How much FPS do you ACTUALLY NEED?
The question us PC Master Race folks often ask ourselves is, just how much FPS do I really need? Can I really justify the extra £100, £200 on this better graphics card just for 10 or 20 extra FPS in my favourite games? Well, I thought I’d put that to the test.
Now, this isn’t a perfect test for a whole lot of reasons, namely, I only have a 144hz monitor to play with here, rather than what has become the “gold standard” at 240. With that said, it’s a blind test so until we had completed all the testing, I didn’t know any of the results.
Right, so what’s the test then. Well, to set a baseline, and prove the haters wrong, I’m testing 30 FPS, 60, and 144, using AMD’s Radeon Chill (Frame Rate Target Control, really) to fix the FPS in CS:GO at one of those frame rates. Or, more specifically, my partner is, while I look away. I then play the game and make a guess at what FPS I’m at, to see if there is a noticeable difference between the three.
The long story short here is, once you go 144, you can never go back. I actually got 60 mixed up with 30 after having done 144 first, as the gap between 60 and 144 is incredibly, incredibly noticeable. And 30, well I refused to even play…
So, now we know that, what about a more reasonable test, say, 100, 120, and 144? Well that gets interesting. Since the gap is a lot smaller, especially when you realise that in terms of frame times, not frames per second, 100 equates to a frame time of 10ms, 120 is 8.3, and 144 is 6.9, so an ever decreasing difference in time between them.
We ran the test multiple times to confirm the results, but here it is. I couldn’t reliably guess between the three. I guessed a couple right, and tricked myself out of guessing correctly once or twice, but not solidly. Not for sure. When tallying kills and deaths between the rounds, the averaged results speak for themselves. There was no major difference in gameplay performance between them, and while at times it did feel a little smoother, or jerky, it wasn’t the game ruining experience that 30FPS was for me.
Now that’s not to say that more FPS, higher refresh rates, and everything else like it, isn’t better to have more of, it definitely is, and maybe you can tell the difference between what I’ve tested here, but for the average gamer like me, this should give you an idea of how worth it it may be to spend your extra cash on better components specifically for extra FPS. Of course, there are plenty of other factors to take into consideration, but I hope this video is helpful in understanding at least one of them.
