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Study Shows Gamers At High FPS Have Better Kill-To-Death Ratios In Battle Royale Games (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Gaming enthusiasts and pro-gamers have believed for a long time that playing on high refresh rates displays with high frame rates offers a competitive edge in fast-action games like PUBG, Fortnite and Apex Legends. The premise is, the faster the display can update the action for you, every millisecond saved will count when it comes to tracking targets and reaction times. This sounds logical but there's never been specific data tabulated to back this theory up and prove it. NVIDIA, however, just took it upon themselves with the use of their GeForce Experience tool, to compile anonymous data on gamers by hours played per week, panel refresh rate and graphics card type. Though obviously this data speaks to only NVIDIA GPU users, the numbers do speak for themselves.

The more powerful the GPU with a higher frame rate, along with higher panel refresh rate, generally speaking, the higher the kill-to-death ratio (K/D) for the gamers that were profiled. In fact, it really didn't matter hour many hours per week were played. Casual gamers and heavy-duty daily players alike could see anywhere from about a 50 to 150 percent increase in K/D ratio for significantly better overall player performance. It should be underscored that it really doesn't matter what GPU is at play; gamers with AMD graphics cards that can push high frame rates at 1080p or similar can see similar K/D gains. However, the new performance sweet spot seems to be as close to 144Hz/144FPS as your system can push, the better off you'll be and the higher the frame rate and refresh rate the better as well.

149 comments

  1. Correlation Causation by Bourdain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Could it perhaps be that those with more expensive rigs are just more serious gamers who play more and are thus more skilled?

    Further, the headline had me scratching my head for a moment as I wasn't sure if it were people who were high playing a FPS...

  2. IgNobel by nazsco · · Score: 1

    I truly hope they win the IgNobel

  3. Common Sense by foxalopex · · Score: 1

    Umm maybe that's because you can't kill what you can't see? Realistically thou of course there's an upper limit because at some rate the screen is changing faster than it is humanly possible to see.

    1. Re: Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not true. It's the first time you see each piece of relevant visual information that's vital, not the fact that it updates quickly.

    2. Re: Common Sense by Luthair · · Score: 2

      At a certain point the difference is dominated by your reaction speed, network latency, etc.

    3. Re: Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unfortunatedly update speed directly translates to "delay" 60hz display has 16ms delay... 1000hz has 1ms on top of this theres also possibility of delays of image processing
      and what not hardware stuff...
      24hz display is already horrible for games... yet enough for "moving picture" like movies... atleast when we have accustomed to it... theres even evidence that flicker sensitivity is different in americans&europeans, and it has to do with getting used to ones lightning systems mains voltage hz

    4. Re:Common Sense by gweihir · · Score: 0

      That speed is at 24 FPS for most of the population. That is why that is frame-rate used by quality movies. You know, the classical stuff on celluloid.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re: Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somewhere between 120 and 144 Hz/FPS is where you subconsciously stop blinking. Your eyes might start bleeding after five hours of gaming but your brain can definitely process visual data at that rate.

    6. Re:Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      24 FPS is the point at which most people accept motion content as being real rather than a series of jerky images. It's not the point at which visual data stops being perceived by the retina or brain.

      In 2014, MIT found that humans can perceive and react to events that happen in as little as 13 ms. That's about 76 FPS. (Naturally it takes the brain hundreds of milliseconds to execute that reaction, but the event itself is perceptible and starts the chain)

      What kind of events are we talking about? Suppose a rocket flies from left to right on the screen in 13 ms. You'd want a frame that shows the rocket being on the left side of the screen, which is time period that only lasts 6-7 ms. You'd want a frame that shows the rocket being on the right side of the screen, again, 6-7 ms.

      But to reliably capture events that are only 6-7 ms long, like the rocket being on the left side of the screen, you really need to sample at twice that speed. Otherwise you might entirely miss rendering the time span where the rocket is on the left side. So there's some use for having time spans as low as 3 ms.

      That works out to about 300 FPS. Above that point we can be fairly certain that the flash of an event happening won't impact the human visual system, but below that rate a human is likely to see the flash of a thing moving, at some reflexive level, and duck/move the mouse.

      We should consider issues like temporal aliasing on curved movements. How many frames does it take to know what the curve of a moving target is and move towards railgunning him? Three, four? Smooth movement is baked into our brains. Baseball players have to be able to estimate the curve of a fastball in under 200 ms. If that baseball player were instead seeing an aliased set of only four frames of the fastball moving towards him do you suppose that might reduce his performance?

    7. Re:Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Those same movies open and close the shutter three times per frame so that the flicker is difficult to see. This shows that 24Hz and 48Hz are completely inadequate or they would have used one of those instead.

      The reason movie frame rates were so low is that film was expensive. The reason movie frame rates are so low today is a combination of nostalgia, ignorance, and the fact that the low frame rate is useful for masking bad cinematography, choreography, and acting.

    8. Re:Common Sense by DamnOregonian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're telling me with a straight face that 24FPS is smooth, I'm forced to conclude one of a few things.
      Either you have simply never seen a higher framerate newscast,
      Your brain somehow can't pick up the difference,
      Or you're just fucking lying.

      Given that the 24FPS of celluloid wasn't in any way the "most a person can notice" but a tradeoff between the cost of the celluloid and "smooth enough", I'm going with the latter. You act like you've got skin in the game... You one of those nVidia haters?

    9. Re:Common Sense by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      That's not true. 24fps became standardized because it was the slowest frame rate at which mouth movements didn't get garbled (note that the cinema standard was 18fps before talkies.)

      If you've bought a TV lately you'll note that most suffer from a bug called "soap opera effect" whereby their attempts to show 24fps look terrible because a small insect known as a "Marketing Executive" corrupted the TV's spec and inserted a line about "motion smoothing", something that wasn't noticed until long after the TV was designed, built, and sold to an unwitting customer.

      Soap opera effect - where a TV extrapolates the in-between frames of 24fps content to product 60fps content - is noticeable, and wouldn't be if the people could only see in 24fps.

      60fps is getting close to the high end of where you think you see perfectly smooth movement, but it isn't the limit. VR systems like the Vive use 90Hz, for example.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    10. Re:Common Sense by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      That speed is at 24 FPS for most of the population.

      You clearly have no idea. In movies at 24FPS a single frame is usually made up of an exposure with sufficient motion blur that all information between the current frame and the next frame is captured. It looks smoother many thanks to the blurryness, but even that has a limit and typical bright scene where shorter exposures are necessary show jerky movements especially during camera panning which is precisely why high framerate movies are a thing.

      That is why that is frame-rate used by quality movies.

      No. No it is not.

    11. Re:Common Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF are you on dude? this piece is nothing but marketing. now if you excuse me I need to go buy better graphic hw and a 4k display

  4. Alternative explanation by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps players who invest more in hardware (higher FPS players) are more dedicated than average (lower FPS) players, and their better stats are explained by their time spent, experience, and skill. This is obvious, and I bet NVIDIA didn't control for it in any statistically scientific way.

