Obbsession with framerate?

[velve666]

Hi there folks

 

I got something that has been bothering me for a long time and I hope some of you are willing to share your views and opinions about this subject. I'm talking framerates.

 

Now skyrim is a beatifull game if not one of the most beautiful i've ever played (I'm not that big on gaming since I left the house and started "living") I love it everything about it. But my question is what is it with most players obsession with "high" framerates? I would classify a decent framerate of 25, anything higher and its a bonus but 25 is fine for me. I am constantly reading post's about players complaining about framerate just to find out the framerate theyre complaining about is somewhere in the high 30's 40's mark, and thats when they feel GPU upgrades are necessary and they suddenly get a sinking feeling about how their pc's have somehow failed them. Its crazy!

 

On my laptop I need to run hialgoboost on its lowest resolution setting so my screen is pretty much constantly blurring to get what seems perfectly appropriate to me somewhere between 20 and 30. Granted without it I get something like 10 fps but is anything over 30 necessary? I used to think its just about boasting your acheived rate but Now I see its a personal matter.....perhaps im muttering along here sounding like a technophobic moron but I really want to understand why 40 fps is a reason for some to start worrying. A while ago I saw a post with someone running everything on max with ENB's the works, yet was concerned with a framerate in the mid 50's. Why not just turn you graphics down a notch? have I missed out on a movement or a phase where it is of paramount importance to have everything looking as good and running as fast as possible?

 

To summarise i'm asking this because I am perfectly happy "lagging" along as some might say at my mid 20's framerate yet most others aren't satisfied with double that. what has happened? Why not just tone it down?

Edited February 12, 2014 by velve666

[Oubliette]

Meh.

 

I started gaming on a used laptop and got 5 fps in Morrowind - I suspect it was actually lower in Balmora but the rating only goes down to 5. So to me anything over 5 is running smooth as silk. Yes I've heard people talking about wanting to run at 60 FPS constantly with all visual mods enabled at maximum settings, I don't pay them any mind. I just figure that they've come to gaming from a very different place than I did and are used to things that seem ridiculous luxuries to my 'antiquated' self.

[Rennn]

I cap at 30 fps in all my games. It saves me a lot of headaches, and it gives me double the power to throw at graphical effects.

 

The main reason most people worry, I think (or hope), is because when you aim for 60 fps you usually have vsync enabled, and when you have vsync enabled and drop below 60 fps, it pops down to 30. So when people worry about dipping below 60 fps in Skyrim, often it feels terrible because really they're not feeling 55 fps or 45 fps, they're feeling the framerate jump straight from 30 to 60 fps randomly, which feels terrible and looks terrible. What's more, oftentimes framerate measuring programs don't account for vsync so they won't display that the framerate is jumping from 30 to 60 causing microstutter. The program will just display "47" or whatever. It leads to a lot of undeserved hate for framerates below 60, because when vsync is turned on anything below 60 comes with microstutter and instability, unless you use a framerate limiter to keep it consistently below 60 fps yet above 29 fps.

 

Framerate limiters themselves come with problems, however. For example, Nvidia's official limiter breaks vsync for me. So I now use the RivaTuner Statistics Server to limit my framerate instead. It doesn't break vsync.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Rennn

[Hyacathusarullistad]

My framerate is all over the place. I go from 20/25 to 60+ with the turn of my character's head. I honestly don't have a problem with anything above 15 FPS, myself, and anything over 30 is gravy as far as I'm concerned, considering the load order I play with these days.

[djjohnjarvis]

The only reason I upgraded my graphics card was because I wanted to use ENB and graphics mods to make the game look much better and ENBs can sometimes almost half the framerate so in that situation a high vanilla framerate is needed and I should think this is the case for most people who upgrade their graphics card. However anything higher than 40fps and I can't tell much difference. 30fps feels smooth if the framerate remains fairly constant and at 40fps I can tell a slight difference in smoothness but anything above is just unnecessary so I don't see why people pay ridiculous prices for the best graphics card on the market (mine is fairly powerful but I got a really good deal on it and it wasn't ridiculously expensive). Sometimes my fps shoots up to a full 60fps with ENB but it usually stays fairly constant around the 40-55fps range but it seems Skyrim caps it at 60fps (at least on mine) so any extra processing power gets wasted anyway.

