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Little did I realize that The Sims 3 was making my graphics card squeeze out several THOUSAND frames per second. You heard me right. Over 1,000 frames per second in the main menu. No wonder that a three year old game was pushing my temperatures almost to Crysis levels! Most games are pushing your graphics cards unnecessarily - and here I will explain why.
Now, a lot of you may be thinking: 1,000 FPS? GREAT! Well, no. A common myth in PC gaming is that the more FPS you have, the better the game runs. This is true - to a certain extent. After 60FPS, the difference that the human eye can perceive becomes very small. Therefore, pushing your games beyond 60FPS is pointless, right? Wrong. If you are lucky to have a 120Hz monitor and a good set of eyes, then you shouldn't push your games beyond 120FPS.
The rule of thumb is to have your framerate NOT exceed the refresh rate (Hz) of your monitor. Why? Because the monitor physically cannot display more frames per second than the number of times it refreshes per second (measured in Hz).
Therefore, having your PC render excessive FPS is completely useless. Well, unless you're benchmarking it against someone else's PC ;) But still, it makes NO difference in gaming.
How do I solve this?
Simply turn on the game's frame limiter or Vsync! Vertical synchronization (Vsync) is a feature that locks the number of frames per second your GPU can produce to the vertical refresh rate (Hz) of your screen. Usually, enabling Vsync in your global graphics settings or in the game options works. Be wary, though. Sometimes Vsync may be buggy in a certain game, so you might want to use a frame limiter instead. But, in most cases, Vsync is fine, and also helps to reduce screen tearing, which is when your screen starts to split into annyoing sections due to the excess frames per second.
Got a question? Angry at your PC?
Drop me a comment or rage in the comment section below!
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2 comments:
I've been having a problem with my screen when I play Sims 3. I have the Ambitions, Pets, and Supernatural expansions (want to get more, though), and about once a month, my monitor just shuts off and won't connect to my pc for ages. I even tried using another monitor then setting it up as a secondary one and switching them over, which worked once. Last time I just left it for a week and it started working.
My fans go like crazy when I play it, I just tried turning everything down a notch (all on medium or high settings now) but I couldn't find a fps changer thingy, just the thing for Hz which I believe matches my screen anyway. Anything else I can do? I built my pc specifically to play Sims 3 on higher settings since it was killing my laptop D;
Hi Leech,
You may have a faulty graphics card and/or another hardware issue. Try the monitor with another PC to rule out a monitor problem.
Let me know how it goes!
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