Do you really need 144 fps for a 144 Hz monitor

[Stefanos Lamparas]

Hello,

I am planning to get a new monitor and I am thinking for a 144 Hz one.With the knowledge I have so far I know that If you use a 60 Hz monitor for example you should be getting 60 fps in a game for the best experience.However I see some youtubers that benchmark pcs,they use a 144 or 160 Hz monitor without getting the corresponding fps.So should I be concerned if my pc can run a game at 144 fps without a problem,or will it be ok with 70 fps for  example?

Thank you for your time.

[LTT_fanboy]

Just now, Stefanos Lamparas said:

Hello,

I am planning to get a new monitor and I am thinking for a 144 Hz one.With the knowledge I have so far I know that If you use a 60 Hz monitor for example you should be getting 60 fps in a game for the best experience.However I see some youtubers that benchmark pcs,they use a 144 or 160 Hz monitor without getting the corresponding fps.So should I be concerned if my pc can run a game at 144 fps without a problem,or will it be ok with 70 fps for  example?

Thank you for your time.

the monitor does not change frame rate , its just the amount of times the screen refreshes to give you clear data of what is going on , but 144 hz would be good for fps games or thos quick action games.

[LTT_fanboy]

2 minutes ago, Stefanos Lamparas said:

Hello,

I am planning to get a new monitor and I am thinking for a 144 Hz one.With the knowledge I have so far I know that If you use a 60 Hz monitor for example you should be getting 60 fps in a game for the best experience.However I see some youtubers that benchmark pcs,they use a 144 or 160 Hz monitor without getting the corresponding fps.So should I be concerned if my pc can run a game at 144 fps without a problem,or will it be ok with 70 fps for  example?

Thank you for your time.

you should be ok with anything over 60 fps games too

[TVwazhere]

7 minutes ago, Stefanos Lamparas said:

So should I be concerned if my pc can run a game at 144 fps without a problem,or will it be ok with 70 fps for  example?

Thank you for your time.

It will be okay at 70fps. If you were getting 70fps on a 60hz screen, you;d only see 60fps as that's the monitors limit. 

 

144hz simply allows yo to view all FPS between 0 and 144, so even if you're only getting 100fps on a 144hz monitor it's fine. It simply allows you to actually see and feel that difference compared to a 60hz. 

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

When ur FPS dips bellow ur monitor's refresh rate u get what's called Tearing; It's when for a split second half of ur screen is still the previous frame and the other half is the next one. In general it is recommended to make sure ur GPU is pushing the needed amount of Frames per second that matches ur monitor's refresh rate. That much do know. And from personal experience i'm not quite sure if G-Sync and Free-Sync help that much. 

[Tan3l6]

Tearing is not Hz nor FPS dependent.

It's just a "misplaced" frame(s). Freesync and Gsync are great for avoiding the effect.

And yeah 144+Hz is good. More noticable at higher framerate but lower also.

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, Tan3l6 said:

Tearing is not Hz nor FPS dependent.

It's just a "misplaced" frame.

It kind of is. Tearing happens when the rate at which the monitor refreshes its contents and the rate at which the GPU produces new frames don't match up.

 

Essentially if your GPU switches to a new frame/image when the monitor is partially done drawing it, you see some part of one frame and some part of another frame. How noticeable that is depends on how much the contents of those frames differ. If both are the same image, you won't notice. If both are wildly different, it'll be very noticeable.

 

V-Sync solves this issue by synchronizing the GPU to the monitor's refresh rate (it is only allowed to switch frames when the monitor is done drawing a frame). If the GPU isn't fast enough to keep up with the monitor, then you drop to some fraction (e.g. 60 -> 30 fps).

 

Adaptive Sync (G-Sync/FreeSync) solves this issue by synchronizing the monitors refresh rate to the GPU's frame rate. The monitor is asked to draw a new frame whenever the GPU is done with it. This has some upper/lower limits, since the monitor needs to be fast enough to be able to draw when asked (and be done with the previous frame).

[Tan3l6]

19 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

It kind of is. Tearing happens when the rate at which the monitor refreshes its contents and the rate at which the GPU produces new frames don't match up.

....

Yup, I'm not disagreeing, I just gave a simpler explanation. 

Tearing depends of both - framerate and refresh rate, not either separately  ...

[Stefanos Lamparas]

I also know that If you are getting fps half the monitor's refresh rate ,the monitor shows double frames, tho I don't know how the is experience in person because in a 60 hz getting 30 fps is not good at all.

[manikyath]

it can be argued that if you're getting 70FPS it'll be a smoother experience limiting that to 60 on a 60Hz panel, than to run at 70 on a 144Hz panel.