    Is anyone actually surprised that a gaming hardware manufacturer says that better/newer/more expensive gaming hardware makes gamers better at games? You know they cherry-picked stats in an obvious way, right? This is marketing, not news.

    --
    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
    1. Re:Alternative explanation by Durrik · · Score: 1

      Could it also be that the data is from Nvidia and gathered anonymous from their GeForce Experience and is completely false?

      It's strange that a company that makes money selling high end video cards gets a result saying 'buy more high end video cards if you want to win'.

      I can't trust the data provided by such a vested party, concluding something that has a high monetary reward to them.

      --
      Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
    2. Re:Alternative explanation by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      It's strange that a company that makes money selling high end video cards gets a result saying 'buy more high end video cards if you want to win'.

      The same way it's strange for a manufacturer of gas masks to warn you that breathing mustard gas will kill you.
      It's self serving, not strange.
      Self serving does not mean false though, and this set of data isn't a surprise to anyone who has been gaming as hardware has evolved. Particularly gamers who have upgraded their machines and noticed instantly that they simply aim better the more fluid it is. It's almost like the brain can tell the difference between 8ms between frames, and 16ms between frames, or 32ms if you had a shit machine back in the day.
      Where do *you* draw the line for the reasonable brain response rate for hand-eye coordination?

    3. Re:Alternative explanation by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      No kidding, this is quite obviously a marketing stunt. NVIDIA is busy, busy trying to prop up their slumping sales now that all the coin miners have stopped snapping up their kit.

  5. Once again... well done. by Type44Q · · Score: 0

    The premise is, the faster the display can update the action for you

    Fuck's sake; this isn't a premise; it's logic: a process the poster is clearly unfamiliar with.

    Sure wish the site could afford editors with IQ's above a hundred...

    1. Re:Once again... well done. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For F's sake, it sure would be nice if folks like you weren't such pretentious pricks sometimes. Premise - definition: "a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion." Now STFU

    2. Re: Once again... well done. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The premise is, the editors are idiots, which is why we get a mix of stories like this and that patriarchy shit show earlier

  6. That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's really neat and if you give me a moment I'm now going to submit a proposal to ban all Nvidia hardware from our purchasing because apparently their drivers are capable of spying on you, telling Nvidia what refresh rate your monitor is and even monitoring your K/D ratio in video games. Who knows what other data they're sending back to Nvidia.

    Thanks Nvidia! Without this "study" I might have accidentally purchased one of your useless RTX cards.

  7. no shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...

  8. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The study also accounts for hours played per week. Non-serious gamers ( 5 hours a week) had an edge too.

  9. Most be a slow news day... by Crash+Dummy+Redux · · Score: 1

    Or you can reduce your screen resolution to 320 x 240 to increase your framerate per second (FPS) to get a faster response in first person shooter (FPS) multiplayer games. Worked great in Quake back in the day!

    1. Re:Most be a slow news day... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      I found high pixel count but low graphics detail worked best in Unreal Tournament. Greater precision for your shooting but still stupidly fast screen refreshes.

      Of course, that was using a CRT monitor, and having a 1Mbps cable connection may have helped a little against all the people on dial-up. Maybe.

    2. Re:Most be a slow news day... by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

      Nah just up your fov to 360 and your resolution down to 1x1, guaranteed hit!

    3. Re:Most be a slow news day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      gris
      FPS means "frames per second"
      it is already a rate
      it can not be a framerate per second unless you mean an acceleration of the rate
      every second it increases

    4. Re:Most be a slow news day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are aware that you are replying to a well known Slashdot troll, aren't you?

      Crash Dummy Redux == CDR == Christopher Dale Reimer == creimer.

      Last year, I proved to creimer that I was running a click bot to inflate the views on his stupid channel and he admitted it! He has even written about it on twitter, go check and you will see.

      I specifically targeted music videos to make him believe that he had just discovered a new Klondike!

      Then, when the party was over, I proved to him that I was the one inflating his views, I told him in advance that I would stop the views on one specific video which I did and he confirmed that fact on twitter.

      Well, he just posted a imaginary story here where he pretends that pedophiles were looking at his kid music video. Maybe he figures that pedophiles are better click bait material. My bot isn't a pedophile! No pedophiles looked at his video at all!

      See his post here:
      https://medium.com/@cdreimerth...

      He is such a liar and a thief! He will say or do anything just to get 1 click on his stupid videos.
      --
      -the bigest loser on Slashdot

  10. Duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    well DUH!

  11. Pay to win. by devslash0 · · Score: 1

    Just different the one we know.

  12. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could it perhaps be that those with more expensive rigs are just more serious gamers who play more and are thus more skilled?

    Hmm... insight is so obvious not sure whether to mod informative or redundant...

  13. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    From TFS...

    "In fact, it really didn't matter hour many hours per week were played. Casual gamers and heavy-duty daily players alike could see anywhere from about a 50 to 150 percent increase in K/D ratio for significantly better overall player performance."

    captcha: reading

  14. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in my competitive CS days. Some of the better players I knew would drop graphic fidelity all the way down so they could get a guaranteed couple hundred FPS.

  15. Pepperidge Farm Remembers by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of when I used to play Netrek.

    I was on a 5Mb/s cable modem, destroying pretty much everyone playing using a 56K (or less) dial-up modem.,,

  16. Increase contrast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The human a visual system is adaptive and slows down at low contrast.
    Turning up brightness and contrast can probably save another couple of ms.

  17. Re:Correlation Causation by chispito · · Score: 2

    The study also accounts for hours played per week. Non-serious gamers ( 5 hours a week) had an edge too.

    Are they non-serious gamers or are they non-serious about that particular game?

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  18. Shocking! by EllisDees · · Score: 2

    Video card manufacturer produces study that says more expensive video cards are better.

    --
    -- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
    1. Re:Shocking! by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      Manufacturer of bigger sausages produces study showing that people who eat bigger sausages are less likely to be starving.

      Sure it's a self-serving set of data, but that doesn't mean it's fucking wrong. Use your logic.

    2. Re:Shocking! by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      Manufacturer of bigger sausages produces study showing that people who eat bigger sausages are less likely to be starving.

      I don't get it. Could you use a car analogy?

    3. Re:Shocking! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      additionally, the timing is suspect (i.e., obvious) considering nvidia isnt selling nearly as many GPU as it wants right now.

    4. Re:Shocking! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Manufacturer of luxury cars produces a study showing that people who drive a luxury car are less likely to take a city bus or subway.

  19. High FPS unfair to women players by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and therefore must be banned.

  20. Study by nVidia by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

    Who would have thought! A study by NVIDIA finds that you need to buy their high end stuff because it'll make you play better.

    Color me shocked.

  21. Sponsored by Nvidia? by Pascoea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I couldn't possibly see a conflict of interest with a company funded study concluding that their higher priced items will give you a significant competitive edge in a competition.

