Does High FPS make you a better gamer? Ft. Shroud - FINAL ANSWER

You guys loved our latest video using a

high

-speed camera to investigate the real-world performance impact of upgrading to a

high

-refresh rate gaming monitor, but you also got some feedback on our testing methodology and skills. of play, so for the second round we reached Thanks to nvidia for the sponsorship we needed to take our test to the next level. Thanks to them, we are in the Santa Ana esports arena. We have a much wider variety of tests and systems and were able to get some very special ones. guests to come and participate representing the dirty casuals, we have yours truly and paul from paul's hardware and today we are going to be very embarrassed because at the pro player level we have corey here from the washington justice esports team.

As a general idea of ​​what I'm doing today, so we have a couple of excellent Twitch streamers, Mr. Grimms, who went from 144 to 240, I thought it was a slight improvement and like many of you requested the one and Just pass from 60 to 144 is like night and day for me, obviously it is correct, but from 144 to 240. So let's get down to it, can we measure the impact of monitor refresh rate and fps on the game in our subjects? set of five tests ranging from synthetic reaction time tests to aiming tests to put it all together, so behind me I have three identical systems, except they have a key trait modified, so they are all running core i9 9900k processors.

They all run the same 240Hz Acer Predator displays, but their graphics cards have been modified. System number one is running an rtx 2060 super which is capable of running our test games today at between 250 and 300 frames per second and its monitor has been completely unlocked. at 240 hertz this is our best case scenario for competitive

gamer

s or so we think we will see how the results go today system number two is on the other end of the spectrum so our monitor refresh rate has been completely reduced to 60. hertz, but we went even further because having a very high performance graphics card on a 60hz display still gives you

better

responsiveness than if you had a lower performance graphics card, so we downgraded our gpu to a gtx 750.

This will give us between 70 and 85 fps in our games and

final

ly, by popular demand which represents the middle ground, we have our third monitor marked at 144 hertz and connected to a GTX 1650 that will work anywhere. around 150 to 185 200 fps now, just like last time, our test subjects will have no idea what hardware they are sitting on until they actually start playing and we will use high speed cameras to record. not only their test scores that we were able to get from the software, but also the exact points they point at and even how they point, so to accomplish that task, we have a couple of camera prototypes from our friends chronos that are capable to record at 1080p. capturing at a thousand fps for 10 seconds at a time, each of which gives us a total of 20 seconds of capturing at a thousand fps now because that's not enough for some of our tests.

Today, our epic red camera with 8k will be running at 1080p 240fps Hey, how's it going buddy? Okay, yeah, okay, so we set it up so that while we run the engine tests in the game tests, instead of just as a web browser-based skills trainer, the tests are actually designed to test your skills Instead of testing your skill in a game, we actually did a special development for this video in the yprac game trainer so that we could get exactly the data we were looking for, okay? and what is ypak, it's a jasper workshop map that's basically like a combination of a bunch of different skills training things that you can do, test your reaction time, test your rapid fire aiming capabilities, uh, your rates of death by flow, since you have enemies appearing in a shooting gallery, all kinds of interesting things, okay, so we have a lot of tests, we have five different tests and we will run them until we start to see statistical convergence and we can trust our results per player, so you will test with three different frame rates: 60 fps 240. fps and 144 fps to determine where that point of diminishing returns is or if the fps

make

s any difference are excellent players, just excellent players, is it a difference in fps or hertz or are they just fps?

You know what I am saying? What a wonderful question. I'm very happy to work with people who get it today, this is awesome and that matters because if you're running a 60Hz display but your graphics card is outputting 300 frames per second in CS GO and your frame rate is limited, you're effectively getting much newer information on the screen than if your graphics card was only outputting, say, 70 75 frames per second, so I was actually very late to the 120 hertz monitor switch, so when I played Counter-Strike I played at 60 hertz and All the best players I had no money at the time because I was so young and all the best players were 120 hertz, they were on that new right and I was sitting there and I was 60 and I was still doing very well.

I switched to 120 Honestly, it didn't change much, so I really think that if someone played at 60hz long enough, they would play the same as playing at 144 long enough. I guess we'll find out, well there's a lot of that today. uh so I'm cory my name is corey in-game and I'm a damage dealer for washington justice in overwatch uh I didn't really start using 144 240 until I started playing overwatch interesting so that was pretty recent for you. so you're a late converter, how much improvement do you expect to see going from 60 frames per second to 144 and then from 144 to 240? 60 to 144 is like a big jump like 70, like you feel the difference, yeah, right away.

