What counts as a 'playable' framerate?

I've been reading TONS of threads in preparation to build a rig that'll run Crysis on high settings at 1920x1080 at a good framerate.

Seems like there's a broad spectrum of what various gamers consider 'good' and/or 'playable' when it comes to the framerates they are achieving.

I've been gone from gaming for a while, but have had a few stints on a friend's machine: CoD4, all maxed out and v-synch'd at 60fps ran just beautifully...like liquid-smoothe. After seeing that, the mid-30's he was getting on Crysis looked choppy and unpleasant. Certainly "playable", since the lag/chop didn't actually screw up the gameplay itself, but isn't the point of all this money and time and effort we put into our rigs for the experience of immersion and realism and visual awesomeness? Framerates in the 30's are definitely flickery and distracting - at least to my eye.

Alot of people on here seem to feel that framerates in the 30's are just fine, and some have even declared that there's no real noticeable difference between 30's and 60. So is it just me? Am I missing something? Isn't the buttery smoothness of 60fps a whole pants-load better then 35fps? Like almost night and day?

-C

It varies depending on the person, but I find anywhere from 30fps upwards just fine. I've had my fps drop below 30 in some places in a game like Crysis but it doesn't really effect my gameplay...it's just something that I notice when it happens.

Edit: And yes, I would much rather game at 60fps but as far as "playable" goes, 30+ seems fine...

A constant 60FPS is the most ideal. Anything higher then that you probably won't notice the difference. Even 40FPS isn't to bad as long as it doesn't dip. If it stays around a constant FPS above 35-40FPS its playable. There are parts of the game that will take it's toll on your PC so the higher the average FPS the better. That way if it does dip it still won't dip to "unplayable" framerates.

Once I saw the buttery difference between 30-60fps...

60 and can NEVER go back.

Turn on the Vsync and blows me away eveytime...

Any stable frame rate above 29fps is playable. Any frame rate at or above 60fps is the best/

It depends on the person.

My opinion is that a solid framerate is more important than hitting a single instance or "average" high number. For example - you can average 30 fps with your low being 10 and your high being 50.

For instance, I find the single player game of Battlefield Bad Company 2 to be playable because the framerate was steady enough to actually move around, aim and fire without noticeable chugging. To my surprise, when I ran fraps with it - fraps reported my framerate to be around a solid 17-18 fps in some instances, and a solid 30-40 in others. At least in each of those instances, the game felt "smooth".

Yes, 60+ fps is always ideal, with 30+ preferred more than under 30, but I'd rather have a solid framerate versus one that jumps wildly from high to low in the same scenario. It's also one reason I don't depend on benchmarks or run fraps too often.

I've been reading TONS of threads in preparation to build a rig that'll run Crysis on high settings at 1920x1080 at a good framerate.

Seems like there's a broad spectrum of what various gamers consider 'good' and/or 'playable' when it comes to the framerates they are achieving.

I've been gone from gaming for a while, but have had a few stints on a friend's machine: CoD4, all maxed out and v-synch'd at 60fps ran just beautifully...like liquid-smoothe. After seeing that, the mid-30's he was getting on Crysis looked choppy and unpleasant. Certainly "playable", since the lag/chop didn't actually screw up the gameplay itself, but isn't the point of all this money and time and effort we put into our rigs for the experience of immersion and realism and visual awesomeness? Framerates in the 30's are definitely flickery and distracting - at least to my eye.

Alot of people on here seem to feel that framerates in the 30's are just fine, and some have even declared that there's no real noticeable difference between 30's and 60. So is it just me? Am I missing something? Isn't the buttery smoothness of 60fps a whole pants-load better then 35fps? Like almost night and day?

-C

CMChotmail

More is definitely better. There's no denying that. But, I seem able to move, aim, shoot at lower frame rates just fine. Crysis is a good example. It was immersive enough for me at 25-30 fps at a res of 1440x900, 2xAA High-Very High. Most of the time, the frame rates hovered above 30. They dropped to the low 20's with the final boss. But, even that didn't really affect my aim. I finished both Crysis games with relatively low frame rates at the very end.

With Flight Simulator X, keeping the frame rates locked at 24 fps was much smoother than having them spike into the 80's then dip down below 24 fps.