    1. Re:Sponsored by Nvidia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The irony is that if you currently want a good 144hz monitor and matching video card for esports and other highly competitive games, nvidia's choices are about twice the cost of a comparable AMD/Freesync solution.

      nVidia is now claiming to at least make an effort to support Freesync monitors though, so maybe this study gave them some direction.

  22. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't believe it does. I had same thoughts as both of you. However - at ANY amount of play time, someone willing to invest more in a gaming rig - I would ARGUE - is going to take their play time more seriously as well.

    Need to test results of same players on different rigs - I think this could still be correlation based on the kind of person that buys top end graphics cards.

  23. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The study also accounts for hours played per week. Non-serious gamers ( 5 hours a week) had an edge too.

    5 hours per week playing a game is "non-serious"?

  24. Re:Correlation Causation by Calydor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did they try to take players who were used to playing at 30 FPS and gave them a 120 FPS rig, did they try to take players used to playing at 120 FPS and gave them a 30 FPS rig, or did they just compare current FPS levels with K:D levels?

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  25. Weightlifters prove this logic is wrong. by magusxxx · · Score: 1

    Generally weight is weight. It's determination and dedication which overall decides if you get better.

    --
    Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
  26. lot's of people don't use GeForce Experience so ga by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    lot's of people don't use GeForce Experience so there may be an big gap of people who are not reporting.

  27. Great news for me! by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    That means my absolute suck at Fortnite must be due to framerate, and not related to skill whatsoever!

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Great news for me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's still the SJWs. By including women and gay people and non-whites in your game it's clearly going to distract you from your manly mission. So don't worry, you don't have to put away your old prejudices, you can still blame anyone who didn't vote Trump!

    2. Re:Great news for me! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Exactly. And we are here to help! There's only one way you can solve this: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/s...

      Regards
      Your friendly neighbourhood NVIDIA representative.

  28. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just think about it this way.. 60fps = 16ms delay vs 120fps 8ms delay
    given large enough playerbase shipty internet connection delay average's out...
    result is that some people get 8ms advantage in reaction times... this might not sound much
    due traditional propaganda of 120ms reaction times of human but theres studies that show dragging "box" on screen latency of 2ms is detectable simple task "like dragging" a box the continous sensitivity to delay is actually really sensitive, this translates something like "aiming" enemy and trying to spray paint bullets at it...

  29. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    User choose to run GeForce Experience monitoring tool. It isnâ(TM)t secret.

  30. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 2

    Correlation is not causation. A favorite beginner's mistake, repeated time and again and often made intentional to push faulty ideas in politics, marketing and other disciplines primarily focused of creating a false reality via lies. If you have A~B, you can have A->B or B->A or, and that is often the real situation, there is a C with C->A and C->B.

    In this case here, it is very likely that more serious shooter gamers (C) have both better kill rates (A) and higher FPS (B). Also, there is factor D, namely that Nvidia wants to sell higher powered gaming cards to earn more money, which makes even the data suspect and most certainly the interpretation. Caveat emptor.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  31. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hope you're not an idiot who actually thinks that way...

  32. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 1, Informative

    People with higher FPS have invested more money and hence are very likely more serious than those with lower FPS. In other news, the human visual sensory system and motor system is not equipped to use the higher FPS at all (it can detect them via inference effects though), so the whole interpretation is a lie with very high probability only from that already.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  33. Gold standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sure this study is definitive. It's not as if NVIDIA has any conflicts of interest when creating and analyzing and publishing a study finding spending more money is better. Oh, wait. As far as the profoundly stupid fucking idea that "the numbers speak for themselves", well as Sam Clemens said: there's liars, damned liars and statisticians.The very definition of stupidity is believing numbers or data are information.

  34. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's included by default in the normal, express installation flow of the nVidia driver installation. Most corp environments aren't going to be installing the drivers that way.

  35. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Besides the obvious problem with correlation vs. causality, there's also the question of whether it's actually the screen refresh rate or something else that is causing the better performance. For example, every semi-regular Quake (anything up to Q3 at least) player would know that you generally want these games running at a "magic framerate" such as 125Hz, 250Hz or 333Hz even if your actual display device is still running at 60Hz, because you get very obvious (measurable) benefits from having your physics run at certain specific framerates in addition to the general trend where higher tends to be better.

    In short, there are a number of other things that could change in any given game with the screen refresh that have nothing to do with the display device (or graphics card for that matter), but could certainly have a strong correlation with player performance. As presented, the data we have is essentially useless.

  36. Re:Correlation Causation by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are they non-serious gamers or are they non-serious about that particular game?

    Or they're semi-serious players with obligations. I'd say the presence of a 144 Hz gaming monitor and a graphics card to match probably says a lot about your interest and competitiveness in FPS games. It's like trying to measure how a sports car makes you drive while ignoring who buys a sports car in the first place.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  37. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Naaa, that would have been a) scientifically sound and b) would very likely not have shown the outcome they so desire to push their products.
    Cannot have truth in advertising. It is bad for business. And there are enough morons with money to spend that will believe this crap.

    Actual reality is that human visual latency and motor-reactions are so slow that above 25PFS or so, there is no relevant difference in reaction speed in almost all cases. Sure, if you are really, really good, you can maybe get 0.1...1% more kills or so because of some border conditions and to a professional gamer that may matter. But to anybody else high FPS is a purely aesthetic question and has no impact on performance as a gamer. Of course to Nvidia, high FPS means quite a bit more profit and that is the actual driver here.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  38. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by MojoKid · · Score: 1

    Correct, thanks. Users can opt out of running the tool and the data certainly isn't user-identifiable. Back away from the tinfoil hat. If you want complete security and privacy, unplug every data-capable device you own from the internet.

  39. Re: Correlation Causation by David+Gould · · Score: 1

    Exactly, you'd have to do something like that for the results to be meaningful. Data from people playing at home on their own machines will have all kinds of bias.

    --
    David Gould
    main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
  40. Re: Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But muh refresh rate!

  41. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like they were not being scientific and had an agenda. By the looks of your post you can relate to that.

  42. For every reason turn turn turn by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    What you really need is fast turn rate fps (and latency.) High fps running in a straight line is misleading for games. Turn stutter is bs fraud.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  43. You suck at everything in this life incel Ken Doll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You do suck at everything you attempt. It's probably related to you being a dishonest faggot who makes excuses and lies instead of reading and learning, improving. You're just another loose turd of Republicanism, floating along.

    *flush*

  44. Nobody needs a Fucking Study... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...to tell you that if you spend a quarter of a second contemplating your navel while waiting for packets, you are likely to have a rocket shot up your ass.

    1. Re:Nobody needs a Fucking Study... by chispito · · Score: 1

      ...to tell you that if you spend a quarter of a second contemplating your navel while waiting for packets, you are likely to have a rocket shot up your ass.

      I think we can all agree that players running at four frames-per-second are at a disadvantage.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  45. Correlation =/ Causation by Fluffymuffin+Cocobut · · Score: 1

    Take all the High FPS/High Kill Ratio players - give them identical rigs with identical monitors - with half the subject population's frame rate capped at 60fps and the others maxed to 144 using identical 2080ti SLI cards. Measure kill ratios. Switch populations. Measure again. Otherwise this sounds like a marketing stunt by Acer to sell some high frame rate monitors. In other news: young adult athletic males wearing Nike much more likely than non-Nike wearers to be tall NBA players.

