Refresh rate and FPS

Does the refresh rate of the monitor have any influence on FPS? Let's say your monitor has a refresh of 60Hz. That means that the picture is redrawn 60 times a second. So it stands to reason that the max FPS on that monitor would be 60 FPS since the screen only gets redrawn 60 times a second. Anyone have any insight on this?

Your FPS would be capped at the refresh rate if you have set your graphics card to wait for vertical refresh. Otherwise it would go beyond that to however fast your computer can handle.

Yes, as long as vertical sync is disabled your FPS will go however high it can. Unless the game has a "soft cap". I don't believe GW does though. If vertical sync is enabled your FPS will not go above your refresh rate.

How can I disable my graphics card's wait for vertical refresh?

There is an in game option.

F11->Graphics->Wait for Vertical Sync


As well as one in your GFX card control panel.

R Click on your desktop->Properties->Settings->Advanced->Click on your GFX name-> Performance and quality settings. In the settings box there should be:

Vertical Sync Application Controlled.
(Application Controlled, is what you would want it set at btw.)

Somewhere in the box. Or something like that, obviously depending on your graphics card, what drivers you are using etc. That was the way you would get to it on the Nvidia drivers using the classic control panel.

Is there any advantage and/or disadvantage to doing this?

I'm currently capped on my sync rate of 60Hz.. would there be any issue's (ghosting? jaggies? etc) by telling the game to fps at ignore vertical sync rather than capping at 60?

Some games have graphics issues if vsync isn't enabled. Generally disable it unless you're having graphics problems.

can anyone solve this problem plz?

If you disable v-synch you tend to get what is called "tearing" where a frame is halfway drawn to the display buffer and then the buffer gets displayed before it finishes, resulting in an image that is a composite of two different frames. Tearing is most noticeable when viewing a vertically tall texture (like a building) while panning horizontally -- the top and bottom of the building sometimes won't line up!

Like CHTHON said, it creates a "line" shear that jarrs your eyes nastily when you dont have Vsync on.

My computer can run GW at around 200 FPS, but I need Vsync on because the shearing on my really fast monitor is jarring to me. I have very focused vision so it causes me headaches.

Therefore, my FPS is locked at 60 FPS (At 60Hz, it would be 75 at 75hz, but no point except to stress your monitor more). Which, to be honest, is more than enough for any game (human eyes stop noticing the difference at around 24 FPS for most things). Never dips below 60 so I don't have a problem. Large framerates mostly are for bragging rights, as your video card is processing enough power to do everything.

On my 19" WS LCD at 1400x900, 2ms refresh, 60hz. Games tear too much for me without Vsync on, so I turn it on and if I want to brag, I can turn it off and screencap my FPS. But 60/75 FPS is plenty ideal for any game.

ALSO: Guild Wars DOES have a vsync option, but your display driver's control panel trumps all else. If you turn Vsync off, make sure its off in the control panel as well (at least for your selected game), or else some really nasty stuff will happen.

The higher your monitor refresh rate the less stress there is on the eyes. And if your monitor can run 75Hz, I don't see how you would be stressing it since it was made to go up to 75Hz.

This is true for CRT's, but not LCD's. LCD's have constant pixel luminance (light/color stays fixed until updated), while CRT pixels suffer strobe fade (pixels start fading immediately after each refresh strobe). CRT's are usually runned at >60hz to avoid visible flicker to the human eye.

If you're running GW on an LCD, just keep V-Sync on... there's no real benefit unless you're playing a fast-paced FPS game like UT3 or similar.

GW doesn't have a softcap, I can almost reach 3000 fps.


I've been told V-Sync makes you LCD's live longer because the pixels don't get flashed so much.

The above is probably true since LCD pixels can only switch colors a finite number of times before going bad. That number is pretty large, but an LCD monitor running abnormally high vertical refresh rates will hit that limit sooner than similar monitors running standard 60hz.

