's) adds lag.
Those are facts.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/lcds-images-delayed-compared-to-crts-yes.html

It's not the games (eg Quake 4), it is your poor choice in hardware.

Trust me, some games are just inherently laggy. Q2 is as bad now as it ever was back on my old Voodoo2 8mb.

I think you'll find that anyone hears a big delay will be down to their audio hardware, unless you're running a very high spec professional sound hardware then you'll have some apreciable delay.

I used hearing as a simple example, but you can just look at the screen and see the shot fire instead. Compare your tap with the gun firing visually and you'll still 'see' the delay.

I'm surprised it seems so few of you have noticed this problem over the years. I'm very 'tactile centric' when it comes to games, if I can feel the slightest bit of lag or clumsyness to the controls I'm instantly turned off. I played the Q4 demo for about 5 minutes before I just couldn't carry on with it because the input lag annoyed me so much. If I don't feel that I'm fully in control of a game, then I can't take it seriously. Might as well just throw a dice to see if I win or not.


I'll grab the Q4 demo again and see if it was old hardware that made it bad and/or if my memories have exaggerated it over the years...

 

[VolvoR]

I never stated that I can see the difference between 250 and 350 fps, BUT, I can see the difference between 60 fps and 150 fps. It just seems smoother.

Anything over that is just psychology. It makes me FEEL good that my hardware can run those frame rates. I know there's no difference. Not it COD4 anyways.

It's good to know that I can run almost ANY game at full settings (assuming they're coded well). I'm also quite certain that my hardware is good for at least a year (hopefully more) before any upgrades are needed.

 

[spine]

Sorry for the semi-thread jack VolvoR, but I thought some people might find this of interest...


I went and recorded the Input Lag I was talking about with Quake2 on my Digital camera.


Here it is (1.8meg, Xvid):-

QuakeII Input Lag Demo


Pretty blatant IMHO. Quake4 was as bad if I remember rightly, though I don't have it to hand at the mo.


p.s. I timeshifted the audio by -30ms to counter the +30ms delay that encoding with mpeg audio adds in (for any videoeditophiles who are reading). Yes I have WAYY too much time on my hands; benefits of being in full time education again.

 

[Fliddycent]

What a thread. I'm staggered.

 

[SoFGR]

LDC's adds lag.
USB mouse adds lag.
Multi-GPU add lag.
Vsync (due to those crappy LCD's) adds lag.
Those are facts.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/632-1/lcds-images-delayed-compared-to-crts-yes.html

It's not the games (eg Quake 4), it is your poor choice in hardware.

multi-gpu add lag ????? do you have any proof of that ?

Even now that I am just a casual TF2 player I still run a custom fps config that basically turns off all eye candy so I can get a steady 75fps at 1080p, and increases all fov values to the max allowed. I would never expect anyone else to use the same config that I do because it is really all about running what you are comfortable with.

DO you mind sharing this autoexec.cfg with the rest of us ? i play tf2 at 1280*960 100hz so i would really like to keep my frames capped to 100

 

[PS3]

I'm sure I get low fps on my 720p via the ps3, but it really isn't noticeable in most games, I guess because most games are so damn optimized. I use to be concerned about fps, etc. but realized that as long as the game is good and runs smooth and you enjoy the game, who cares about fps / resolution. Ok, if you are running 640x480 then that would suck.

I played Quake 2, it's a great game. You know what game is also awesome and like Quake 2? Resistance 2 on the PS3.

 

[Dome]

seriously, cs 1.6 and cs:s were fun as crap and i always had very modest hardware. i wasn't dominant by any means, but i was able to get enough kills to have fun (3:2 ktd is all i need) and i maybe got 60 fps if i was standing still.

there were always people bragging about specs and frames and shit, and some were better than me and some worse, but when it all comes down it it, we're all playing the same game to have fun. and if i'm going to measure my e-peen, i'll do it with kills, not with fps

 

[dkev]

A lot of people have faster frame rates then me on COD4. That's ok though, they die all the same.

 

[VolvoR]

Yup, just because you have the fastest hardware, it doesn't make your game any better. Sure there's going to be some improvement, but anyone who says that their game is better because they got that extra 10 fps bumping them up to 260fps is full of it.

 

[SoFGR]

Anything helps, a mousepad large enough so it can accomodate your sensitivity, providing a comfortable and CONSISTENT level of friction, a comfortable mouse which sensor doesn't costrain your large/fast movements with negative accel nor skips tons of pixels when playing at high sens, a pair of headphones with good detail,precise imaging and wide soundstage so you can hear that bast*rd who tries to flank you before it's too late.