    --
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  46. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Indeed. And as a scientist, junk science like this pisses me off. It gives Science a bad name.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  47. How many times must it be said? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Correlation is not causation. Furthermore, NVIDIA is a biased entity. Of course they're going to find that high end GPU users with low refresh rate displays get better KDs. That's where they make their money.

    This reads more like an advertisement than a study--because it is.

  48. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I spend roughly 5 hours a week driving too and from work. I spend roughly 5 hours a week cooking. I promise you, I'm not serious about cooking nor am I serious about commuting between work.

  49. Re:Correlation Causation by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Perhaps, although it would be fairly easy to compare like-for-like, e.g. users with a certain GPU with or without a 144Hz monitor.

    I'm skeptical though because there is great variance between 144Hz monitors. The Amazon special ones have so much ghosting that the frame rate is unlikely to help much. There is no real way for Nvidia to measure monitor response times and control for them.

    --
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  50. Re:Correlation Causation by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1, Insightful

    FPS has a huge impact. visual latency and motor-reactions are so slow that above 25PFS That is simply wrong. 25FPS is the lowest minimum to don't be distracted by flickering, that is all.

    When the game world is updating with 50FPS then a screen with higher frequency is better. Most important however is the mouse and how it is synched with the game FPS and screen FPS.

    With higher screen FPS it is simply much easier to correctly aim!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  51. Re:Correlation Causation by DamnOregonian · · Score: 2

    You're not wrong about any of those points, however, I noticed over a decade ago that I performed noticeably better with some mice vs. others. I later learned it had to do with the refresh rate of the mouse.
    120Hz may sound awful high to matter, and I salute your skepticism- but that's 8ms of latency. Which I assure you is a lifetime when you're doing precision hand-eye coordination that is largely autonomous.
    These results don't surprise me in the slightest. I have seen this myself in a hundred LAN parties over the years. Even relatively unskilled players perform better on machines with higher refresh rates. It's smoother, and their brain simply does a better job at aiming, or shooting from the hip.

  52. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Except it's wrong - the GeForce Experience is now the ONLY way to access Nvidia drivers. You're required to create an account and install this program if you want access to Nvidia drivers.

    It's seriously creepy and a very good reason to be an all-AMD shop.

  53. nice, data theft and harvesting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > just took it upon themselves with the use of their GeForce Experience tool, to compile anonymous data on gamers by hours played per week, panel refresh rate and graphics card type.

    Nice of nvidia to steal / pilfer, etc our data.

    I dont care if they say its anonymous, its not, its wrong, and its theft.

  54. So is low lag time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    High Internet speeds is the top contributor to frag rate.

  55. Re:Correlation Causation by war4peace · · Score: 1

    I play games for at least 5 hours per day and I am not a serious gamer.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  56. It use to be all about the ping by portwojc · · Score: 1

    Remember being called an LPB back in the day?
       

  57. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Again with the "we can't see that many frames, so it's useless" argument.

    We tend ( I use that word, as this is not universal ) to see video as 'motion' instead of 'individual frames' somewhere around 10 frames per second. 24 and up generally looks pretty smooth, if you're just sitting back and watching. When motion is fast, different effects come into play, such as the ability to track an object on screen and predict where it's going to be. While your eyes are tracking a fast moving object across the screen, your eyes move smoothly while the image changes in steps. If you've got 24 steps per second, that fast moving object will look like a series of blurred lumps. At 60 fps, it's quite a bit smoother. At 144 fps, it's really nice. If you've got one of the newer monitors with low-persistence tech (the image flashes brightly for a fraction of the frame time and then goes black instead of holding a dimmer image for the whole frame time), it's damn near impossible to pick out individual frames.

    In my own personal experience (admittedly anecdotal evidence with a sample size of 1), I can see a significant difference up to about 100 fps, and can reliably tell the difference between 100 and 144 fps when things are moving fast.

    https://www.testufo.com/

  58. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just installed Nvidia Display Driver v419.35, released March 5, 2019, which is two days ago, without installing GeForce Experience.

    Perhaps they tried that in the past and quickly backpedaled? I don't like Nvidia, but please try to accuse them only of things they are actually guilty of.

  59. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are seriously wasting a lot of time though...

  60. Re: That's really neat and now I'm banning all Nvi by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    the GeForce Experience is now the ONLY way to access Nvidia drivers.

    Bullshit. You can no longer download a driver package which doesn't include the install files for geforce experience, but you don't have to install it. Nice FUD, how long have you been working for AMD?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  61. Re:Correlation Causation by mindwhip · · Score: 1

    While they only played Battle Royal games for 5 hours a week... that might becuase they are playing other more traditional FPS games such as COD etc. Even additionally playing Warcraft or Minecraft for 30 hours a week will likely result in them having better hand-eye coordination and reflexes over someone that plays less games in general, and someone who plays many different games will be more likely to spend more on their gaming system that someone that just plays one game as they also more likely spend more on the games themselves.

    If you rearrange the same set of stats you could even stretch to the conclusion that people with more money play a wider variety of games and so are better at them in general making this a class issue....

    --
    [The Universe] has gone offline.
  62. Re:Correlation Causation by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    My thought exactly. As usual, it's probably a confluence of both factors.

    Certainly, a smoother, prettier experience is going to make the game more enjoyable, and more "fun" to play for the quantities of time it takes to get very good...but realistically, the top end graphics cards are $600+ on top of the price of a computer worth running it (just having a great video card alone means you're just going to be bottlenecked elsewhere), probably $1200-$1500 base.

    The only people dropping $2k on a desktop today are going to ALREADY be dedicated game-players whose habits already justify buying such a machine.

    --
    -Styopa
  63. Re:Correlation Causation by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

    I've not kept up on this sort of thing, but in the past didn't the games is the rendered frames to determine if you did things like hit the enemy? If so, even if you can't perceive the frames, it might produce a technical advantage in gameplay.

  64. TIL: flicker fusion threshold by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's a lot of misinformation in this thread. Everyone needs to go read about Flicker_fusion_threshold:

    The maximal fusion frequency for rod-mediated vision reaches a plateau at about 15 Hz, whereas cones reach a plateau, observable only at very high illumination intensities, of about 60 Hz.[3][4]

    and

    If the frame rate falls below the flicker fusion threshold for the given viewing conditions, flicker will be apparent to the observer, and movements of objects on the film will appear jerky. For the purposes of presenting moving images, the human flicker fusion threshold is usually taken between 60 and 90 hertz (Hz), though in certain cases it can be higher by an order of magnitude.[7] In practice, movies are recorded at 24 frames per second and displayed by repeating each frame two or three times for a flicker of 48 or 72 Hz.

    p.s. There's also Chronostasis where moving your eyes can cause you to see a frozen image for up to 1/2 a second (example).