 

that said.. graphics settings in games exist, and vsyncing at half your montior's framerate exists too. if you're hoping to hit high framerates, it can be assumed that you'd gladly turn down anti aliasing and shadow quality for that.

 

i would argue that if you're looking towards the higher framerate panels that you look into freesync/gsync too, that'll get rid of tearing/stutters when you are running at varying framerates.

 

all in all.. i could probably write a book on the complex 'dance' of monitor refresh rate, the preceived input latency, game framerate, and graphics settings... but the simple answer is this: always try to run your game as close to 'a multiple' of your display refresh rate as you can (so for 60Hz panel this is 30, 60, 120, 180, 240, etc. and for 144Hz this is 36, 72, 144, 288, etc.) to avoid stuttering or tearing.

most games have enough options for tweaking graphics settings to get you up in the quite high framerates if you so desire. i'm personally a fan of using vsync and double/triple buffering (essentially running at N times display refresh rate), but i'm also not into very fast paced games.

The beauty of G-Sync/freesync is that you essentially skip over the 'dance' of matching framerates, because your display will display anywhere between 70 and 144Hz for example, so you just adjust graphics settings so you're somewhere in that range, and have it be just about as smooth as a steady 144Hz.

 

Your perception of smoothness is not dependant on framerate as much as it is on smoothness. if a game is running at a "theoretical" rock solid 33.33ms per frame ("30FPS") it will appear much more smooth than a game that is constantly jumping between 16.67ms ("60FPS") and 6.94ms ("144FPS"). if we talk about enabling vsync, and stuttering caused by vsync, this is actually what happens: vsync will output a frame to the display exactly once per refresh cycle of the display (in example: 60Hz), so for example once every 16.67ms. now, if your GPU does not have a new frame ready in time, it will send out the same frame again, essentially keeping the same image on screen for twice as long as the other frames ==> a stutter.

what higher refresh rates do for you is refreshing information much more quickly, so the stutters are also much less noticeable.  if you then add Gsync/freesync into the pile, they essentially just hook the display's refresh rate into the game's framerate. the result is that it removes the noticeable stutters or tearing (which essentially 'doubles' the time certain information is on screen) and turns that into a mild variation of framerate that is overall smoother to the eye.

 

or in short.. if you get a 144Hz panel and your game doesnt get 144Hz: lower your settings.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Stefanos Lamparas said:

I also know that If you are getting fps half the monitor's refresh rate ,the monitor shows double frames, tho I don't know how the is experience in person because in a 60 hz getting 30 fps is not good at all.

if you get a "theoretical" rock solid 30FPS it's pretty nice, the issue is that usually when you're struggling to get past 30fps, it's probably also bringing along a lot of stuttery mess, and it's that stuttery mess that is extremely upsetting at such a low framerate.

getting 72fps on a 144Hz panel will theoretically be the same experience, but in practisce the stutters are much "shorter", which makes then much less upsetting. 

[Stefanos Lamparas]

Okay thank you all so much.

[Shoopman]

3 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Yup, I'm not disagreeing, I just gave a simpler explanation. 

 

19 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Tearing is not Hz nor FPS dependent.

It's just a "misplaced" frame(s). Freesync and Gsync are great for avoiding the effect.

And yeah 144+Hz is good. More noticable at higher framerate but lower also.

You gave no explanation at all lol. You just explained how screen tearing works in a way that only someone who already knows how it works would understand. Saying screen tearing happens due to "misplaced" frames to someone who has no idea what you are talking about (like OP) will be no closer to understanding what causes screen tearing without a lot of additional context, which you have not provided. On top of that, your semantics are misleading. It's true that neither Hz nor FPS are solely responsible for screen tearing, but it is both of them in conjunction that causes it. Any time your Hz is not perfectly divisible by your FPS (which is basically all the time on a 144Hz display unless you lock it), screen tearing will occur.

 

@Stefanos Lamparas To answer your original question, no, you do not need to be getting 144FPS in every game to fully utilize a 144Hz display. Any amount higher than 60 will make the game smoother, even 70fps. However, unless your display also has Gsync (Nvidia GPU) or Freesync (AMD GPU), you will experience screen tearing (which was explained in the other replies), the degree of which will vary based on your framerate and the game you are playing. Most people find this annoying so if you have the budget for it I highly recommend a Gsync/Freesync display. You won't have to worry about trying to lock your FPS or trying to adjust in-game settings so that you are always at 144 or 72. You can just play any game on any settings you want with no fuss, very nice feature to have.

 

[Nathanpete]

53 minutes ago, LawrenceBarnes2013 said:

When ur FPS dips bellow ur monitor's refresh rate u get what's called Tearing; It's when for a split second half of ur screen is still the previous frame and the other half is the next one. In general it is recommended to make sure ur GPU is pushing the needed amount of Frames per second that matches ur monitor's refresh rate. That much do know. And from personal experience i'm not quite sure if G-Sync and Free-Sync help that much. 

