FPS Questions

[Roger Wilco Jr]

This is just something I've never thought about before. If I have a 60Hz monitor, I assume it can't display more than 60FPS no matter how strong my hardware is. First, is that correct? So if the FPS counter says I'm at 260FPS, is the hardware generating these screen frames and then just throwing them out, or is the monitor just ignoring all the extra ones, or wtf is happening?

If the graphics card can't maintain 60FPS - say it drops to 50FPS on the counter, and v-sync is on to avoid tearing (I'm talking out my ass a little bit here), does the monitor just repeat the previous frame if a new complete one is not available? And does that mean you are actually getting 30FPS, at least for those 2 cycles? And then does it bounce between either 60FPS and 30FPS for an average of 50FPS? Or can the monitor reset when it starts displaying a frame, so instead of displaying a single frame for 2 cycles, it displays a frame for 1 cycle, and then nothing for 1/2 cycle, and then start again with a second frame?


Why I ask.
I was getting annoyed by the map taking 10-20 seconds to open (dear FD, but they don't care). I thought I'd try the trick of disabling the frame rate limit. Then I was only getting about 130FPS, which seemed low, and I discovered my SLI was disabled again! I assume this happened with the latest game upgrade. After I fixed that I was getting 260FPS (out in deep space exploring). The map did open quicker, but then I started wondering about what was really happening.

[TorTorden]

Yes as you say, the monitor just throws out any extra frames, inow pushing 260 fps to a 60hz monitor just means the monitor throws 200 of them away.

Enabling v-sync is mainly just putting brakes on the gpu so it slows down and try to match rendering output with a monitor drawcycle.

I am no expert but I believe tearing is when a monitor gets a new frame partially through its draw cycle and v-sync tries to match draw cycles and frame rates, it has other effects mostly not so great (like introducing a very slight delay)

I also noticed that enabling frame limiter to say 60 fps actually halts the render 59.9 something. So enabling v sync on top of this it goes "hey I can't make 60hz with that , better slow down some more"

In short don't use frame limiter on top of v-sync unless you want to cap to 45-55fps even though you could get 200 easy.

You can also see v-sync or frame limiter in gpu workload deactivating both and rendering 260fps taxes your card completely , running either slows the card down so I notice using gpu-z in the background it went from screaming along at 100% load to like 30-40%.

Less load means less heat and less heat means less fan noise, and since i got like you a 60hz monitor running full load when I can't really use it seems a little wasteful.

As you can easily keep 60hz, i would use frame limitier rather than v-sync.

[Walter]

So all those players claiming high FPS are no better off if their monitors are only refreshing at 60Hz? I see the minimum refresh cycle for 3D headsets is 90Hz.
---
As I understand it (that may be an exaggeration), slow System map displays are down to Frontier's servers and not your machine. DB has said there will be improvements (I would love to give the reference but can't find it).

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I am no expert but I believe tearing is when a monitor gets a new frame partially through its draw cycle and v-sync tries to match draw cycles and frame rates, it has other effects mostly not so great (like introducing a very slight delay)

I was watching some videos this evening about input lag. I've never noticed anything like that while playing Elite, but it was very obvious in the street fighter type game examples - about 100ms.

You can also see v-sync or frame limiter in gpu workload deactivating both and rendering 260fps taxes your card completely , running either slows the card down so I notice using gpu-z in the background it went from screaming along at 100% load to like 30-40%.

Less load means less heat and less heat means less fan noise, and since i got like you a 60hz monitor running full load when I can't really use it seems a little wasteful.

Yes, I usually try to maintain 60fps to keep things cool and quiet. I was just testing to see if the map opened faster, and it did - about 4 times faster. Also, the compute shaders also zipped by much faster.

As you can easily keep 60hz, i would use frame limitier rather than v-sync.

I hadn't tried this in a while, as I really don't like tearing, but I gave it another go. I can't say I noticed any tearing, but it was like I was looking at the screen through a mirage or wavy window. It was very distracting. I usually have the in-game setting off and use the Nvidia adaptive sync and it usually holds 60fps and occasionally drops to 57fps or so. I really wanted a g-sync monitor, but I still don't want to pay what they are asking.

So all those players claiming high FPS are no better off if their monitors are only refreshing at 60Hz?

Yes, but they probably do have 120Hz or 144Hz gaming monitors.

As I understand it (that may be an exaggeration), slow System map displays are down to Frontier's servers and not your machine.

I suppose they may have some weird timing thing where they only try to communicate each frame, so more frames equals faster communication.


This guy does a pretty decent job explaining v-sync & frame limiting and what happens.

[TorTorden]

So all those players claiming high FPS are no better off if their monitors are only refreshing at 60Hz? I see the minimum refresh cycle for 3D headsets is 90Hz.
---
As I understand it (that may be an exaggeration), slow System map displays are down to Frontier's servers and not your machine. DB has said there will be improvements (I would love to give the reference but can't find it).

They have 120hz+ monitors now mostly but back up a few years then this was rather funny yes

[Black Rose]

While many clinical facts vary, its seems the consensus is that the human eye, barring any physical defects, can see between 40 and 60 fps.

A higher refresh rate on your monitor increase the smoothness of picture. So the air may actually blur as a camera follows the path of something moving very fast. A 144 hz monitor will show a much smoother image than a 60 hz. The reason, as I see it, that 60 hz has been the industry standard for so many years reverts back to the limitations of the human eye.

The slow load has many things contributing to it and I suspect its not your frame rate. More than likely its the ping/pl rate on your connection plus the speed of your HDD, and to a lesser degree the speed of your memory and bus.

Now I could be talking out of my tush but it was explained to me this way and it makes sense to me.

In relation to perceived speed, here is an example.

2006 - Dell XPS System running 2.6 ghz on a who knows what cpu, 2 gb of memory, windows XP and a 30 gb sata hdd - Boot time 6 minutes.
2009 - Falcon system running at 3.3 ghz on a Core Two Duo 8600K, 8 gb of DDR 3 Memory, windows 7 and a 250 gb sata hdd - Boot time 2 min.
2015 - Falcon system running at 4.0 ghz on a i7 Devil's Canyon, 16 gb of DD4 memory, windows 10 and a 250 gb ssd - Boot time 7 seconds

The 2006 system was on an nVidia 8600 with 512 mb
The 2009 system was on an nVidia GTX 470 with 1 gb
The 2015 system is on an nVida GTX 970 with 4 gb.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

2015 - Falcon system running at 4.0 ghz on a i7 Devil's Canyon, 16 gb of DD4 memory, windows 10 and a 250 gb ssd - Boot time 7 seconds.

That sounds like the system I built 16 months ago down to the exact same boot time. Now it's 21 seconds.

[Black Rose]

2015 - Falcon system running at 4.0 ghz on a i7 Devil's Canyon, 16 gb of DD4 memory, windows 10 and a 250 gb ssd - Boot time 7 seconds.

That sounds like the system I built 16 months ago down to the exact same boot time. Now it's 21 seconds.

Mine boots slow one day, then fast the next. Its really perplexing for me.