How low can you go? (Framerates)

[legendarytomuk]

Purely out of interest, what is the minimum frame rate that you'll play a game at? Whilst this applies mostly to PC gamers as we quite often have to tweak and compromise to get something we'd consider acceptably playable, I imagine it can apply console gamers to, thanks to shoddy ports, or perhaps you insist on a perceptual 60Fps for all shooters? I would make this as a poll, but it does vary on the genre you play, an example being that I'm currently playing The Witcher 2, and I've decided to let the frame rate drop into the 20s occasionally in return for having the settings on ultra. Whilst if I'm playing something a little faster paced I may do my best to keep at sixty. How low will you let it go?

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I don't really know. With my computer, it's very rarely an issue.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

For first person games I won't play below 20fps. For other games, like puzzles and strategy, as long as it's reasonably playable, I'll go down to whatever. My rig is pretty awesome though, so there aren't many games that can knock me below 30.

 

[Fanta Grape]

I don't check framerates and I can't tell by eye but I'd say pretty damn low.. I use a mac so... yeah... Bulletstorm is one of the worst things that I've ever tried to port into a mac...

 

[gewata]

The processor on my laptop is kinda shite so I play League of Legends, a fast pased online 5v5 game where a single decision or wrong click can affect the outcome of the game, with an average framerate of about 10. Less when everyone is in the same area, which happens a lot.
Surprisingly, I can actually play like that.

And yes, I am getting a new laptop very soon.

 

[ZeZZZZevy]

I haven't had a whole lot of problems with framerates (console gamer) but I do play League of Legends and I have to say it gets unplayable when:

a) my input is completely lost on my character (by god I'm going to walk into that cluster of enemies and not do anything. That's what you wanted me to do right? RIGHT?)

b) input is recognized more than a couple seconds later. What I wanted to do 3 seconds ago may not be the same thing I want to do now, and mixing the two often results in being cut in half and called a retard by my less-than-understanding teammates.

sometimes I really wish I had a gaming desktop/laptop and a solid internet connection that doesn't rely on shoddy software that likes to turn itself off for fun.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

For fast-paced stuff where it makes a difference like Burnout Paradise, nothing but 60 fps will do, although it's trivial to get 60 fps in that game maxed out these days. Same with competitive stuff, ideally, even if I suck at it, because there's no need to go and give myself an even bigger disadvantage on top of just being terrible at the game. For less twitchy single-player or co-op games, 30 fps is good enough, though. That was fine for Just Cause 2, which let me turn most of the settings up all the way or almost all the way even at 1920x1200, and it's an easy enough game that pretty was worth it over fast. Below 30 and I start to notice it being jerky, which gets kind of irritating. V-sync must be on at all times, however, because screen tearing just grates on me.

Edit: And I suppose with v-sync on, that means 30 really is a hard limit for me, because the next step down from that on a 60 Hz monitor would be 20, which is intolerable. Heh.

 

[Bearjing]

A little under 30. I only look at the fps counter if i notice it being low, so anything about 28 i never notice anything bad.

 

[Irriduccibilli]

I'm used to my shit computer right now, so I can live with only having 20FPS, but it still annoys me. I just bought Withcer 2 and it can only run it with 15FPS max on the lowest settings, I cant live with that, it's really choppy, but in three days i'm going to order the parts for my brand new PC
Cooler Master Haf X
Corsair HX 850W PSU
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, Socket-AM3
Corsair Vengeance? DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 1536MB PhysX CUDA
Western Digital Caviar® Blue 1TB x 2

Booyaka

 

[erbkaiser]

It really depends on the game. I have games where I drop to 15F/S or below and it doesn't bother me (adventure, simulation), but in other games (racing, First Person Shooters and the like) anything below 30F/S is noticably irritating and I prefer to have it at 60F/S. Higher is not worth it since my monitors don't go beyond it.

I seldom enable the counter or use Fraps, since once I see it I can't help but try to get it up to the detriment of gameplay.

 

[legendarytomuk]

I'm used to my shit computer right now, so I can live with only having 20FPS, but it still annoys me. I just bought Withcer 2 and it can only run it with 15FPS max on the lowest settings, I cant live with that, it's really choppy, but in three days i'm going to order the parts for my brand new PC
Cooler Master Haf X
Corsair HX 850W PSU
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, Socket-AM3
Corsair Vengeance? DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 1536MB PhysX CUDA
Western Digital Caviar® Blue 1TB x 2

Booyaka

I should actually say, I dunno how old your PC is but when I first bought The Witcher 2 it played horribly, my spec is:

AMD Athlon X2 235e
4Gb 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM
XFX AMD 4890 (870Mhz)

What I've done until I get a new processor is to create a new partition on my hard drive, put a fresh install of Windows on it and then bought a 1TB external hard drive (that weirdly has higher Read/Write speeds than my internal) and used that to play games on, even after fiddling around with msconfig I still had loads of useless processes going on in the background, the fresh install is as clean as a whistle and I now have a perfectly playable framerate. You might like to do it until your new parts arrive.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Played Warhammer Online at 10 fps during huge RvR battles, as did everybody else involved.

