FPS and refresh rate

I start an article in which the idea to be transmitted is frankly clear and in the same way complex when it is translated into an explanatory text. So I’m going to try it, hoping the road will not take me to the lion’s den. It is about explaining the heres on the screen and its almost obligatory relationship with the FPS so that the whole is well taken advantage of.

And is that it is a question that especially assaults users when to get a monitor is involved. Between the stickers appears the reference to the hertz with which the monitor or screen is able to work , a figure that does not have to see (now we will qualify it) with the FPS to which some games work.

First of all we are going to determine what we are talking about when we refer to the refresh rate in hertz of a screen. With this specification we refer to the speed, or number of times per second that the screen is updated , which appears measured in Hertz. For example, a TV or monitor at 60hz, you can display 60 frames in a second, a 120hz can display 120 frames in a second.

On the other hand the FPS (Frames per Second) refer to the speed with which the frames are displayed on the screen . To give life to the image, what we see is a succession of that, of images, in the same way that when we were little we would draw something on the different pages of a notebook and then give it life.

Normally the games work at 30 or 60fps, which means that in a second 30 (or 60) different images are displayed on the screen to achieve the sensation of movement . The higher the frame rate, the more fluid the scene will be and that’s why the games look better when they go to 60 FPS.

In theory, having a higher refresh rate is always more interesting. Hence, we see gaming monitors prepared to work at 144 Hz and even some top range dare and reach 240 Hz . But keep in mind that optimal performance also brings into play the FPS and the relationship with hertz .

To put ourselves in situation, let’s think if for example we use a monitor that works at 120 Hz with a game that runs at 60fps . The console or the PC is sending a signal that offers 60 frames per second to the monitor, which, we remember, has a refresh rate of 120 Hz. This translates into twice the speed, so to alleviate that difference, the screen will pull a resource such as Interpolation (repeat the same frame in this case twice or four if the monitor is running at 240 Hz).

This solution what it does is that it can generate stuttering , a kind of flicker on the screen that can be quite annoying. This can occur if the monitor does not have the ability to synchronize with the graph that sends the game signal.