Request: Ability to limit FPS

[XOMTOR]

Hey Dark Energy,

Would it be possible to somehow allow us to limit the framerate? I think it would go a long way to aleviating some of the GPU stress many of us are feeling. Right now, I'm getting mostly 50-60 FPS but it will dip as low as 45 in some areas and while that doesn't sound bad, having it locked and non fluctuating at 45 would be prefereable. Currently, GPU will hit 99% in some areas, temps can climb to 58-60 degrees and the fans start to become audible.

Personally, I find most platformers such as this don't require 60 FPS to feel smooth. For example, in Batman AA, I'm unable to discern any difference between 45 and 60 so I limit it to this which allows less GPU load, lower heat and less noise being generated by the GPU fans. It also means that I can crank everything to the max (16xQ AA, 16x AF etc.). Game runs great, no stuttering, temps never get above 54 degrees even after an hour of gameplay.

Similarly for Crysis 2, I'm running on extreme with a custom config to boost it even further (LOD, shadows, particles etc.) and 56 degrees is the highest recorded temp and 96% GPU usage is the highest I've reached. Again, I limit the framerate to 35 FPS and it plays and looks wonderful.

Anyway, just and idea and an option that may be useful to some.

[Fox_McCloud]

At 60 degrees you have nothing to worry about, 80 is another issue.

Yeah, it it stayed stable at 45 it would be fine. After the last patch I stay near 60 solid so I'm happy albeit at 1280x720 at lowest settings with an i5 750 with a 5770.

[Kleetus]

Originally Posted by XOMTOR

temps can climb to 58-60 degrees and the fans start to become audible.

That's actually quite cool for a GPU.

It's idling temperature for some, nothing to worry about.

[XOMTOR]

Originally Posted by Kleetus

That's actually quite cool for a GPU.

It's idling temperature for some, nothing to worry about.

Oh I agree 60 degrees isn't too bad but I do have a fairly aggressive fan profile setup in Afterburner so the GPU fans ramp up quick. Still, that's with low shadows and medium particles. I've also only gone as far as the first flooded hallway in the game; waiting for a few more patches before proceeding too much further.

Also, by itself, 60 isn't bad except that that's the highest temp I get in any game I'm currently playing and that includes Crysis 2. Now don't get me wrong, Hydrophobia is a great title (at least what little I've seen of it) but Crysis 2 is pushing around much more in the way of graphics and has way bigger/open areas with higher draw distance, real time lighting and shadowing, GI illumination, SSAO, destructible objects and environments etc. etc. etc. There's no way that this game should be more demanding on hardware than C2 unless....

Anyway, having the ability to tweak settings with an *ini or a config file for things like MaxFPS may at least help stabilize framerates until they can get things dialed in a bit. I think that playing at a stable 35 or 40 fps with all the eye candy would be preferable to a stuttering 60 with settings turned down.

[cakefish]

No need surely. This game has such poor performance I want a framerate booster!

[stillwater78]

Originally Posted by cakefish

No need surely. This game has such poor performance I want a framerate booster!

In games with poor performance, limiting the fps can actually help the game feel smoother, because one of the main things that makes a game seem jerky is an inconsistent frame rate. a steady 45 is usually more enjoyable to play than a game that fluctuates all over the place between 45 and 60

[Naznomarn]

Originally Posted by stillwater78

In games with poor performance, limiting the fps can actually help the game feel smoother, because one of the main things that makes a game seem jerky is an inconsistent frame rate. a steady 45 is usually more enjoyable to play than a game that fluctuates all over the place between 45 and 60

If you're good at noticing the difference between 45 and 60, then kudos to you. Anything above 40 is generally indistinguishable though may give you a bit of a headache if your monitor is set to below 50. Thus most run between 60 and 75.
The human brain processes images at ~20Hz, so you need at least twice that for it to appear smooth.
If it's not appearing smooth, that's because it's running below 40.

It's possible though that what you're noticing are the occasional frame that lasts more than 1/40th of a second. So it may be fluctuating to below 40fps, but only for a fraction of a second, and that may on average come out at 45fps.

As 40fps is lower than 45fps, even if it were limited to 45, you'd still notice jerks like that.

So as Cakefish so eloquently put it "I want a framerate booster". Or rather, it's those stuck frames that need smoothing out.

[samfisherand]

Originally Posted by Naznomarn

If you're good at noticing the difference between 45 and 60, then kudos to you. Anything above 40 is generally indistinguishable though may give you a bit of a headache if your monitor is set to below 50. Thus most run between 60 and 75.
The human brain processes images at ~20Hz, so you need at least twice that for it to appear smooth.
If it's not appearing smooth, that's because it's running below 40.