It was only bearable up to a point, until they fixed their game it was too late.

 

[uttaku]

bah pansy's untill you've played a game on 5 fps you know nothing, oh and the game dwarf fortress

 

[Irriduccibilli]

I'm used to my shit computer right now, so I can live with only having 20FPS, but it still annoys me. I just bought Withcer 2 and it can only run it with 15FPS max on the lowest settings, I cant live with that, it's really choppy, but in three days i'm going to order the parts for my brand new PC
Cooler Master Haf X
Corsair HX 850W PSU
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, Socket-AM3
Corsair Vengeance? DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 1536MB PhysX CUDA
Western Digital Caviar® Blue 1TB x 2

Booyaka
(Theese specs are the one for my new PC, not my old)

I should actually say, I dunno how old your PC is but when I first bought The Witcher 2 it played horribly, my spec is:

AMD Athlon X2 235e
4Gb 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM
XFX AMD 4890 (870Mhz)

What I've done until I get a new processor is to create a new partition on my hard drive, put a fresh install of Windows on it and then bought a 1TB external hard drive (that weirdly has higher Read/Write speeds than my internal) and used that to play games on, even after fiddling around with msconfig I still had loads of useless processes going on in the background, the fresh install is as clean as a whistle and I now have a perfectly playable framerate. You might like to do it until your new parts arrive.

It's such a pain, I really want to play the game, and I can see Geralt's smirk on my shelf taunting me *Throws the game into closet* How'd you like that?

 

[Kal-V3]

I'm used to my shit computer right now, so I can live with only having 20FPS, but it still annoys me. I just bought Withcer 2 and it can only run it with 15FPS max on the lowest settings, I cant live with that, it's really choppy, but in three days i'm going to order the parts for my brand new PC
Cooler Master Haf X
Corsair HX 850W PSU
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, Socket-AM3
Corsair Vengeance? DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 1536MB PhysX CUDA
Western Digital Caviar® Blue 1TB x 2

Booyaka
(Theese specs are the one for my new PC, not my old)

I should actually say, I dunno how old your PC is but when I first bought The Witcher 2 it played horribly, my spec is:

AMD Athlon X2 235e
4Gb 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM
XFX AMD 4890 (870Mhz)

What I've done until I get a new processor is to create a new partition on my hard drive, put a fresh install of Windows on it and then bought a 1TB external hard drive (that weirdly has higher Read/Write speeds than my internal) and used that to play games on, even after fiddling around with msconfig I still had loads of useless processes going on in the background, the fresh install is as clean as a whistle and I now have a perfectly playable framerate. You might like to do it until your new parts arrive.

It's such a pain, I really want to play the game, and I can see Geralt's smirk on my shelf taunting me *Throws the game into closet* How'd you like that?

30fps for me, maybe 25. Witcher 2 is a bit of a hog but look at what you're getting. My specs are:
AMD 3Xcore @2.7Ghz
4GB 1600 DDR3 RAM
ATI HD6850 1GB GDDDR5
and i'm running on MED. settings. at 30fps and under when things get hectic...pretty crazy if you ask me. Must upgrade soon.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

What really bothers me is screen tearing. I hate screen tearing with a passion, I hate it so much. I cannot describe how much I hate screen tearing. If a game is tearing on me for a long time, then I will drop it no matter how good the rest of the game seems to be.

That was me for a while, until I discovered what is soon to be your new best friend: D3DOverrider. It works with every Direct3D game I've ever tried it with, even ones that don't have in-game v-sync settings and don't work with the ATI/Nvidia control panels to force settings. It's part of RivaTuner, but you don't need to install/use any of the other components to use it. All it does is run in the background and override Direct3D's values in memory for whether v-sync and/or triple buffering should be enabled for whatever games/programs you tell it to, or globally if you're lazy. It changed The Witcher, which had some of the worst tearing I'd ever seen, from "ARGH MY EYES" into one of my favorite games ever in a couple clicks.

 

[Griffolion]

Purely out of interest, what is the minimum frame rate that you'll play a game at? Whilst this applies mostly to PC gamers as we quite often have to tweak and compromise to get something we'd consider acceptably playable, I imagine it can apply console gamers to, thanks to shoddy ports, or perhaps you insist on a perceptual 60Fps for all shooters? I would make this as a poll, but it does vary on the genre you play, an example being that I'm currently playing The Witcher 2, and I've decided to let the frame rate drop into the 20s occasionally in return for having the settings on ultra. Whilst if I'm playing something a little faster paced I may do my best to keep at sixty. How low will you let it go?

30 is the absolute minimum, below that and you will visibly notice stuttering/choppiness. For more trained eyes, or those used to consistently higher framerates, you may be able to tell up to 40 and maybe 50 frames. 60FPS is the maximum the human eye can realistically tell. Some may be able to do more, but they are rare.

 

[Zantos]

I won't go below 40 or above 90. I'd rather have it on low but running smoothly though.