Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

Warning for game developers: PCGamingWiki staff members will only ever reach out to you using the official press@pcgamingwiki.com mail address.
Be aware of scammers claiming to be representatives or affiliates of PCGamingWiki who promise a PCGW page for a game key.

Glossary:Frame rate (FPS)

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 12:17, 12 September 2012 by Andytizer (talk | contribs)
This page may require cleanup to meet basic quality standards. You can help by modifying the article. The discussion page may contain useful suggestions.

The frame rate, denoted by Frames per second (or FPS), is the speed at which the videocard updates the scene being displayed on screen. The more powerful a graphics card, the higher a FPS can be displayed. A game being played at a low FPS will appear choppy compared to a game at a high FPS. 60 FPS is often a good goal to shoot for when adjusting video options, providing a more fluid image while still providing decent graphical fidelity.

Measuring FPS

Most games that feature an in-game console will have some command to display FPS. Just search for "(game) console commands" to see if one does exist.

If a particular game does not feature such a command, the utility Fraps can be used to display the FPS in game. Simply download the program, install it, and run it, and a small display will show up in game displaying the current FPS.

Frame-rate (hardware)

Possible causes

There can be a host of different causes to sudden decrease in frame-rate. When trouble-shooting take note of new hardware, age, compatibility, possible damage caused by (and not limited to) power outage, and all changes made to the system in the time before the performance drop.

Sudden drop in frame-rate on older systems

This is often caused by overheating of the graphics card, particularly on a PC that haven't been dusted out in a while. The graphics card will in the event of overheating turn its performance down to a minimum to cool off and safely continue working. Note that this is in contrast to many CPU models, which will just turn off the computer altogether.

Sudden drop in frame-rate on new hardware

  • Performance issues can arise between incompatible hardware - A too powerful graphics card can turn into a bottleneck for the computer by putting a too great demand on the CPU.
  • Some graphic cards require more power than others. Check your Power Supply Unit (PSU), and compare your new graphics card with the older. Other hardware can also affect the total power usage.