This can get confusing because there are different meanings to FPS. But first, some history:
For various technical reasons, the frequency of AC current used for general power distribution (the 110VAC that comes from the wall socket) was set at 60Hz (or cycles per second). The original television system (before HDTV) was also, for various technical reasons, set to the same 60Hz. (although the picture was "interlaced" meaning there were actually only 30 FPS)

On CRT monitors, the electron beam scans across the image hitting each "pixel" in turn. As soon as it goes past the pixel, the pixel starts to fade - if you stopped scanning, the picture would just fade away. This results in "flicker" which can cause eyestrain and headaches even if you can't consciously see it. (On TVs there's usually a lot of motion going on so flicker is not that noticeable). Early CRTs were basically TVs without a tuner, they shared many of the same components and had a 60Hz refresh rate. When eye strain began to show up as a problem, CRT monitors started to use more expensive and stable power supplies so that their refresh rates could go beyond 60Hz. (And thus began the FPS wars. ) Of course, video standards and graphics adapters, also had to be able to go beyond 60FPS.

LCD monitors don't have the pixel fade problem. If you stop scanning an LCD it just keeps displaying the same picture. The 60Hz refresh rate of most LCDs goes back again to the 60Hz of the 110VAC power - it's easier to keep any fluctuations in the power supply from affecting the picture, if the picture scans at the same rate. As has been said, 60 FPS is more than enough to give the eye/brain the appearance of smooth motion and without the flickering, eye strain is not as big a problem (and when it is, it's related to other things such as background lighting and viewing distance.)

By the way, just to add more technical mumbo jumbo - the whole Vertical sync thing goes back to the early days of television also. Basically, a video "frame" is scanned starting from the top left. The scan goes from left to right, and then moves down to the next line and goes left to right, then the next line, etc. When it gets to the bottom right, the scan stops and the scanning beam (in old CRT TVs and monitors) goes back to the top left again. The number of times this happens is known as the Vertical Refresh Rate. (There is also a Horizontal refresh rate, but that isn't mentioned too often and doesn't apply here.)
There was a certain amount of time set aside for the beam to return to the top, during which the video information is "blanked" (turned off) and this is known as the Vertical Blanking Interval. Someone got the idea, once computer displays got fast enough, that it would make less tearing, and other artifacts, on the screen if they only updated the video information during this time that the display is "blanked". Whether or not the image is actually blanked anymore doesn't matter, there's still a period of time during which nothing is being displayed on the screen at the start of each scan. V-sync sets the system to only update the display during this vertical blanking period.
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FPS can also refer to the number of times per second that the program itself - in this case, Guild Wars - can run through a loop which updates all of the game content. Depending upon the power of your system (cpu, memory, gpu, etc.), the game is often able to go through this loop more than 60 times a second.
In some cases (stand alone games for example), if you turn on Vertical-sync, the game will go through the loop, and then wait for the next vertical sync to update the display. If you turn off V-sync, the game will update as fast as the system will allow, but there's most often nothing different to update.
In other cases, (particularly on-line games like GW, or games with players connected on-line like some FPSs), the game will constantly update the content based upon the info it receives from the network. In this case, if you turn on V-sync, the game only updates the display a the vertical refresh rate, but may update it's own content more often. If you turn off V-sync, the game runs as fast as the system will handle, and updates the display buffer as fast as the system will allow, but again, there's most often nothing different to update. (which is why most of the screen shots you see of people's FPS are staring at a dark corner, not moving - nothing is happening - weeee!)

Another aspect of this to consider is that, whether v-sync is turned On or not, the display itself only scans at it's own vertical refresh rate.
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The third aspect of this, which is more important to on-line games, is the FPS or "updates-per-second", coming from the game server. This can, depending upon the power of the server and the speed of the network, be actually a lot less than 60FPS. If V-sync is Off and the game content (specifically, the viewpoint or objects on screen) changes, the "frame buffer's" contents (which is the memory from which the final display is read) can change in the middle of a scan, resulting in "tearing" as mentioned above.
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All three of these things can affect the overall FPS of the game. Generally speaking, however, there is no real point to turning off V-sync. 60 FPS is more than enough to convince the brain that smooth motion is happening and whether it's on or not has little effect upon the actual game update rate from the server.