Look at it, yeah, you really have to be looking for that 144 to 240, yeah, to really notice it, but I would say there's definitely a jump like a smaller jump to the other one, maybe like 20. Okay, I started on Twitch over four years. I got really into, I actually started with fighting games, believe it or not, I got into shooters about a year later and then I basically rode the wave of all fps, uh, you know, the evolution from h1z1 to pubg and all the games you know today I understand that I'm supposed to represent a certain kind of

gamer

uh you told me I was probably the best the best of the best the kind of gamer tech enthusiast someone someone who

make

s more gaming computers than the that actually play video games, yes, we have five different tests and we will run them until we start to see statistical convergence and we can be confident in our results per player.

Test number one today is pure reaction time, clicks on the cover to signal readiness. for the test to start and as soon as it turns green, you click again as fast as you can. This tells us his raw reflections. Do you want a Red Bull? What about coffee? Drink coffee, but drink some coffee. Sip at each stage. Yes. you drink it at every stage, so this is a great discussion. Mike was craving coffee and we actually turned him down because we shot the tests out of order and we already did one without caffeine in the system, so now we're just on our own.

I'm going to have to see, that's just it, this is your biological stable state. I'm slow, sorry, I'm slow, yeah, just no, I don't think it's for this test specifically, I don't think so. 60 240 144 I don't think I don't think it's going to make a difference because, I mean, the only time you feel 60 versus 240 is when you move like that and you can feel the tear and everything and it's something you're not used to. but when you're still it's all the same so I don't think anyone knows the difference in my mind. I know it

does

n't feel good because I'm 60 and I'm like, oh this feels terrible, but I haven't actually done legitimate statistics or broken them down and maybe I got less deaths, no I haven't, so one of The things that our audience asked us to find out is whether you are in fact human and with that type. of consistency yeah, I can't say I'm sure it's really good, right?

Yeah, I mean, very consistent in my glory days, maybe 1.5 consistent 1.72 now some of our tests are purely synthetic and a couple of them are really focused on your reaction time now everyone knows that players have basically passed the hill when they turn 30. Do you expect your youth to be an advantage in that type of test against someone like me? I'm 33, I'd say yes, a little, wow! An idiot, do you know what this interview is about? I mean, it helps a little. I would say a lot of it comes down to practicing in the game because being used to being able to see certain things like I was seeing, I'm sure I will. do it in the middle of the double doors and if you're not familiar with doing that every day then it would make a little difference, sure test number two is still a reaction time test but this time it's a practice one, the classic one double doors sniper position in Dust2, so once you shoot to start at random intervals, a counter terrorist player will run through the door and jump.

These are robots, so you will be in the exact same place every time. so right there on the second line of the truck is where it's going to cross, okay, so it's not about aiming, it's not about just holding it steady clicking when you can correct, okay, how come I'm failing right now? 64 here, I'm telling you, I hit this guy at least three times, okay, that was a whiff, but this is bad, I guess this is a tough man, I'll get him eventually, oh boy, I got nothing zero, How is it possible? It seems to me that he is pushing it just to let you know that we double checked the server mark, it's 128, that's not the problem, it's not good, sorry Linus, well, don't apologize to me, apologize to the millions of viewers , oh, okay, can you explain it?

For both of us, the science behind why those shots seemed to hit but didn't register, yes, so at 60 frames and hertz there is a delay in two areas, there is a delay from the state of the game to what is actually happening. sample. on the screen so the guy is actually in a little different place because the rendering took quite a while to get to your monitor, plus your input is also delayed so when you click it will take a little longer get to the game site, so you're getting kind of latency in both directions, that's great.

Is there something I don't know? And you can see that we have multiple frames from our thousand frames per second camera that correspond to a single frame on the monitor because it only updates 60 times a second, so I'm scrolling pretty fast here, so it was a clear mistake, yeah, but this one here, how can you stand on your tiptoes? Because we can't really adjust this now. I'm fine. Well, so this one here is your crosshairs, that one is more debatable, you hit him on the butt, so that little difference could be exactly what they just explained to us, so maybe it will be interesting, hey, I hope so, because That makes me look really bad, so I'm going to tell you something that you absolutely smoked

shroud

and corey in that 60 hertz test.

Do you think you could train at 60 hertz and hit as many targets as you did with a higher refresh rate? Yes, definitely, yes, I can't because, honestly, I like it. when I was like doing the test and I felt like you know that slight delay is almost like a pattern right, you don't want to push it too fast otherwise you'll come up short, so I mentioned before that I come from fighting games, right, we had a big lag between Xbox and Playstation, especially when it comes to three frame inputs and stuff like that, for this one it's a bit similar if you press it too early, even though you feel like you're sure you're going to hit the target, you're going to hit the target much sooner, so you have to get into your head that it's like a light pattern because you have to like this one.