It's possible though that what you're noticing are the occasional frame that lasts more than 1/40th of a second. So it may be fluctuating to below 40fps, but only for a fraction of a second, and that may on average come out at 45fps.

As 40fps is lower than 45fps, even if it were limited to 45, you'd still notice jerks like that.

So as Cakefish so eloquently put it "I want a framerate booster". Or rather, it's those stuck frames that need smoothing out.

I actually can detect the difference between 45 and 60 though. I do whatever it takes to play all games to run at 60FPS, turning options off or lowering them till I get it. 45-50 just isn't smooth enough for me >.<

[Leak]

Originally Posted by Naznomarn

If you're good at noticing the difference between 45 and 60, then kudos to you.

Actually, since that 45 means "45FPS when the screen is set to 60Hz" you'll get noticable judder on all bigger movement - think of a camera pan left to right: half the images will be shown twice as long as the others (2 vs 1 frames).

Maybe Americans are trained to notice that less thanks to the 2:1 pulldown used on 60Hz TV for 24 FPS movies?

[XOMTOR]

Originally Posted by Leak

Actually, since that 45 means "45FPS when the screen is set to 60Hz" you'll get noticable judder on all bigger movement

Except some games use motion blur to smooth that out and make it essentially unnoticeable. Crysis is eminently playable at low framerates as a result; good thing because almost nobody gets to play it at 60 FPS.

To illustrate your point though, I find COD is juddery at anything below 60 with fast camera movements. COD is also a twitchy game so fast movements are the norm. But I find CODs to be crap games so I don't care.

[stillwater78]

Originally Posted by Naznomarn

If you're good at noticing the difference between 45 and 60, then kudos to you. Anything above 40 is generally indistinguishable though may give you a bit of a headache if your monitor is set to below 50. Thus most run between 60 and 75.
The human brain processes images at ~20Hz, so you need at least twice that for it to appear smooth.
If it's not appearing smooth, that's because it's running below 40.

It's possible though that what you're noticing are the occasional frame that lasts more than 1/40th of a second. So it may be fluctuating to below 40fps, but only for a fraction of a second, and that may on average come out at 45fps.

As 40fps is lower than 45fps, even if it were limited to 45, you'd still notice jerks like that.

So as Cakefish so eloquently put it "I want a framerate booster". Or rather, it's those stuck frames that need smoothing out.

I don't want to get into an argument here, but "anything above 40 is generally indistinguishable" is simply a myth. Maybe it holds true for a sizeable part of the population, but it definitely doesn't hold true for many others, like me.

I can notice the difference between 60 and 55. Often I'll play at a constant 60, and I'll notice a slight lag in framerate - I'll look down to my fraps monitor on my keyboard and yep, it confirms that it dipped below 60 to 55 or so for a frame or two (and it was a brief dip, so I highly doubt it went below 40)

Personally, I'd prefer not to notice fluctuations at such high framerates, because they're distracting. But I do notice them.

The brain doesn't work in frames or Hz. We see the world continuously - there's no such thing as a still image or a frame in the real world - just a continously moving picture. I actually read an article once that suggested that for your brain to REALLY be 100% 'fooled' by a frame-by-frame picture to the point where it treated it just as if it really were a truly continuously moving image, it might actually require an fps of 4,000 or more. So this 20Hz approximation of yours is just that: an approximation. It may be an accurate enough approximation to describe your eyes, but it isn't for mine.

I don't mean to be rude, but it really jaratees me off that people like me can't ever start a discussion about high fps on this forum without someone coming in to start telling us what we can and can't see, and insisting that they know more about your eyesight than you do. It happens just about every single damn time, and it gets old real quick.

Though usually people just flat out call you ignorant or a liar, or some kind of graphics ♥♥♥♥♥ who's obsessed with a high fps just for the sake of bragging rights. Whereas you were quite polite about it. So thankyou for that, and sorry for getting so defensive about it. But yeah, let's try and keep the thread on-topic (ie. fps in Hydrophobia)

@XOMTOR: Yeah, I LOVE the motion blur in Crysis. Makes it feel pretty smooth almost no matter what the FPS is. I really wish more games used it, but few games implement it as well as Crysis does. Either it's too subtle (eg. Half Life 2), or it looks like rubbish (eg. Alpha Protocol), or it makes the mouse movements juddery as it tries to calculate the blur for each frame (eg. Half Life 2 if you jack up the motion blur in the console).

[Kleetus]

Originally Posted by Naznomarn

Anything above 40 is generally indistinguishable

Maybe for you, but plenty of people notice the difference.

And the frame-rate is also linked to input responsiveness.