Eliminating mouse-acceleration in windows and ingame is a must too although some people believe it's just a matter of preference, anyway in my experience using noforce commands, accelfix.exe from razer blueprints (sorry, it doesn't work on Vista not even on XP sp3 so i'm stuck with sp2 ) is a surefire way to mantain my aiming skills in cs 1.6 even with minimum-to none playing time, i even stopped playing for 2 months once and my aim was still there.

Last but not least a consistent framerate is important too, especially for multiplayer games, high framerates usually mean better hit registration, for example most servers in CSS force you to use cl_cmdrate 101 and cl_updaterate 101, you can't send/receive 100 packets per second in source/goldsource while having less than 100fps, your choke levels will skyrocket, try playing css with max_fps 30 and cl_Cmdrate 101 and you'll see what i mean

Not to mention that in most engines 30fps are simly not enough for fluid mouse movement, anything below 50fps in css/bf2 feels SO laggy to me, in the end it's all down to player skill, but believe me you will never know your true potential until you play on a comfortable properly configured ( and sometimes expensive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJZJXDxlS0M ) setup

 

[fx9]

People actually notice a difference when they get 250 fps or 350fps? I seriously don't notice a difference when I'm playing a game. Take a random person off the street show them the game at 250 and 350 fps and ask them if they see a difference between these two, I bet they won't see any change.

 

[Atech]

*snip* a pair of headphones with good detail,precise imaging and wide soundstage so you can hear that bast*rd who tries to flank you before it's too late.*snip*

I have yet to find any headphones that can match the 3D sound picture of a 5.1 speaker setup, and don't even get me started on how much headphones suck *beeeeep* compared to 7.1 sound.

 

[SoFGR]

In my opnition your frames per second should be equal to your monitor refresh rate for total smoothness ( 100/120fps in my case ) having more frames than you monitor can display is usually pointless unless you're playing a game with fps-affected physics like vanilla Q3, 43/76/125/333 were the magic numbers for that game as far as i remember, cod4's engine has many similarities with Q3 engine despite they're both running on different API's ( cod4 engine directX, Q3 engine openGL ) you may even hear that cod2 was unplayable without 125fps fixed

 

[SoFGR]

I have yet to find any headphones that can match the 3D sound picture of a 5.1 speaker setup, and don't even get me started on how much headphones suck *beeeeep* compared to 7.1 sound.

Go play UT3/BF2/bf2142 with hardware open AL and cmss3d headphone macrofx and elevation filter ENABLED, if you're still not impressed then i guess you need an upgrade, here's a list of headphones that are well known for their "3D" capabilities, AKG 240/501/601/701 DT770/DT880 sennheiser HD555/595 audiotechnica A500/700/900/AD700, there's more in spaceman's guide http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1234050 i can't help you much myself since i own "only" 3 expensive pairs ( A700, DT770/80 and recently AKG 601 ) so my experience is kind of limited

A very practical 3D sound test imo is that testing map on tactical ops crossfire ( ut2004 mod ) remember to untick system driver first and set your device to HW 3D and EAX mode in the sound options menu ,the level is composed of three rooms, in the first one you hear footsteps playing on your center channel only, in the second one you stand in the center while you hear footsteps costantly making circles around your character, in the third one you can hear footsteps above AND below your position, you have to try it

Check these settings out too, you can have very good 3D audio while playing games with software accelerated sound engines(mostly console ports) this way, although you won't have any sense of elevation, sounds located below and above your position will sound like they are on the same height with you http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=2444347&postcount=31

 

[Staples]

I stopped worrying about graphics years ago. I use whatever resolution will get me a constant >60fps rate. I find even that hard to get on some games even with crappy resolution but I will knock it down to 1024 if I need to. I used to worry about graphics but I realized that I spent more time tweaking games than I did playing them and that was quite counterproductive.

This was also one of the reasons I embraced console games years ago. No hassle and everyone playing the game will have the same experience. Online no one has an edge.