    1. Re:TIL: flicker fusion threshold by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's about light appearing to be continuous (rather than flickering), not about motion not appearing to judder.

    2. Re:TIL: flicker fusion threshold by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1
      Yes, indeed. Go read about flicker fusion thresholds. Only this time, go past the summary.

      CRT displays usually by default operated at a vertical scan rate of 60 Hz, which often resulted in noticeable flicker. Many systems allowed increasing the rate to higher values such as 72, 75 or 100 Hz to avoid this problem

      For the purposes of presenting moving images, the human flicker fusion threshold is usually taken between 60 and 90 hertz (Hz), though in certain cases it can be higher by an order of magnitude.

      Next.

    3. Re:TIL: flicker fusion threshold by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you trying to argue with me? You proved my point.

  65. Re: Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Says the AC posting on slashdot about other peoples' time.

  66. It's not just about smooth motion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's also about latency. There are about four frames of delay between the game trying to show you something and the monitor actually getting around to displaying it (and this is not just about monitor lag, or monitor response time which is what everyone advertises, but also about the drivers and rendering pipeline). Weak monitors add a frame or two on top of that. This can add up to 60 to 100+ ms of delay. A really fast monitor can cut this delay in half. You had better believe that an effective 50ms improvement in reaction time makes a big difference.

  67. Re:Correlation Causation by Solandri · · Score: 1
    That only disproves play time as a third factor which increases both.. It could be that players who found themselves to be naturally better at playing these games have invested more heavily in gaming rigs.

    In fact, one of their graphs seems to show exactly this. If you look at the zero axis of the kill/death ratio increase vs hours played graph for different GPU owners, you see that all four do not converge to zero at zero hours played. Those with higher-end hardware have a better K/D ratio even with minimal time played, indicating that they're naturally better players.

    The problem with the "better hardware makes you a better player" hypothesis is that the gaming hardware is actually a comparatively small component of the lag you experience. I used to work at a company making networked simulators for the military, and had to quantify this a couple decades ago to decide how important it was to optimize our code.
    • Internet lag averages about 30 ms. Might be lower for newer games. (I've seen as low as 8 ms if you're lucky and have a good ISP and live near the server).
    • Game and protocol processing lag (time for the game to decode the network packet, decode the protocol simulating your opponent's movement on your computer) is usually on the order of 100 ms (the other player's movement has to be encoded by their computer, shoved into a network packet, transmitted to the server, transmitted to you, removed from the network packet, then decoded by your computer for display on your screen).
    • Human comprehension time is about 250 ms for visual stimuli. That is, your brain takes about a quarter second to see something, process it, and comprehend exactly what it's seeing. It's actually faster at processing audio (about 170 ms) - the runners in the 100m dash are beginning with the crack of the starting pistol, not the flash of the gun firing. It's important enough that they wire the gun to speakers placed in each runner's starting blocks, so that nobody is advantaged by the slow speed of sound causing the gun crack to reach their ears faster.
    • Nerve impulse speed is around 120 m/s. So when you command your hand to move your mouse, it takes about 5 ms for the signal to travel from your brain to your muscles.
    • Your muscles take about 5ms to begin respond to a nerve impulse and about 25 ms to respond fully.

    So your hand isn't moving/clicking your mouse until 100 + 250 + 5 + 25 = 380 ms after the other player pops his head out from behind the wall. Your brain is basically constantly predicting what'll happen more than a third of a second in the future, and pre-emtively sending movement signals to your muscles to respond to what it thinks will happen in the future. That's why motor reflex actions like those associated with walking happen in your spinal chord. It avoids the lengthy trip all the way to your brain and back, plus processing time in your brain.

    Meanwhile, going from a 60 Hz monitor to 120 Hz gains you 8.3 ms. Going from 120 Hz to 144 Hz gains you 1.4 ms. And going from 144 Hz to 240 Hz gains you only 2.8 ms. Even if you say your brain needs to see 3 frames to pick up and predict motion, that becomes 33 ms for 60 Hz (time interval between 3 frames is 2 refresh cycles), 17 ms for 120 Hz, 14ms for 144 Hz, and 8.3 ms for 240 Hz. It's still dwarfed by the time it takes your brain to parse what it's seeing, meaning the biggest factor is how much talent you naturally have or are trained to have. That's why the military trains so relentlessly rather than buying night vision scopes with a better than 60 Hz refresh rate - decreasing the time your brain needs to process what it's seeing makes a bigger difference in reaction time.

  68. Re:Soap opera effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are actually two different effects that combine to create what's commonly known as the soap opera effect.

    1. Lack of motion blur: Set an old camcorder to "sports" mode, and it'll keep the shutter open for 1/1000 of a second but still record at 30 or 60 fps. Put the camera on a tripod, go stand in bright light and talk normally. When you watch the video, you'll observe the soap opera effect because the image doesn't contain motion blur, but your eyes are trying to interpret the sequence of still images as a continuous motion. If you set the same same camera to have a 1/60 second shutter speed, the effect goes away completely.

    2. Nonsensical interpolation added by new TVs: When the underlying video contains no motion blur, morphing from still image 1 to image 2 creates nonsensical facial micro-expressions. If you watch that video of yourself shot at 1/1000 second shutter speed on a TV with morphing turned on, and focus on your eyebrows and/or your mouth, you'll start seeing "impossible" facial expressions that you never made. But if you try the same with the video recorded with 1/60 second shutter speed, you may not even notice that the morphing is doing anything.

  69. NVIDIA Says Buy More Graphics Cards by Sir+Realist · · Score: 1

    Study Funded and Performed by Major Graphics Card Manufacturer Finds You Should Buy A New More-Expensive Graphics Card.

    Yeah, that's definitely shocking.

  70. Re:Correlation Causation by ewibble · · Score: 0

    perhaps people with better graphics cards have better mice?

  71. Re: Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hello, console peasant.

  72. Re:Correlation Causation by mlheur · · Score: 1

    I would consider 100fps display to be a bit low for 25fps receiver.

    Imagine you have a program who's purpose is to display the current time. The clock only needs to update once per second; so setting a timer to check the system clock once every 0.25 seconds and update the display as appropriate - that would actually be jarring for a human to watch. The seconds indicator would update anywhere from 0.76 to 1.24 seconds in between; I consider that a huge gap. I would write my program to check at least once every 0.1 seconds.

    By my reasoning, along with your statement that 25fps is human capability, then I would want a 250fps rig before I blame anything other than my reaction time.

    Other than that, I agree this "study" is simply a veiled marketing tactic and dispute their claim; I doubt a hardcore gamer would lose that much K/D if you frame limit him to 50fps.

  73. Re: Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you can't tell 25 and 144 FPS apart, the issue is you.

  74. More expensive graphic cards make you better... by denzacar · · Score: 1

    ...at games, confirming decades of player biases - says NVIDIA's shill.

    That highly informative advertisement even ends with an Amazon Affiliate Link, suggesting you should buy a $500 graphic card.
    Earning hothardware.com up to 10% on all purchases made.

