120hz gaming... my thoughts on it, not as smooth as I remember CRT

[Phusius]

120hz gaming has intrigued me for awhile now. Made the jump two weeks ago to an asus 120hz monitor, colors and backlight bleed are not an issue thank goodness, I am on Splendid mode with contrast at 70

Now the main reason I got this monitor was people saying 120hz has a smooth feel to it... and honestly I can't tell.

I mean I set everything to 120hz in control panel, I can tell my mouse feels smoother in windows or browsing the internet... and I can tell it is a little smoother in games... but honestly its so minimal a difference I think I am just going to sell it and go back down to 60hz... to each his own? :/

[xenocide]

The major issue is that all 120Hz LCD's use TN Panels, which are just really poor quality. When the day rolls around that they have 120Hz LCD's using IPS Panels or something equivalent in image quality, Monitors that support 120Hz costing around $300-400 will make sense since you are getting a very high quality product with a lot of benefit. I got a 120Hz LCD because for FPS games it does make a huge difference.

[Phusius]

Yeah but a lot of FPS games I play like MW3 online cap out at 90 fps online anyway... so its kind of like well shit. lol

And honestly I have owned IPS before the Yamakasi Catleap had great colors on it, but on Splendid Mode with contrast at 70 this Asus is not far behind in color reproduction... maybe I have an untrained eye or something, but I couldn't notice much difference in games. IPS is nice though I won't lie I could tell the overall colors were better, just not by much

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Yeah but a lot of FPS games I play like MW3 online cap out at 90 fps online anyway... so its kind of like well shit. lol

That's because MW3 is a really poorly handled console port.

[Phusius]

Can you recommend me some fun FPS games then besides BF3? I tried it and hate it for some reason, I mean I like it overall, but I get my ass handed to me every time and it just is not fun anymore. MW3 kept me around because I have some bad games, but most of the time I am kicking ass. That rewards me to keep returning, heh.

I really want to buy this monitor, but waiting for it to get free ship or go on sale. ASUS VS229H-P Black 21.5" 5ms (GTG) HDMI IPS-Panel...

[the54thvoid]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Can you recommend me some fun FPS games then besides BF3? I tried it and hate it for some reason, I mean I like it overall, but I get my ass handed to me every time and it just is not fun anymore. MW3 kept me around because I have some bad games, but most of the time I am kicking ass. That rewards me to keep returning, heh.

I really want to buy this monitor, but waiting for it to get free ship or go on sale. ASUS VS229H-P Black 21.5" 5ms (GTG) HDMI IPS-Panel...

BF3 is much more fun when you play with friends in a squad. Playing alone in a random server often leads to frustration and much death but it is a much more involving game than MW3 - probably why it is both great fun and also greatly infuriating.

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by the54thvoid

BF3 is much more fun when you play with friends in a squad. Playing alone in a random server often leads to frustration and much death but it is a much more involving game than MW3 - probably why it is both great fun and also greatly infuriating.

The best games tend to strike a balance between Frustration and Fun. There are plenty of solid FPS' that are a lot of fun; Tribes: Ascend (F2P), Blacklight: Retribution (F2P), Borderlands (very fun with friends, and BL2 should be out the end of the summer and will be amazing), Team Fortress 2, Left for Dead 1&2, and Portal 2 all come to mind. Unfortunately since CoD has kind of saturated the market there aren't a lot of high-quality FPS games coming out these days, and very few of them try anything new and interesting. I think a lot of companies that made classic FPS games are going to come back in a big way soon (Epic Games and ID Software namely) since the whole Modern Combat FPS has been beaten to death.

[robal]

You won't see the difference between 60 and 120 fps.
You will see the difference between 30 and 60 fps.
The main advantage of 120Hz display is better behaviour of double buffered VSYNC.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by xenocide

The major issue is that all 120Hz LCD's use TN Panels, which are just really poor quality. When the day rolls around that they have 120Hz LCD's using IPS Panels or something equivalent in image quality, Monitors that support 120Hz costing around $300-400 will make sense since you are getting a very high quality product with a lot of benefit. I got a 120Hz LCD because for FPS games it does make a huge difference.

Remember there are TN panels and TN panels. A good TN panel can be better than a bad IPS.