Master a lag with the highest refresh rate, you just have to master the reaction time more. I would say it's more towards that aspect. High refresh rate

does

n't make you a

better

player, but it makes it easier to be a better player. I would say yes, uh, I'm older now, I'm a father, it's not like that affects your reaction time, it shouldn't happen because of your reaction, did you sleep well last night? You know it wasn't bad, it wasn't. bad, I only got up twice to change diapers if that makes you feel better.

shroud

only went 2 for 30 on this really yes and same for corey the legit pro gamer oh so the reason you're saying I should be a legit pro gamer too no that's not what I'm saying uh Grimm got it four out of ten wow consistently has a reputation for being pretty fast so you mentioned something really interesting to me you said that because we're running at such a low frame rate you can't really trust your eyes and you're losing muscle memory quite a bitHit rates were much lower at 60 fps 60 Hertz than at our highest refresh rates and most of our shots were actually only a few milliseconds apart.

We also have a couple. There are several shots here that look like they could have been hits, but ended up failing because at 60 frames per second the target location isn't updated as frequently, meaning what our camera and therefore your eyes were seeing, it was already outdated. The moment he landed the shot, Mr. Grimm showed us that with enough practice some of this disadvantage can be overcome. His experience with rhythm games allowed him to quickly become familiar with the speed of the queue, so that's what the opponent looks like and then predict when. would cross his crosshairs, but everyone, including Brims, performed better at frame rates above 60 fps, showing that with more information to predict trajectory and velocity, everyone will perform better.

We actually had Shroud repeat this test at 60 hertz on his monitor, but at a good frame rate. above 200 and the result was much better because the input lag and overall latency are reduced, but you still didn't get as much results as when you had high fps and a high refresh rate in the Overwatch movie test at 60 frames and 60 hertz we definitely saw differences in target movement - it was slower and with more corrective movement after the initial movement. Additionally, shots would often be taken a few milliseconds after the target disappeared. The ghosting that occurs regardless of the refresh rate is also higher at 60 hertz and the image shift between refreshes is higher, making everything look blurrier at high speeds, which requires slowing down. our bombing site defense test or flow state at 60 frames and movement in hertz is slower because the position of the target in the game is less clear, the timing of shots and the prediction and tracking of movement is worse and movement between targets ends up being slower and less precise.

Because the subject has to readjust, as expected, Shroud's runs on the bombsite defense flow state test were the fastest, although not the most consistent. What was surprising was that his runs fastest were at 144 frames and hertz, this seems to have been due to the training effect where he had started to recognize patterns in the test when he arrived at the 144hz station with mr grims and paul, neither of whom had played much cs go, We actually found that the less familiar you are with the activity, the more the results align with our expectations, so their runs were faster and more consistent as the refresh rate and frame rate increased, we also found that I finished being a great example of the effect of training.

I did my 144 frames and hertz test first, then I did 60 and then 240 and my run times ended up improving as I went, so overall 60 fps at 60 hertz clearly got the worst results in each test, while some Individual runs had better scores, consistency between runs was generally much better at 240hz and the most predictable improvements were actually found in more casual players who didn't have as much game sense and muscle memory to rely on, so Aiming in the game could be described as a function of muscle memory response prediction and confirmation. When a target appears, you start aiming at it. based on your current knowledge of where the mouse is and where it should be as it moves, you receive an image and correct or continue your movement until you have reached your target when your target moves, you predict where the target will be and when based in a combination of pre-existing knowledge of speed and your brain calculates speed and trajectory based on what you see on the monitor, so with lower frame and refresh rates the following disadvantages are present, you have a less up-to-date target Information because the frames are displayed for longer, your movement is more blurry thanks to the transition of frames between updates and you have a worse estimate of speed and trajectory due to that lack of information, these effects can be greatly overcome with training, but there will be a limit to the situations in which that training can be applied, so I was not surprised to find that 60fps players are at a significant disadvantage compared to high refresh rate players, but I was It was surprising how big the difference was between 144 and 240.

So, all things being equal, high fps and a high refresh rate monitor will make you a great gamer, but they will certainly make you a better gamer, so using a powerful graphics card like an nvidia rtx 2080 ti, thanks again to our sponsor for making this whole video happen to see things sooner and have a better chance of hitting what you're aiming for helps and I can't wait to see how this plays out translates at 300 fps 300 hertz and more. It's a preview of a part 3 I'll let you be the judge