    It's like an advertisement inside an advertisement.
    So you can earn money for the fake journalists while you make money for them. WHAT A VALUE!!!

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  75. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Naaa, that would have been a) scientifically sound and b) would very likely not have shown the outcome they so desire to push their products.
    Cannot have truth in advertising. It is bad for business. And there are enough morons with money to spend that will believe this crap.

    Actual reality is that human visual latency and motor-reactions are so slow that above 25PFS or so, there is no relevant difference in reaction speed in almost all cases. Sure, if you are really, really good, you can maybe get 0.1...1% more kills or so because of some border conditions and to a professional gamer that may matter. But to anybody else high FPS is a purely aesthetic question and has no impact on performance as a gamer. Of course to Nvidia, high FPS means quite a bit more profit and that is the actual driver here.

    I can disprove your "theory" in 5 seconds.

    Here is a video, same game. On the left is 25FPS, and on the right is 60FPS.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iZybcq05Eo

    Are you telling me that you cannot tell the difference? If not, there is something wrong with you and you need to be checked for dementia.

  76. Stay classy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm currently developing a game using Source Engine on a reasonable laptop with HD 3000 graphics. Back before some readers of Slashdot left college I was involved with the game development and have some success with technology and discussing issues including framerates and cinema special effects. Most people now take present techonology and practice for granted and repeat many of the old arguments or points of view which were problematic back then. Framerate does matter which is why I stepped back for design and practical reasons to a less intensive engine. UDK (Unreal 3) and Unreal 4 have closed render piplines like Adobe Lightroom is closed and cannot be optimised for different priorities without recoding the pipeline. Source Engine isn't the most user friendly but has a decent render pipeline for the platform and framerate I like to target. It's a very involved discussion which can get into the psychology and neurology of perception but there are reasons why a heavy render pipleine with all the bells and whistles is a poor technical and aesthetic choice. At an OS or hardware level lag can be introduced too so a less contorted path at this level can produce advantages too. You need to aim for 140 FPS as a minimum for action games and preferably aim for 200-250 FPS for peak performance. If a modern engine makes the render path too slow the only way to target this is to shrink the render pipleine which means throwing out bells and whistles most of which aren't necessary or add cognitive load to the brain. I consider 60 FPS a minimum for adventure games. As an example Deus Ex runs very well on most low end hardware today (even if the mappers forgot to portal the maps properly) and it still sets a standard for games which are far too blingy or linear or pointless and lack any form of lasting emotional connection.

    I don't develop game engines or design bespoke games now and may never again. I didn't get along with the industry and now work as an escort.

  77. Re:Correlation Causation by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    And yet, if you were spending 5 hours a week driving just to drive, with no destination, just there-and-back to enjoy time behind the wheel, I'd say you were a very serious about driving as a hobby.

    A person who plays chess 5 hours a week is a "fairly serious" player.

    A person who cooks most of their meals spends more than 5 hours a week at it, serious or not, but if you do 5 hours a week of serious cooking just because you wanted to, that's being pretty serious about cooking.

  78. Re:Correlation Causation by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    You were only told that humans can't self-report conscious detection of higher frame rates.

    You heard that, and in your simplistic, unscientific brain it turned into, "the human visual sensory system and motor system is not equipped to use the higher FPS at all."

    If you don't have the reading comprehension to paraphrase a narrow scientific claim, how can you possibly take it to the next level and provide contextual analysis?

  79. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 1

    You have no clue. 25Hz on a 60Hz display gives you inference. You just failed physics 101.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  80. Re:Correlation Causation by gweihir · · Score: 1

    This has happened. It has led to changes, as it is considered an unfair advantage.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  81. Re:Correlation Causation by Ranbot · · Score: 1

    Could it perhaps be that those with more expensive rigs are just more serious gamers who play more and are thus more skilled?

    Don't stop there...
    Could those with more expensive video cards also have researched or pay for an ISP with less latency?
    Could those with more expensive video cards also have monitors with a faster refresh rate and better image quality?
    Could those with more expensive video cards also have high quality surround sound*?
    Could those with more expensive video cards also have better gaming-oriented peripherals (e.g. gaming mice, keyboards, etc.)?

    Those are factors with more impact on K/D stats than whether your video card can push 100+ fps, but those with expensive video cards will likely cover those bases too.

    * - Although sound might not seem related to visual response, high quality surround sound and knowledge of levels allows you to sense/predict/react to enemies or teammates before you even see them.

  82. Re:Correlation Causation by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    In my own personal experience (admittedly anecdotal evidence with a sample size of 1), I can see a significant difference up to about 100 fps, and can reliably tell the difference between 100 and 144 fps when things are moving fast.

    https://www.testufo.com/

    I heard some cluestick saying that humans "can't" hear frequencies above 20khz, and accusing people who can hear artifacts in digital recordings of lying, but then when I looked up the actual range of hearing it said that some people can hear much higher frequencies. And there is no reason to expect the distribution not to include the full range that other mammals can detect; that is how that whole "bell curve" thing works! A few people have hearing so much more sensitive than anybody else that their hearing is basically useless, they're constantly swimming in loud noise, and a few others can hear things at different frequencies than other people.

    The funniest part is that the level that most of these idiots choose to believe in as a hard upper limit is merely the 95th percentile! LMFAO

    Once I even had a guy tell me that it is "impossible" to have 20/10 vision. The reality is that most "full" eye charts can only test to 20/15.

    Nevermind that it might look visually smooth because of a low-pass filter at the interface between the visual system and the conscious system; you might still be able to detect and react to changes much faster, using a totally different mental pathway. For example, studies show that monkeys trained to look for a colored dot on the screen have a different response to correctly-colored and incorrectly-colored dots in cells in their visual system that come before the higher brain functions. When you're looking for something specific and staring intently, there is some sort of sub-processing done in the brain that changes cellular responses in the sensory systems. This is not yet very well understood, at least as it relates to human experience. There is absolutely no reason to believe that during some activity you only and exclusively use the visual data that got copied into your frontal lobes; there are other systems also being used!

    Just like, high level athletes sometimes respond more quickly to a stimulus than would be "possible" if the input had to make it to the higher brain functions and back; clearly their conscious mind is operating some sort of fly-by-wire system where some part of their sensory input is filtered and shunted directly to the major nerves in a way that results in a coordinated, practiced set of movements.

  83. I call bullshit by scdeimos · · Score: 1

    First I want to pooint out that I think this "study" is just a markting scam. NVIDIA is trying to drum up hardware sales now that all the coin miners have gone away.

    If it's actually a legitimate study... why aren't all the privacy nuts up in arms? Where's their testing methodology? How is it possible that NVIDIA could come up with such data? How were they able to gather K/D ratios from games so that they could tie specific gamer accounts to the hardware being tested to prove the correlation?

  84. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep, they'd drop it so far the walls were no longer solid.

  85. Re:Correlation Causation by Trimaz · · Score: 1

    Higher refresh rate = Lower latency/input lag.