[Mathragh]

Originally Posted by robal

You won't see the difference between 60 and 120 fps.
You will see the difference between 30 and 60 fps.
The main advantage of 120Hz display is better behaviour of double buffered VSYNC.

This is actually not true.

The difference between 30 and 60 FPS is that your brain actually can comfortly convert the frames to a "smooth motion" at 60FPS. At 30 FPS this is a lot harder, and this requires more effort from the brain.

This does not mean that at 60FPS, your visual cortex is already saturated and wont benefit from more frames per second. 120FPS definately adds to motion smoothness, its just less obvious as when going from 30 to 60 FPS. There are ofc people more or less receptive to this increase in FPS, and then there are also things like microstutter which do not get better when going from 60 to 120FPS which may add to the feeling of 120Hz not being better.

I personally still get annoyed from time to time when the image still appears not as fluid as I'd like in some fast paced scene and with 60FPS steady.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Frick

Remember there are TN panels and TN panels. A good TN panel can be better than a bad IPS.

Yes. ^^

My Iiyama TN monitor & LG 120Hz monitors both have a very good picture - TN caveats such as viewing angles not withstanding.

@Phusius

If you don't notice much difference, then I wonder if things are set properly?

1 is the refresh set to 120Hz in gaming mode?

2 You need to have vsync turned on to lock the PC output to the monitor refresh

3 Have you tried running Fraps? If your PC isn't outputting a solid 120fps, then animation won't look smooth, but the judder won't be as noticeable as at a 60Hz refresh. Please run Fraps and let us know what it reports


www.fraps.com

[Phusius]

qubit, do I need to have Vysnc on? I have adaptive vsync on.... maybe I need to take that off and just put it on regularly, and yes 120 fps in some games at 120hz do feel smoother, I will probably keep this monitor, but heh, I just thought 120hz was going to be smoother then this.

[qubit]

I've just seen your setup and it's about as high end as one needs to get it, especially with that GTX 680. That means achieving a solid 120Hz isn't all that hard, depending on game and video settings. It's ok to leave adaptive sync on, as it doesn't reduce your framerate any - it helps to keep it up a bit, if anything.

What you need to do, is to get your system doing a solid 120fps and try it out for a bit - any game you like. Then play the same game at 60Hz and the difference should be quite noticeable. It will feel laggier and less fluid and that's even on a CRT!

[phanbuey]

nvidia is having driver problems and there is microstuttering when v-sync is enabled on 6x series cards. They say next driver release should fix it. Disable v-sync to see if it get smoother.

[Phusius]

Even MW3 single player can't keep up with 120 fps, it dips down to low 80's for most shooting scenes and when turning to look around in the world, if I stand still it takes it a sec but it will got to 120 fps. my gtx 680 is OC'ed to 1215 core btw.

so yeah... I think I am just going to stick a 60hz monitor

[caleb]

I don't get it. Even if its not doing 120FPS the screen fills it up to 120Hz anyway so you see 120Hz. What does it have to do with FPS?!

[Phusius]

now I am confused... thanks Caleb, lol

[cmaxvt]

Originally Posted by caleb

I don't get it. Even if its not doing 120FPS the screen fills it up to 120Hz anyway so you see 120Hz. What does it have to do with FPS?!

Your monitor is always capable of refreshing at 120hz, but that doesn't mean the game is able to display 120 frames for each instance that the monitor refreshes.

120 FPS lines up nicely with 120hz, but if your video card is only sending out 80 FPS, then you are only seeing 80 Frames each second, not 120. The monitor may be ready to receive 120, but that doesn't mean your system is sending that many.

Plain and simple if you want to really experience 120 FPS gaming, you need a 120hz monitor and a system that can pump 120 frames out. My system currently (see sig, it's not bad) has a hard time running games with max settings at 120 frames. However, if you turn down some settings like AA, filtering quality, Bloom, etc, you might see more steady 100+ FPS.

The trick is to find a middle ground where FPS and image quality match for the system you have. My old system, I used to just turn everything on low just to try to get more FPS =P

[EarthDog]

Originally Posted by qubit

I've just seen your setup and it's about as high end as one needs to get it, especially with that GTX 680. That means achieving a solid 120Hz isn't all that hard, depending on game and video settings. It's ok to leave adaptive sync on, as it doesn't reduce your framerate any - it helps to keep it up a bit, if anything.

