What are Frame Times?
What are those pesky frame times anyway? Well, this is a short video to help you understand, and why you should care.
GN Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ehmETMOmw
Everyone understands FPS – how many frames are displayed in a second, and more is better. But like Scott Wasson and Steve from Gamers Nexus explained in a video that I’ll link below, FPS isn’t a linear scale, so while more is better, the more you get, the less “better” it gets.
This video though is really just to explain what a frame time is, and give it a definition everyone can understand. If, at the end of this video you are interested in learning more, then let me know in the comments and I’ll make a more in depth video about how it all works – even if that sort of thing is probably best reserved for a Computerphile video…
So, what are frame times? Well, it’s a unit of measurement, measured normally in milliseconds, and it really does what it says on the tin, it’s how many milliseconds it takes for one frame to render. The way your monitor works is that a series of still images are displayed one after another, and in most people’s cases, that’s happening 60 times a second – or 60Hz. That means that for a standard – non adaptive sync – display, each frame is being displayed every 16.7ms.
That 16.7ms may not be how long your PC is actually taking to render the frame – but that’s a topic for another video. Let’s pretend that your PC is rendering every single frame at 16.7ms, that means that from the millisecond that one frame is done, the timer starts and the PC gets to rendering the next one. As soon as that frame is ready to be displayed, the timer stops and you’ve got your frame time for that frame.
Really, frame times are just the stopwatch for how quickly each frame can be rendered, with the quicker it can do it, the smoother and more enjoyable the experience is. The problems come when frames take too long to render. This could be every frame – in which case you’d see a low FPS value and that’s likely just because your PC or console can’t handle the game it’s trying to play, but the more hidden problem is when only one or two frames take too long. In this case, you’ll likely see your FPS is still reporting as fine – nice and high – but your experience is awful as it feels like you’re getting a much lower FPS than you are. That’s because of those one or two frames that are taking much longer to render than the rest – and that’s called stuttering.
Stuttering generally doesn’t show up on FPS results, because FPS – frames PER SECOND, is an average, whereas when you record frame times, you can get graphs like this where you can see the massive spikes that mean the game feels like it’s playing at 15FPS despite an “average” of 120.
With that said though, I think I’m going to leave it there for this video, as I said if you want more info on frame times and how your PC actually goes about rendering a frame, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to get an easy to understand video out.
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Disclaimer:
TechteamGB assumes no liability for damage, misuse or misunderstanding of the information contained in this video. Use this information at your own risk. TechteamGB cannot guarantee any particular result from the information contained in this video, and all information was presented as correct as of filming. TechteamGB accepts no liability for information being proven incorrect after the creation of the video, and all information should be taken as opinion and guidance, not fact. This video was not sponsored by anyone, and TechteamGB does not accept monetary – or non-monetary – benefits to alter opinions or results.
