It's Hard To Go Back To Sub-60 FPS Gaming

Kotaku - On today’s Kotaku Splitscreen, we’re talking about noir games, how to get your husband into The Witcher 3, PC vs. consoles, and much much more.

[bluefox755]

It really is. I can tolerate it, but it's just not as good. Some games use graphical trickery to make 30 feel smoother, but even then it's just not the same.

[zb1ftw777]

It's not trickery. It's frame latency aka microstutter.

Consoles in general deliver a very consistent 30fps with little or no microstuttering. It's because they are optimised as such.

PC games suffer from this due to background applications running and accessing the hard drive amongst other things.

A very smooth and consistent 30fps is much more preferable than 120fps with lots of microstutter.

It's very noticeable in driving games when you turn very sharply. Even top end PC rigs still suffer from microstutter and it's very easy to create with a simple sharp turn in any driving game.

[kevnb]

What you are talking about is frame pacing issues, for the most part if your hardware is up to the task and your graphics aren’t set too high you will see even frame pacing in pc games. Console games often have terrible frame pacing and sub 30 FPS, just watch a few df videos. In the past amd video cards always had much worse frame pacing then nvidia cards, these days it’s usually pretty good on both camps. You can see how cards do by looking at fcat benchmarks found in most reviews. Now what some people find is that capping to 30 FPS on pc can cause bad frame pacing depending on how you do it, but with a little research it can be done just like on console.

[zb1ftw777]

No kevnb i am not taking about frame pacing.

Even with frame rate drops and no microstutter the experience is still smooth.

Research frame latency. The PC is notorious for micro freezing when background apps run and access the harddrive or rebuffer the memory.

Frame rate and frame drops have nothing to do with microstuttering.

[kevnb]

Bad frame pacing is stutter, I suggest looking into it. You could have frame rate drops and still have decent frame pacing, again research it and you will understand it a whole lot better. For examples of bad frame pacing in console games just check out df, there are stuttering console games released all the time.

[Razzer]

"A very smooth and consistent 30fps is much more preferable than 120fps with lots of microstutter."

Most PC games allow the user to lock fps some as granular as increments of 10. If a PC can achieve 120 fps then it can perform even better and more smoothly when set to 60 fps. Either way it beats the shit out of any console. Period.

If you think consoles are immune to slowdowns/stuttering then you are just kidding yourself.

[bluefox755]

I was talking about things motion blur in games like Uncharted 4. Really smooths out the camera movements. Furthermore, I rarely have problems with microstuttering, and my rig isn't really "top end" I'll take 60fps over 30fps any day.

[chris235]

it is also nigh impossible to go back to sub-resolution games, but still the switch is a thing. what does this mean for this article and the overall bias that's behind gamer's mindsets? ;-) if resolution is not relevant for gaming, like the knights in shining nintendo armor don't get tired to preach, then of course subpar framerates aren't either ;-)

[Razzer]

Bullshit. I will turn down resolution in favor of frame rates on my PC in a heartbeat.

But you are just trying to turn this into an anti-Switch rant. You really have no clue what you are talking about.

[JOHN_DOH]

If your graphics card cant put out your monitor's native resolution it's time to upgrade. PC monitors don't upscale so it;s usually best to stick with native res. If you are having frame rate problems adjust graphical setting. Obviously having higher fps is preferable but as long as the frame rate is stable it doesn't matter unless it is sub 30 fps. If you lock fps it just means that it won't let fps go above whatever you lock it at. Locking fps doesn't mean it won't drop below. (it's used for screen tearing) Frame drops is impossible to avoid. Games like call of duty have no problems running 60 fps without drops because they can hit 200+fps (in benchmarks)

[Razzer]

I’m usually happy if i can keep my rates in the 50s. Every time I start a game I start at the highest 4k settings and then start adjusting down. I use a 43” TV as a monitor so I do get some upscaling.

[Ittoittosai]

I play my classic console collection all the time, in games and video where I have an options I choose 30, 60fps looks like fast forward everything move unnaturally fast and just looks off to me. Having had a chance to choose I choose 30 every time. Plus then its a cheaper price tag anyway in the over all scheme.

[kevnb]

Most really old 2d games are 60fps, many early 3D games are much less and have physics tied to frame rate though.

[Ittoittosai]

No there not EU titles were 50fps sometimes 30.

[kevnb]

most of the world isnt the Eu

[The_Sage]

I may be alone in saying this, but I hate 60fps. It gives everything a cheap soap opera look and feel. I'll be very disappointed if we ever go to that as a standard. At that point I'll have to start looking into 2 2 pulldown and spend a bunch of money so movies tv and games don't look like crap.

[BrettAwesome]

I have a penis. Mine is better than yours! True story right there

[TheOttomatic91]

Konami eh? That explains alot

[Razzer]

Konami? You mean Kotaku?

[TheOttomatic91]

Lol yep messed that one up and the edit button isn’t popping up for that reason.

[mastershredder]

I sure am glad that the users on N4g know so much about this stuff. So good to have really bad wild-ass-guesses/pull-it-out-o f-my-ass-read-it-somewhere-onli ne descriptions for things. Quick someone call HR! We need to hire these guys stat!