 

[Atech]

Go play UT3/BF2/bf2142 with hardware open AL and cmss3d headphone macrofx and elevation filter ENABLED, if you're still not impressed then i guess you need an upgrade, here's a list of headphones that are well known for their "3D" capabilities, AKG 240/501/601/701 DT770/DT880 sennheiser HD555/595 audiotechnica A500/700/900/AD700, there's more in spaceman's guide http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1234050 i can't help you much myself since i own "only" 3 expensive pairs ( A700, DT770/80 and recently AKG 601 ) so my experience is kind of limited

A very practical 3D sound test imo is that testing map on tactical ops crossfire ( ut2004 mod ) remember to untick system driver first and set your device to HW 3D and EAX mode in the sound options menu ,the level is composed of three rooms, in the first one you hear footsteps playing on your center channel only, in the second one you stand in the center while you hear footsteps costantly making circles around your character, in the third one you can hear footsteps above AND below your position, you have to try it

Check these settings out too, you can have very good 3D audio while playing games with software accelerated sound engines(mostly console ports) this way, although you won't have any sense of elevation, sounds located below and above your position will sound like they are on the same height with you http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=2444347&postcount=31

I have tried headphones, sig in rig...7.1>5.1>headphones.
Look at my posts too...I know my 3D sound...headphones does NOT give the best 3D picture.

I would even reverse your post and say you must have listen to badly configed speakers to make a post like that.

 

[phide]

It's not so much about the number of frames you're seeing, but the input lag. The higher the fps, even if you can't see it, reduces input lag provided vsync is off (which it should be if you in any shape or form give a shit about input lag).

Sometimes, but not always. Most modern engines use asynchronous or fixed tic input polling which do away with the input rate irregularities of the older engines. You may be rendering 300 frames per second, but the engine may only polling the input at the equivalent of 60 or 100 frames per second. id Tech 4, for instance, uses a global fixed tic rate of 60 Hz, and everything is jammed to that (though ET:QW runs at 30 Hz by default, if I recall). Uncapping the renderer doesn't correspond to an increase in the global input polling rate. As such, the netplay is consistent for all users regardless of the frame rate.

I can't be bothered to explain in any depth, but it's a basic fact that if you have 2 machines using an LCD screen @ 60hz, but one is putting out 200+ fps where the other is just keeping 60; the first machine will provide a MUCH smoother and tighter play experience.

That isn't a basic fact. Theoretically speaking, if both poll at 60 Hz, both will 'feel' identical. Depends on the engine.

Fire up Quake2, pick a gun, any gun, railgun or pistol work well. Then close your eyes, and every 2 seconds or so tap the mouse fire button hard. You'll hear quite a delay between the finger tap and the gunfire sound.

Could be due to a number of reasons. It's possible some of firing delay is intentional for animation purposes, or the sound file isn't cut tight to the first transient. In other words, there may be several hundred samples of silence or dither before the first transient that causes a delay of several milliseconds on top of the delay introduced by the audio API's buffering.

With both DirectSound and OpenAL, the minimum latency is between 30 and 35ms, and you simply can't get the audio delay any lower than that unless you use a different API with smaller and fewer buffers. I'm fairly sure there's no control of buffer sizes in OpenAL, but I could be wrong.

multi-gpu add lag ????? do you have any proof of that ?

Microstuttering. Different kind of lag (not even lag, really, just a visual inter-frame inconsistency). There's proof of it, but it's not relevant to the kind of lag we're discussing.

I know my 3D sound...headphones does NOT give the best 3D picture.

Well, this sounds familiar. I don't think he said anything about it being the "best", just that it's impressive.

 

[Shlomo]

Lol OP got trolled....

 

[spine]

Could be due to a number of reasons. It's possible some of firing delay is intentional for animation purposes, or the sound file isn't cut tight to the first transient. In other words, there may be several hundred samples of silence or dither before the first transient that causes a delay of several milliseconds on top of the delay introduced by the audio API's buffering.

With both DirectSound and OpenAL, the minimum latency is between 30 and 35ms, and you simply can't get the audio delay any lower than that unless you use a different API with smaller and fewer buffers. I'm fairly sure there's no control of buffer sizes in OpenAL, but I could be wrong.

Check out the video I posted earlier, says it all. Quake2 is the worst game for input lag I've played, but most games suffer a bit because they all too frequently put the user input at a lower priority to other things like AI, physics, etc.

QuakeII Input Lag Demo


Supreme Commander is a good example of the opposite where it is done correctly. That game can be utterly raping your machine (both cpu and gpu) but as soon as you hit escape the menu pops up and the mouse is smooth as butter and you have full control. This is how games should be.


The point I'm making is simply that you can have all the frames per second you like, but if the game is inherently laggy with its input then it's a waste of time optimising an excessive framerate for a competitive edge.