If you can see the difference, more power to you.

generally 27.5+ fps is before you start reaching unbearable choppyness.

I'd also like to add Crysis at 25-30 fps is smoother than Oblivion at 40-50 fps at least on my pc with Phenom II X3 720BE (4th core unlocked), Sapphire HD 5770, 8gb RAM DDR3 1600.

It depends on the game. For shooters, 60+ FPS would be preferred, but for RTS and RPGs, 30 FPS is fine. For turn-based games, something as low as 20 FPS would be playable.Einhanderkiller

I think the majority of RTS (at least the older ones such as C&C: Generals) were locked at 30 fps

[QUOTE="Einhanderkiller"]It depends on the game. For shooters, 60+ FPS would be preferred, but for RTS and RPGs, 30 FPS is fine. For turn-based games, something as low as 20 FPS would be playable.jun_aka_pekto

I think the majority of RTS (at least the older ones such as C&C: Generals) were locked at 30 fps

25 frame rates is playable, and perfect. Anything above is great, however you're not required to have any above 25. Your brain can only register 25FPS per second any way, so anything above essentially you will not notice regardless because you're not superman. I don't get why these people require 60+ frames per second. It's pointless. Movies are filmed at 25FPS, so I think you'll do fine with something that gets at least 25-30 on all the heaviest games. Of course having something higher than that will benefit you knowing that you wont drop under 25.

25 frame rates is playable, and perfect. Anything above is great, however you're not required to have any above 25. Your brain can only register 25FPS per second any way, so anything above essentially you will not notice regardless because you're not superman. I don't get why these people require 60+ frames per second. It's pointless. Movies are filmed at 25FPS, so I think you'll do fine with something that gets at least 25-30 on all the heaviest games. Of course having something higher than that will benefit you knowing that you wont drop under 25.

Spewaged

One thing I learned is when people say they can see a big difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, they probably can. They need a higher-end pc to be happy. Me? I cannot which means I don't really need a top-end pc to game and be happy although I certainly wouldn't mind a higher-end rig.

[QUOTE="Spewaged"]

25 frame rates is playable, and perfect. Anything above is great, however you're not required to have any above 25. Your brain can only register 25FPS per second any way, so anything above essentially you will not notice regardless because you're not superman. I don't get why these people require 60+ frames per second. It's pointless. Movies are filmed at 25FPS, so I think you'll do fine with something that gets at least 25-30 on all the heaviest games. Of course having something higher than that will benefit you knowing that you wont drop under 25.

jun_aka_pekto

One thing I learned is when people say they can see a big difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, they probably can. They need a higher-end pc to be happy. Me? I cannot which means I don't really need a top-end pc to game and be happy although I certainly wouldn't mind a higher-end rig.

I'm not sure a higher end PC will allow your brain to see higher FPS. But yeah, you're right I would love to have a higher end PC. The more frame rates the better. Lessens the chance of a laggy frape drop.

Crysis's motion blur makes the game seem smoother so im actually fine with 20, but if im not playing crysis then i need to have 30 minimum, maybe 24 considering that 24fps is the "cinematic" frame rate. From what ive learned as a video editor the basics are 2,4,6,8 (generally used in photography as 1/x showing shutter speed) 12, 12.5, 14.985, 15, 23.976, 24, 25, 29.970, 30,50 ,50, 59.940 ,60,and 120(which is also a refresh rate) and it continues from there up to 300 something i dont remember (these numbers can also be frames). It gets complicated from there. All these numbers can represent refresh rates, fps, or shutter speed. I believe the fps limit on windows is 1000fps. u cant go over that without some sort of hack.

Here's an awesome example of the difference in smoothness between 30fps and 60fps. (See link below.) 30 is certainly 'doable' but 60 is downright oily. I think that when it comes to a game as visually beautiful and rich as Crysis, the difference between the two is why many people spend SO MUCH more money on machines that can crank out higher framerates. It's like actually BEING THERE (as near as a 2D tabletop monitor can provide, anyway). Sad that it's engine requires such high-end machines, even by TODAY's standards, to approach 60fps... http://spng.se/frame-rate-test/ -CCMChotmail

Those demonstrations would make sense if movement in a game such as Crysis speeds up as well with higher frame rates. Unfortunately, Nomad or Psycho don't walk any faster be it at 30 fps or 60 fps.