  86. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep - grandparent poster here. When I was younger, I had my hearing tested due to chronic headaches and "tinnitus". Turns out I was hearing the 30khz whine of our TV's flyback transformer. I also recently had my eyes checked, since I can't see as well as I used to. I used to like to read the copyright line on the eye charts. Turns out I'm still 20/15 or better, as I can still read the smallest line on the chart, but I can't read the copyright date anymore.

  87. In other news, water is wet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Studies have shown that Ferraris are faster than Toyota Corollas.

  88. Wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fast-action games like PUBG, Fortnite and Apex Legends

    One of these does not belong.

  89. Causation or correlation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this merely a correlation between gamers with high frame rates being those who invest the most, and play the most, and therefore have higher kill rates????

  90. Re:Correlation Causation by chuckugly · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up

  91. Twitch games. by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

    Makes sense that people playing games relying on twitch reflexes would see an improvement. I doubt it helps much in games where coordinated team effort and tactics are required.

    I got high end cards last year and don't notice much difference because my favorite game is tactical in nature. MUCH prettier picture though, which was what I was after.

  92. The truth! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm what you would call a serious gamer. 144hz and 240hz screens sit on my desk with a 2080ti.

    Not a brag.

    I've had to play on friends machines at LANs on 60hz monitors, and it makes things very difficult, and unpleasant. Everything feels less responsive, and more input lag.

    There is such a huge advantage to using high fps on high hz.

    It's hard to explain exactly how much of a "feel" difference this is, suffice to say, I'd dont not play a fps at 60hz at these LANs anymore. I'd rather watch other people play.

  93. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And you just failed to spell "interference"?

  94. Voodoo2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought this was basically settled 20 years ago. At that time with a Pentium II you could play Quake2 at (maybe) 20-30fps in software rendering mode, or install a 3D accelerator that could allow you to do 60fps+. The difference in playability is stark, especially because FPS drops during large fights are more severe the lower your baseline is.

    1. Re:Voodoo2? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      The difference between 30fps, 60fps, and 120fps is when an object is moving quickly, it's the difference between 2 frames, 4 frames, or 8 frames. Easier to predict motion with 8 frames of information.

  95. Top sports players have better equipments by khchung · · Score: 1

    than the average amateur players.

    Well, duh. People are willing to spend more on equipments for things they like to do and are good at.

    --
    Oliver.
  96. Re:Correlation Causation by dpidcoe · · Score: 1

    If I only reacted by clicking on the pixels corresponding to the other players head, I'd never be able to hit anybody half competent at dodging. Aiming in an FPS is much much more than simply clicking on the pixels coresponding to an enemies head. There's a continual integration between eye->brain image processing->brain motor planning->hand->mouse, as well error correction based on proprioceptive feedback from my mouse hand compared to what my eye is seeing.

    If I see another player begin to move in a direction, I don't aim where I see them, I calculate where they're going to be and track across that probability cone of where they're going to be a quarter second into the future. The more accurately I can predict where they're going to be, the more likely I am to hit them. The worse the framerate is, the more processing I need to do in order to integrate the series of images into an accurate motion vector. So for me it's not the actual delay, but the fact that the increased amount of movement between frames makes it harder to pick up the fine details of what my target is doing.

  97. Re:Correlation Causation by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    This was my first thought. Now GeForce could do that experiment with me if they'd just send me a high end gaming rig for research purposes.

  98. Re:Correlation Causation by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    If someone only plays video games on a Saturday, 5 hours is pretty damn serious.

  99. Re:Correlation Causation by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Playing games at work doesn't count.

  100. Re:Correlation Causation by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    But someone who's spent $2000 on a gaming system has a strong motivation to justify their purchase and thus disagree with you.

  101. Re:Correlation Causation by Bengie · · Score: 1

    I used to play 8-16 hours a day from 12 to 30. 5 hours doesn't sound like much, even if a single day. Even for a normal person, 5 hours of any form of entertainment per week, even on a single day, is the norm.

  102. Re:Correlation Causation by Bengie · · Score: 1

    Compared to? Netflix has 61mil subscribers in the USA alone, with an average of 10 hours per week. Most forms of entertainment are less mentally engaging than video games.

  103. Re: Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does AGW give science a bad name, too?

  104. Re:Correlation Causation by Bengie · · Score: 1

    The brain doesn't see in frames, but a continuous integration. Frames mess with the visual system's ability to motion track. When playing World of Warcraft and there's lots of FX going on, if the FPS dips below 50, it gets hard to track players. This negatively affects my ability to properly position myself.

    Back when I played FPS games on my CRT, I had a 75hz CRT and my friend had 85hz. His video card could maintain a stable at least 85fps. At first I was playing and it felt "smoother". Then he changed games. When playing the other game, I told him it felt "choppy". Went into the graphics settings and the game was set to 75hz. Set to 85hz and it felt smoother again.

    "Low" FPS with high paced action results in a strobe effect where objects teleport across the screen. Visual tracking system is not meant for this.

  105. Re:Correlation Causation by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Well, you gotta squeeze in time for chores, talk to family, watch some tv, read a chapter of a book. 5 hours sitting at a stretch isn't huge for a lot of people, but you're definitely not a casual player at that point. Not a super serious gamer but you're taking gaming seriously.

  106. Re:Correlation Causation by kqs · · Score: 1

    A company that wants you to spend lots of money on their video equipment has done a study which proves that you will be better at games if you spend lots of money on their video equipment. Also, you will be stronger, more virile, and better smelling. It's science, so you know it's true.

  107. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think you and many others are overestimating this fairly.
    144Hz monitors have gone cheaper lately, those at 1920x1080 are very affordable perhaps a couple hundred bucks - saw one at 199 euro in my country.
    This maximizes gaming performance, because 1080p is "low res" these days and because it will always, every time be better than a 1080p 60Hz display anyway even if you're stuck running a game at 50 or 70 or 90 fps.

    $600 graphics will only be needed if you want to run the heaviest games at over 100 fps or over 120 fps on ultra settings. Not really needed on popular multiplayer games designed to run on laptops. Though there are graphics heavy multiplayer shooters like the Battlefield series (again, on "ultra" and "ultraest" and "extreme" sliders or settings)
    $250 graphics card will do fine, or slower if you tone down settings..
    Beefy CPU is needed but is not that expensive e.g. i3-8100 or Ryzen 2600 should get you going. Older highend like i7 4770, i5 4670K still has current performance.
    8GB RAM will work, just for running Windoze and the game and maybe a chat program. More is better but I guess these kids can run a browser on phone or tablet if needed, whereas in old times your PC would be your only computer.

    Still not that cheap of an occupation : about $1K to fit everything, perhaps $1K desktop plus $200 1080p 144Hz monitor or $1K for the desktop + monitor by being cost efficient on parts. With upgrades down the road but even older graphics cards run ok now (e.g. if you bought a GTX 1060 on launch day you would have made a good deal, it's good for another couple years!)

    Sadly all games are spyware so I'm not too interested anymore.

