What's the difference between Frame Rate and Refresh Rate?
So I've been tweaking my Steamdeck settings and whilst I don't consider myself a total noob to this..I'm legitimately not sure what the difference is between the two, or which is more important to the overall smoothness of the game I'm playing.
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Frame rate is how many frames per second your game is running at, refresh rate is how many times per second your monitor refreshes. So 60fps at 60hz means you’re running and seeing 60fps properly.
If your screen is at 30hz, and your game is running at 60fps, you’re only seeing 30fps.
Try to keep them matched up for a better experience.
You forgot "frame latency" 😅
Yeah it's a significantly better experience if your game is running about twice as fast as your monitor. Up until the 144Hz+ range where you can just set them the same.
Theoretically, is there any reason to set a game to lock at 30fps but then run the display at say 60hz?
There is a small yes, but not for that big of a gap. There is some minimal advantage, which is if the framerate goes above that of a screen(even at 30 fps caps, you might hit 31 occasionally depending on how it's limited), you get screen tearing. Screen tearing is where new and old frame overlap causing the image to tear. VSYNC and other tech avoids this, but comes at a cost of a small delay in framerate.
So the solution is simply to cap framerate either to a divisible part of the framerate, eg. 30 fps for 60 Hz screens, 60 fps for 120 Hz. You want divisible because if you create 35 fps, the frames will not be done at the same time as the screen is with showing a frame. Thus the need to have it semi matched up.
But this is a rather big loss for a good screen, so you'd like to just cap fps to a few frames below the screen Hz. Modern technologies deal with that by talking better with the screen, so the screen shows a frame until given a next one. GSYNC and FreeSync are the ones that allow variable framerate without needing to match screen Hz and FPS. (There are some limitations, particularly they can be limited to some framerate ranges iirc, and if you go above screen refresh rate you'll still have either screen tearing or VSYNC kick in with that extra delay.)
I recently got my first FreeSync monitor and it's the best thing ever. Everything looks so smooth!
If your PC cannot keep a stable 60 fps due to performance issues it is better to lock it at 30.
For power saving. If you play unlocked then the engine generates more frames while consuming more power.
Trying to keep them matched up isn’t always the best idea.
Your inputs are processed more often if you let the framerate go uncapped.