It does work for a timedemo where the number of frames and time to completion are constant

I require a minimum of 40+ frames per second.

In single player 30fps is ok but for multiplayer you need the highest fps you can get after 70fps it's hard to see the diffrence for me. I have played online multiplayer games in the 30-40fps range and you have much less time to react than at 60 plus fps that's why I make sure to upgrade.

Crysis has a really unique motion blur that lets you play around 25 fps without any lag. But for most games def 30+ is playable.ocstew

Is that what it does? I've always kept motion blur off in the Crysis games. He He.

This is very individual, but im one of thoose that don't need high FPS to be happy.

Theres a great diffrence between a steady number of FPS all the time around 35 FPS, or very unstable FPS at 60's (dipping in the low 20's.) I'd take stable at 35 any day before unstable but 60FPS.

Microstutter as in dual GPU settup were horrible at this before (it's not as bad nowdays), they've had high numbers of FPS but in the fraction of a sec they've had a giant frame loss.

for ex.

(each number reprecent 0.1 of a second.)

4FPS - 4FPS - 4FPS- 0FPS - 4FPS - 4FPS - 0FPS - 5FPS - 5FPS - 4FPS = 34FPS per second but with a very choppy framerate (if you measure it in less than a sec), it's to small lag(s) to measure since we often measure in frames per Second, since they are in less than a second and wont show up in a benchmark or with a FPS app such as FRAPS many people comfuse this choppyness with a low framerate witch isn't true, but they are rigth a microstutter is drastic for your eye.

If you're in the low number of FPS things can get choppy, but thats because of what i just explained not that the framerate is low it's more about the small, small loss of frames in less than a sec that they see.

Id take a low but steady FPS any day before unstable and a little higher.

Another exsample is that a film at 29.97 can be butter smooth, this is because that the framerate is constant at even the microfracture of a second.

For me anything above 25 FPS is fine. Iantheone

Same here. I think people care to much when looking at FPS.

IMO.. a playable game never dip below 25fps

Personally I notice it very quickly when the framerate drops into the 40s. Crysis is very tolerant when it comes to low framerates though. It plays pretty good at 25-30 FPS as long as you have object motion blur enabled. If you don't have motion blur on though, it's very noticeable.

30, about is the minimum for playable in my book, and 60 is the luxury we all wish to pass anymore is just a waste of time. For competitive play you need all you can, online.

the human eye generally cant detect above 24fps which is why most games used to be 25fps to remain smooth. The faster fps generally helps game developers so their collision detection and gfx effects can be more accurate.wurd

i find 45 and up to be really smooth i can play at 25 its jsut i can tell the difference and i dont really care that much

I consider anything below 40 fps unplayable. But I always push for 60 fps. Its just a PC thing.

35fps is playable for me, 60 is just a bonus though :)

where do people get this 24 fps bull? humans can detect pretty much any framerate. there is no framerate of life, there was even a thread on this, i will find it. it just seems like we cant detect higher than 60 or whatever because the time in between each frame gets so miniscule, however we can detect anything

ironman388

It depends on the game. For example: I usually keep flight sims locked at 24 fps minimum since the sense of motion isn't as drastic as in an fps. In most FPS games, I like it higher (at least 30 fps minimum) although Crysis is an anomaly. Usually, I can tolerate lower frame rates so long as movement, accurate aim and firing isn't affected. That's the thing about games, it's not real life. So, I can take some liberties. Of course, more is always better.

In flight sims like these. I keep it locked at 24 fps.

FSX P-51 and B-25

FSX JASDF Mitsubishi F-2A

[QUOTE="wurd"]the human eye generally cant detect above 24fps which is why most games used to be 25fps to remain smooth. The faster fps generally helps game developers so their collision detection and gfx effects can be more accurate.ironman388

[QUOTE="ironman388"]

[QUOTE="wurd"]the human eye generally cant detect above 24fps which is why most games used to be 25fps to remain smooth. The faster fps generally helps game developers so their collision detection and gfx effects can be more accurate.damstr