[bben46]

Some people confuse a high framerate with running smoothly. The console versions of the games are all capped at 30 or less. And, both movies and TV are both framerate locked at less than 30 fps. But they run smoothly. On the PC, the framerate is uncapped - that means it is allowed to jump all over the place - and if you have a mid range graphics card that mostly shows a 60 fps, but then suddenly drops to 45 they see that as a problem with framerate. Where if they had capped at around 40 they would have a very smooth game at a much higher framerate than the xbox or PS users ever see.

 

Instead of trying to max out that framerate, you need to allow some overhead to absorb those sudden changes when your character turns quickly and the graphics card has to suddenly render a lot of stuff. And doesn't have any thing left to work with because it is already maxed out. So, if you graphics card can do 60, but is hard put to maintain it, by just capping the fps to 50 there will be that extra capability to be able to absorb that sudden jump without a drop that shoes as a small pause. Capping at less than 50 gives even more overhead - your card will run cooler, your game run smoother.

 

My current cap is 42. My game runs smoothly and rarely drops below that 42 fps. When I had it at 50, I would see occasional drops down to 20. My GPU is a Nvidia GTX 550 ti with one gig of video ram - about 2 generations behind the latest and about 3 Gig below the newest.

[Descivii]

Is that an honest question? I ask because like any hobby in life people who really appreciate their hobby will strive for perfection; cars, bikes, puters, gardening, etc... It's 1 of multiple standards toward achieving perfection in something you care about. You obviously don't care much about your computer so it doesn't make sense to you but it still seems obvious why a person would pursue high values. Are you confused why people invest auto parts that can make a care go faster than allowed on the street? OP feels like passive aggressive trolling when you say you go out and live "real life"...that's a passive jab at computer people and has been one of the oldest in the book perhaps I misread between the lines; excuse me then!

 

Hope we could shed some light if you were confused

J

[jet4571]

If you can have stable framerates between 30 and 60fps then you are doing good. When you start dropping below 30 you are putting too much stress on the video card and need to cut back on whats used. Usualy something like an ENB or too many high res textures for your card is the culprit. Bben46 explains what you should have going to maintain stable framerates when playing.

 

Now uncapped, no vsync is very usefull for benchmarking and testing what your card can handle. when testing you would add more and more HD textures, an ENB, Ini tweaks, whatever to make the game look better and you shoot for an average 50-60+ fps . Once you get the game looking pretty and you have 50-60+ fps you would then cap it to 40-50 fps. Your fps will be capped lower than what the average uncapped is making the framerate stable no matter what happens in the game.

 

You can put more stress on the card and shoot for a cap between 30 and 40 fps and make the game even more pretty but that just lowers the extra overhead you have and if your game is consistently well below the 30 mark uncapped you are puting way too much stress on the card and will be lowering its lifetime due to heat stress.

 

Allot of people do see benchmark results from video card reviews and confuse that with what should be seen when playing. When doing benchmark comparisons having all the cards vsync and capped you wouldnt know which card performs better when they all have the same 60fps. One card at 65fps and one at 70fps and the last card at 80fps you can clearly see which card is the better performer.

[velve666]

You're excused, I was simply describing my transition from out of school into the real world. I also fall into the category of computer people as you so described us. So no worries there.

 

Thanks for shedding some light guys I didn't realize about the vsync at 60 fps thing. I knew about it just didn't think about it at the time. I had no intention to take a stab at anyone in this thread. I am just trying to pick some brains about the matter.

[FiftyTifty]

With gamebryo games, there is horrible stutter at lower framerates. It's not noticeable at higher framerates, but at 30 or 40? Eugh.

 

Probably a big reason for people wanting high framerates with Skyrim and the like.

 

Luckily, setting ifpsclamp=## in Skyrim.ini (for example, ifpsclamp=30) will remove that stutter at the cost of the game speeding up the fps goes over the set number, and going into slow-mo when below. I find that setting it at 30 (and capping it at 30) makes the game as smooth as when I just capped at 40-45.