A) Love the profile picture, B) My experience: I just bought a radeon card and a freesync monitor, and by enabling freesync I have found what really happens is that radeon software wants to cap the FPS to whatever your monitors refresh rate is (in my case, 144 Hz) but in most games you can bypass this and run as many frames as you like. But whenever your FPS is lower than your monitor refresh rate (there is a lower bounds before it just acts like a normal monitor at a low FPS) it will actively micromanage the refreshrate so that the image stays on screen until it gets the signal to draw a new one. 

 

A 60 Hz non-adaptive-sync monitor takes .0166666 seconds to draw a screen. But if your games is running at say, 90 FPS. that means every other frame get interrupted halfway through drawing with new data. So it immediately starts drawing that data onto the screen. This causes a tear at the point of the interrupt. VSYNC will cap the game's FPS and then only allow the GPU to send out the next frame when the monitor is done with the previous one. But if you FPS suddenly dips below 60, VSYNC then caps the GPU at 30 FPS, causing a noticeable amount of extra input lag. 

 

You may have heard of monitor overclocking. Well Freesync doesn't run at a solid 144 Hz unless your game is constantly above 144 Hz. But if your game is running at say, 130 FPS, it will instantaneously downclock your monitor and keep that previous frame on screen for 1.3 milliseconds longer just so that it can start to draw the next screen from the top the moment the next frame is ready. 

 

TL;DR FreeSync/G-Sync reduces screen tearing and improves smoothness by making you monitor slows itself down to keep on the exact same FPS as your game, while VSYNC slows down the game to a fraction of your monitor's refresh rate. VSYNC reduces tearing but really increases input lag in fast paced action. Freesync/G-Sync are just better options, but you need to buy the one branded for your GPU, so FreeSync for AMD Radoen cards and G-Sync for Nvidia cards. 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Nathanpete
reduced smoothness changed to increased input latency

[Eigenvektor]

17 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Yup, I'm not disagreeing, I just gave a simpler explanation. 

Tearing depends of both - framerate and refresh rate, not either separately  ...

Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it also depends on how well refresh rate and frame rate match and how high they are. When both are high, tearing should be less noticeable, even without synchronization. If both are low and/or there's a large difference between them, then tearing will be more pronounced.

 

For example if you're running at 30 Hz/30 fps and there's fast movement, then differences between frames are probably quite large. So if your screen draws half of one frame and half of another that would be quite noticeable.

 

At 240 Hz/240 fps even fast movement should produce fairly small differences between frames. So if the time at which the monitor refreshes and the time at which the GPU swaps its buffer doesn't quite match up it's probably not going to be that visible.

 

If you have something like 30 Hz/240 fps it's essentially the same as the 30 Hz/30 fps example. You only get to see every eighth frame, so differences between frames are more visible again. Except you could now have a case where the GPU swaps its buffer multiple times during one refresh cycle of the monitor so you'd actually get multiple such artifacts.

[Tan3l6]

12 minutes ago, Shoopman said:

You gave no explanation at all lol. You just explained how screen tearing works in a way that only someone who already knows how it works would understand. Saying screen tearing happens due to "misplaced" frames to someone who has no idea what you are talking about (like OP) will be no closer to understanding what causes screen tearing without a lot of additional context, which you have not provided. On top of that, your semantics are misleading. It's true that neither Hz nor FPS are solely responsible for screen tearing, but it is both of them in conjunction that causes it. Any time your Hz is not perfectly divisible by your FPS (which is basically all the time on a 144Hz display unless you lock it), screen tearing will occur.

If you would prefer a longer explanation, maybe direct the OP to a more knowledgable source, yet I'm somewhat certain the OP did not wish for absolute truth on frame times and buffer.

Might aswell add a link to an article that explains it better - https://www.techspot.com/article/2192-screen-tearing-fix-pc-gaming/#:~:text=When vsync is turned off,frame's out of the picture.

And - https://www.techspot.com/article/1668-how-many-fps-do-you-need/

 

PS. I know what they say about assumptions, also...

[manikyath]

7 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

VSYNC reduces tearing but really reduces smoothness in fast paced action.

increases input latency.. past that, agree with your entire post.

 

oh, and last i heard you can also use freesync panels on nvidia now.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1779-freesync-and-nvidia-geforce/

[Nathanpete]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

increases input latency.. past that, agree with your entire post.

 

oh, and last i heard you can also use freesync panels on nvidia now.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1779-freesync-and-nvidia-geforce/

I'll edit it. I re-read it before I posted and thought that section wasn't exactly right, but was like fuck it they will understand.