  108. Frame rate dependencies by yakumo.unr · · Score: 1

    An aspect that this report hasn't mentioned, perhaps as it's an unfortunate and unfair issue in some games, is sadly there can also be code issues at play as well. Many modern games have still suffered from damage dealt or game physics not being frame rate independent which can directly equate to player advantages, Quake 3 for example was well known for having the fastest movement and most useful jumping speed and height on 125 FPS, the issue was fixed many years ago in some mods and subsequently Quake Live by removing the physics system's dependency on frame rate.

    A quick search on damage tied to fps brings up quite a few recent results, and I couldn't quickly find evidence that they had all been resolved -

    Quake Champions : https://www.reddit.com/r/Quake... (Damage and movement FPS dependencies were fixed early in Early Access)
    PUBG : https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fra... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
    Fortnite : https://www.eurogamer.net/arti... (Epic acknowledge the issue and state that they’re working toward a fix.)
    Destiny 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
    Warframe: https://forums.warframe.com/to... (Staff posted at the time a fix was being looked into)

    Even including such bugs high FPS is not the be all and end all in a multiplayer shooting game as positioning, better weapons, collecting more health and armour are all strategic elements that usually claim the victory beyond simple aim and damage output. Higher frame rates certainly can aid locating your opponents position quickly and accurately in a high speed fire fight though and are certainly a much more pleasant visual experience, https://www.testufo.com/ can give you a quick example of that without having to leave your browser.

  109. Negligible compared to latency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It might be so, but it is negligible compared to network latency. With all the compensation in the network code its a specific range of latency you should be in to have to most advantage (I guess, but this is a guess between 30ms-50ms). There might even be games in which fps and latency have a relation.

  110. These statistics stink by fredrikv · · Score: 1

    These statistics are really lousy and does not say anything about if an expensive card will really increase the player performance.

    1. The "low" frame rate is 120 fps which would not by any means be considered "low" by most gamers.

    2. They only asses GPUs and do not include displays and other hardware or network lag. They have no idea of which frame rates are actually experienced by the players. There is even a graph to show that the more expensive cards are helpful even on 60 fps screens, despite that all studied GPUs produce much more than 60 fps.

    3. As many have pointed out, this is very likely a skewed data set to start with. The serious gamers buy more expensive cards. Nivida actually have the data to confirm or refute this but don't show it. They could show the distribution of hours played per week, grouped per GPU type. They don't show it which is cause for concern.

    There is little reason to believe gamers would experience any significant improvement going from a 120 fps to 200 fps system. That would be equivalent of reducing absolute worst case lag from 8.3 ms to 5.0 ms (on average it would actually be half those numbers). Then consider that the human reaction time to visual stimuli is around 120-150 ms in ideal setups.

    Nivida claims that "pros in our labs have been able to consistently discern and see benefits from even a handful of milliseconds of reduced latency". That may be true, but it just proves that the handful of milliseconds that you could possibly gain can only be discerened by pro players on extremely high-performing systems in controlled environments.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In this case Nividia does not even produce ordinary evidence.
    This is purely a marketing ploy.

  111. Re:Correlation Causation by mathew7 · · Score: 1

    This led me to see the difference between movie frame (which the study was based on) and game frame: 1/fps exposure vs 1/inf exposure.
    if you blend 2 movie frames together, you get an almost perfect 1/half-fps exposure image (even more blur than originating frames). But with 2 game frames, you can clearly see the original 2 frames in the blend. There is a point in these fast blurry things where the brain realizes it's a motion.
    PS: if you see a "slideshow" in a movie, it means the frames were shot with lower exposure. That is bad movie editing. Frames should contain a ~1/23s blur. If it's 1/60s but presented at 23fps....your brain will see individual images. If you pause a movie, you SHOULD see a blur.
    PS2: I'm looking for ways for OBS to capture at 120Hz but blend 2 images (for 60fps) or even 4(for 30fps result) instead of dropping. It should allow most of the 120Hz experience on lower-rate monitors.

  112. Re:Correlation Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Interference? Is that the correct word for it when we're talking about a discrete time domain? I think it's closer to something like temporal aliasing. But English is not my primary language, so I'm not sure if I translate things correctly here.
    I know what you're trying to say, due to a 25FPS signal not being able to be expressed by an integral factor of 60Hz it leads to inconsistent times between the frames. If you play such a 25FPS signal on a 60Hz display every 6th frame would be displayed not for 33.333ms, which would equal 2 frames on a 60Hz display, but for 50ms, which equals 3 frames on a 60Hz display. Most people will be able to perceive this as a hitching.

    However since you claim to know what this is about your reply also shows me that you might be deliberately picking nits since you could just as well use a 30FPS signal on that 60Hz display, where frame times should be a uniform 33.333ms. There most people would still be able to tell the difference.

  113. Re:Correlation Causation by dpidcoe · · Score: 1

    Could those with more expensive video cards also have researched or pay for an ISP with less latency?

    Even assuming you could get the latency numbers, good luck having any choice in the matter of what ISP you use.

    Could those with more expensive video cards also have high quality surround sound*?

    A pair of $10 earbuds will do you better than an expensive surround sound setup. No crosstalk between ears means you might as well have a radar on your screen pointing at sounds.

    I think that the reality is that once it's past a "reasonable" amount, having a smoother framerate is more important. If a video card is pushing 120fps to your 60hz monitor, you're not going to notice when a gunfight suddenly makes it dip to 90fps. You will notice that 30 fps drop though if you're running at a constant 50 otherwise.

    The other factor is smoothness. If there's fast movement on the screen, objects will be jumping around more between frames. The further they teleport, the harder it is for my brain to interpolate the movement and predict where they'll be 300ms into the future

  114. get off my lawn by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

    You young whippersnappers, before most of you were born, the online shooter world was divided into LPBs and HPWs.

    --
    Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  115. Kill to death ratio? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about the alive to not dead ratio? I hate when I have to kill someone again and again until they are dead.

  116. Re: More expensive graphic cards make you better.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nevertheless the study's conclusion is valid. 60 fps has been the minimum standard for 3D PC gaming for the past twenty years.

    Twenty. Years.
    Even then 85 fps gave a competitive edge if your CRT would allow it.
    You might be too young to remember Quake 2 or Unreal, or the excitement when the DooM source code was released, allowing us to break the hardcoded 30fps limit.

  117. Re:Correlation Causation by Ranbot · · Score: 1

    Could those with more expensive video cards also have researched or pay for an ISP with less latency?

    Even assuming you could get the latency numbers, good luck having any choice in the matter of what ISP you use.

    Could those with more expensive video cards also have high quality surround sound*?

    A pair of $10 earbuds will do you better than an expensive surround sound setup. No crosstalk between ears means you might as well have a radar on your screen pointing at sounds.
     

    Re: ISP... I have two ISP options where I live (suburbia). I understand that others may not have options.

    Re: sound.... Agreed on a headphones > speaker system. I should have/meant to say good surround sound headphones, which can be costly, but definitely give an advantage... "a radar on your screen" [as you put it]... those with an expensive video card would probably invest in their sound.