Food for thought: refresh rate accuracy

[Mira Yurizaki]

There was a music sim game I used to play which, for whatever reason, had its timing based around how many frames a note has passed the line. However, for some reason the game referenced 59.95 Hz for timing and used the monitor as the reference for this (yes it really does this, the game will speed up if I play it at 144 Hz). The game also does a reference check so you can see how accurate the monitor is to the timing it wants. The first time I played this game, my monitor had a swing of about +/- 0.1 to +/- 0.05 Hz. I thought nothing of it and went on my merry way because I could still play decently well. However I recently got back into it and with my current monitor. This time the refresh rate swing is +/- 0.001Hz, or effectively on 59.95 Hz. Somehow I'm getting much better results, despite not playing this game for a few years.

 

This is making me wonder about if the timing accuracy of a monitor's refresh rate can have an impact on higher level gaming.

 

Or maybe I'm having a placebo effect thing here.

[ARikozuM]

If your question is "can engines be influenced by refresh rate", then yes. Some games do need to keep their frames within a certain range, not counting Skyrim since Bethesda only made one part of the engine work like that. I remember playing an old game, Magic Carpet, where the CPU clock had to be locked to a certain frequency for best results, but 600MHz isn't doable on modern chips. I could try playing the game as well if you'd like me to check and add my two cents.

[Mira Yurizaki]

27 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

If your question is "can engines be influenced by refresh rate", then yes. Some games do need to keep their frames within a certain range, not counting Skyrim since Bethesda only made one part of the engine work like that. I remember playing an old game, Magic Carpet, where the CPU clock had to be locked to a certain frequency for best results, but 600MHz isn't doable on modern chips. I could try playing the game as well if you'd like me to check and add my two cents.

Well not just that the game's timing is based on the monitor's timing, but if the monitor's refresh rate is inconsistent, it can produce inconsistent results that accumulate over time.

 

I know some players are able to do frame-perfect actions. If the monitor's refresh rate isn't accurate, then it may mess up the timing on that part because they were were just on the edge of where the 16.667 ms mark should've been.