Guide to graphic Display Settings for game players (7) (The Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide)

Guide to graphic display settings for game players (7)

Translated by Koroush Ghazi

7. Graphics settings-refreshing Rate

Update Rate

The refresh rate and the number of frames per second are not confused. FPS indicates how fast your video card can output independent frames per second. The refresh rate is a separate attribute of the CRT display: the number of refresh times per second, no matter how many frames the video card has or what type of images will be displayed on the screen. Most of the things described in this chapter are for CRT monitors. However, if you have LCD monitors, read them as you will see, this content is helpful for interpreting the response time in the LCD display.

 

 

 

Conventional CRT computer monitors work like your TVs. They have a similar working principle: There is an electron gun behind a glass tube filled with phosphorus. To generate an image, the electron gun moves and emits an electron beam to the glass tube to light up the phosphorus points and form an image. The electron beam starts from the upper left corner of the screen and quickly draws a row to the bottom of the screen. Once the electron beam reaches the lowest end, the electron beam closes and starts from the upper left corner. The pause between refreshes is called the Vertical Blanking Interval ). The display refresh itself at an incredible speed every second, so even if the screen is really black at a certain time, It is waiting for the electron gun to be re-drawn, your eyes-for the moment, you can still see the previous images.

The usage frequency (Hz) of the refresh rate is the number of times your monitor redraws the entire screen per second. Therefore, a 60Hz update rate means that your monitor will redraw the content of the screen 60 times in a row within one second; 85Hz means 85 times, and so on. This is quite straightforward, but remember, it is a description of how fast your display refreshes the image with an electron beam, not how many FPS your system actually produces or shows. Let's analyze the differences.

 

FPS vs. Refreshing Rate

As mentioned earlier, FPS and refresh rate are two independent tasks. Even if the images on your monitor do not change anything (just like the 2D images on your Windows desktop ), or your 3D game does not actually provide enough new frames (for example, the game runs at a 25FPS rate of 60Hz ), your screen will still be repainted with a fixed number of times at the current display refresh rate; if your FPS is lower than your refresh rate, the display will simply repaint some frames several times.

However, if your FPS is higher than your refresh rate, your monitor will not actually be able to display all these frames, which will cause a small malfunction of the image effect, this is called Tearing ). To prevent this, you can enable an option called Vertical Synchronization (VSync. However, there is something worth considering here: if VSync is enabled, your refresh rate and FPS will be related to each other-synchronization between them, therefore, your FPS will be dropped. All of this will be explained in the vertical synchronization chapter.

 

Screen flashing)

Because the CRT actually lights up on a black screen to refresh itself. If the intensity of refreshing is insufficient at a certain time point, your eyes will realize that there is a slight interval between the two refreshes, this is also called flashing ). This is why all CRT monitors support a minimum update rate of 60Hz, because most people will not notice this obvious flash at this absolute minimum rate. Movie projectors use duplicate shutter movement and television uses Interlace to increase their update rate or flashing frequency, at least 60Hz or more, these enhancements even when the source materials they operate are 24 and 30PFS, respectively.

For these frames, not every new frame turns black. When the new frame is used to replace the old frame, the old frame is always displayed. So low frame rate will bring bad effects to your eyes. The cause of visual flashing is actually the constant refreshing of the CRT screen, which will change the brightness continuously. Therefore, the low update rate is very bad, because it is like someone holding a torch in front of your eyes, or constantly switching the lights in your room.

The so-called "minimum acceptable rate of refreshing" describes the speed at which different things continuously pass through the human eye. In this regard, animals are much faster than humans. For example, predators in birds can capture more information. Therefore, even at the 80Hz update rate, they will notice the flash. The human eye cannot see these obvious flashes at a frequency above 60Hz, but as we described in the FPS chapter, after testing, the human eye can detect one frame of 200 frames in a second. So even if you don't notice a significant flash at a low update rate, subconsciously it will still cause headaches, eye fatigue, or even nausea.

Different CRT sizes and resolutions have different update rates, which may also affect flashing. In general, the higher the resolution used on the CRT, the lower the maximum possible refresh rate under this resolution. This is because the screen refresh speed of the electron gun can only be so fast-if you give it more things to re-draw, the slower it will be. The larger the screen you see, the higher the update rate you need to prevent flashing. This is why 60Hz is the most effective for a 15-inch display, but it is no longer suitable for a 19-inch or larger screen. So how fast is a reasonable update rate?

 

Recommended update rate

All these discussions emphasize the basic recommendation values about the update rate. However, due to human eyes, these are just guiding rules. Everyone feels different about the fault tolerance value, so you may feel a flash when it is too high or too low than others.

Note: The Flash Caused by all the discussions below has nothing to do with the LCD display, and the LCD will not flash-see the response time section.

First, to check the maximum update rate supported by your monitor at each resolution, you need to refer to their user manual or find their serial numbers and reference manuals online.

Then, to set the maximum update rate for each resolution of the display in Windows XP, you should first install the driver of the display, which comes from the disk provided by your display vendor or through the vendor's website. Use the Refresh Force tool recommended here. This tool is easy to use, and almost everything is set automatically. If you click the "auto-pop Settings" button, you can provide you with a list of the maximum supported update rates for each resolution of the monitor. Please refer to my article on ATI Catalyst Tweak and the "update rate correction" section in the Nvidia Forceware Tweak article for more methods. Do not set the update rate to a value higher than the value detected by your monitor manual or these tools, such as Refresh Force-this will lead to an "out-of-frequency" error and your monitor damage. A display cannot be refreshed at a rate higher than the maximum refresh rate it supports. This is a hardware limitation and cannot be forcibly increased.

The minimum update rate supported by all monitors is 60Hz, but this is not optimal for CRT monitors. This is the default update rate set for each resolution in Windows, but unfortunately most people will feel flashing and uncomfortable at 60Hz of CRT. After research, we will now set the minimum acceptable refresh rate of the CRT to 70-72Hz, which is also the recommended minimum refresh rate for all resolutions. On a 19-inch display, most people do not see a sudden flash. Because you spend a lot of time seeing your desktop, I strongly recommend you set the update rate to 85 or even 100Hz, especially when your display is larger. This will reduce your discomfort for a long time.

The problem is that many CRT monitors do not support high refresh rates, especially when playing games with certain resolutions (such as 1280x1024 or higher ). If you still use a CRT display, but it does not support 70Hz (or better, 85Hz) or a higher frequency at the normal resolution, then you will still see flashing, or you may feel a headache or eye fatigue after a long period of play at a certain resolution, you need to reduce your resolution or increase the refresh rate; or consider using an LCD display, in this way, the system will not flash at different resolutions or sizes. Do not damage the health of your eyes for a long period of time to save the cost of the monitor upgrade.

 

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