Refresh Rate vs Frame Rate: Which is More Important for Gaming?

It is one of those questions that many users ask themselves, but the reality is that in terms of FPS and Hz, although they are related, they do not go hand in hand in the vast majority of occasions. We are used to talking about adaptive synchronization, what if G-SYNC and FreeSync and a long etc, but the vast majority of low budget players who are competitive use FPS rates almost 5 times higher than the refresh rate of their monitor, ¿ is it useful or a fake?

From time immemorial and especially since before the launch of G-SYNC and even the V-SYNC with triple buffering, many of us were already playing with what there was, that is, V-SYNC OFF and graphic settings to a minimum.

Refresh Rate vs Frame Rate

The objective was to achieve the highest FPS rate above or well above the refresh rate of the monitor, although for this we suffered some problems such as Tearing, but then why is this practice still in force?

FPS vs Hz: the eternal discussion we will try comes to an end

Stuttering-vs-tearing

There are only three reasons why the FPS rate will exceed the Hz rate of a gaming monitor, where in any case we are talking about very disparate figures between the two concepts. For this we start from the base that in all hypothetical configurations we will use V-SYNC OFF in the control panels of NVIDIA and AMD, as well as in any available game.

Input lag minimized

It is not a secret that a higher FPS rate achieves a lower input lag. Not surprisingly, the industry struggles to promote the implementation of ever faster panels in terms of Hz.

Having an FPS rate of 300 assumes a render time of 3.33 ms , while 144 FPS results in 6.94 ms and in the case of 60 FPS 16.67 ms . These times mean that it will take less time for the graphics card to produce a full frame as more of these achieve completion per unit of time.

It may not seem like much if we compare 16.67 ms against 6.94 or even 3.33 ms, but reality shows that in trained eyes it is an abysmal difference on the screen, even in 60 Hz.

Frames above the Hz rate are visible

Many do not understand that exceeding a monitor’s Hz rate for FPS has a partially positive result. It is true that with V-SYNC OFF we will have tearing, but this will curiously palliate the greater the difference between the so-called Refresh Rate and the Frame Rate.

The important thing here is to understand that an FPS rate above a Hz rate will always affect the total or partial display of many of those FPS that are “above” their corresponding Hz.

That is to say, in a refresh cycle of the monitor several different frames can be represented, which to the human eye will mean greater smoothness. At higher FPS rate more frames in each refresh cycle and although many will end in tearing because they will coincide between refresh rate and next refresh cycle, this tearing will become more and more priceless as the performance of the GPU increases for obvious reasons.

Less tearing, but also less stuttering

It is another of the curious points of these settings, but the reality is that if we have 300 FPS on a 60 Hz monitor with V-SYNC Off, what we will see on the screen are very small tearing lines from what was previously commented and a stuttering that It will be negligible if not null.

And this is possible because there are fewer harmonic frequency effects between the frame rate and the refresh rate. Therefore, the difference between the two will imply a gradual improvement the more distance is put between them, as in the previous example of 300 FPS vs 60 Hz or similar.

Obviously this is not ideal. The ideal is to have 300 FPS at 300 Hz with VRR on a gaming monitor, but it is not easy to achieve, neither economically nor in terms of hardware in many cases, therefore, this V-SYNC Off technique is still used by the least wealthy.