What you need to do, is to get your system doing a solid 120fps and try it out for a bit - any game you like. Then play the same game at 60Hz and the difference should be quite noticeable. It will feel laggier and less fluid and that's even on a CRT!

Nvidia's Adaptive Vsync DOES limit your FPS to 60/120Hz. It shuts OFF when it goes below that value to eliminate stutter. Hell all Vsync limits the max FPS to the refresh rate of the monitor. When VSync is on, microstutter can be introduced when the FPS need to drop below 60 since the FPS will jump straight from 60 to 30 and back without a smooth transition. When VSync is off, screen tearing could happen when the FPS exceed the monitor’s refresh rate. Adaptive VSync turns on VSync when the FPS is high to eliminate tearing, and it turns VSync off when frames are below 60 to keep the FPS high as possible without jumping to 60-30-60. So, in essence, Adaptive VSync narrows the gap between max and min FPS resulting in a smoother gaming experience.

(from our 680 review)

[qubit]

Originally Posted by EarthDog

Nvidia's Adaptive Vsync DOES limit your FPS to 60Hz. It shuts OFF when it goes below that value to eliminate stutter. Hell all Vsync limits the max FPS to the refresh rate of the monitor. When VSync is on, microstutter can be introduced when the FPS need to drop below 60 since the FPS will jump straight from 60 to 30 and back without a smooth transition. When VSync is off, screen tearing could happen when the FPS exceed the monitor’s refresh rate. Adaptive VSync turns on VSync when the FPS is high to eliminate tearing, and it turns VSync off when frames are below 60 to keep the FPS high as possible without jumping to 60-30-60. So, in essence, Adaptive VSync narrows the gap between max and min FPS resulting in a smoother gaming experience.

(from our 680 review)

I think you've misunderstood what I've said, ED - we're on the same page. Your explanation of adaptive vsync is exactly what it does. As the OP said he was using it, I simply said that his fps will be a little higher, meaning when it drops below the refresh of the monitor, which it's locked at.

Of course vsync limits you to the monitor refresh and it's the only way to get true smooth animation.

[EarthDog]

You are correct. I need more coffee.

To really test this out though, no vsync should be enabled as vsync puts a picture /refresh.

EDIT: Its kind of hard to tell smoothness when vsync is making it artifically smooth in the first place!

[qubit]

Originally Posted by EarthDog

You are correct. I need more coffee.

To really test this out though, no vsync should be enabled as vsync puts a picture /refresh.

Dammit, I need more coffee! Don't worry, I'm an expert at missing the obvious too.

[cmaxvt]

I still think vsync causes pretty noticable mouse input lag.. is this not the case at 120 hz? My experience on my old 60hz monitor was that.. you turn on vsync and it feels like you're aiming through mud.

edit: ps, I have yet to turn on vsync at 120 hz cuz it never tears

[Jstn7477]

I've never really noticed input lag at 60Hz to be honest, but 120Hz (when your computer can get that high) is extremely smooth and responsive for me. USB (at standard settings) polls at 125Hz anyway so you should not have any real lag TBH.

I play TF2 competitively and it's great maintaining 120Hz. Everything is really smooth and I can have VSYNC on while having a constant tickrate of 66, as if you VSYNC at 60Hz you'll actually not receive 6.6 ticks per second. A lot of the Counter-Strike people probably still use CRTs as well, as 100 tick servers probably still exist for that game.

Remember, you can set the VG236H(E) to 50/60/100/110/120Hz if I remember correctly at 1080p, so you can always turn it down if 120Hz is "too much" which it definitely isn't for me.

[cmaxvt]

I actually found that.. when I put my 60 hz monitor on Vsync my mouse just felt completely mucked down, like it was molasses. Turn it off, tearing gets gross but it felt much much faster. I don't think it has anything to do with physical input lag through the usb cable, but visual lag of when your mouse moves and the monitor actually waiting for the vsync to put things where they go. Either way, at 120hz I never need vsync because I never get tearing =D