Which is more important to you 60FPS or better graphics??

[ED-209]

Obviously mostly aimed at console players, this has become a discussion point recently after all the fuss surrounding Gotham Knights.

it’s gotten to the point now where they offer the choice of 60FPS or better graphics even on consoles, console players didn’t have to worry about such things at one point.

Do what do you think? While playing Deathloop I switched to high graphics mode and whilst the graphical difference was barely even noticeable while the frame rate drop definitely was.

Perhaps it depends what kind I’m of game you’re playing.

 

[StarMan]

I happened upon this interesting article from Digital Foundry yesterday on the subject - Why the return of 30fps console games is inevitable

It's a tough one for me, which is why I always toggle between performance / quality and waste a stupid amount of time scrutinizing each mode on new games (I'm on PS5). My partner is a different story. The moment she played her first game at 60FPS, it's now 60FPS - no question.

I like the higher resolution, sharper detail & improved shadow / lighting effects that come with quality modes. I played Horizon Forbidden West on quality mode at release for the reasons mentioned - although that wasn't a tough choice given performance mode was somewhat broken. Recently, I played God of War: Ragnarok on quality mode, but at 40FPS. At the moment I'm playing the next-gen version of Witcher 3; performance mode is a no-brainer with the quality mode sitting in around 25FPS - too low and hard on the eyes.

I would prefer resolution when I can justify the framerate cost. If I can have a quality mode that is implemented well (a stable 30FPS, for starters; well-balanced motion blur) and the quality is a noticeable improvement on performance, I may lean towards quality. If the quality difference is marginal, then I'd say the framerate cost is too high.

40FPS is a great option for those with 120hz monitors. At first, it can look a little like fast stop-motion animation, but your eyes adjust fairly quickly. That's another thing - switching between modes frequently. Sure, when you're evaluating modes it's understandable. But if you are playing at 60FPS and jump down to 30FPS, it's going to look choppy. But if you stick with 30FPS, your eyes will adjust. I played RDR2 several months back after playing Ghost of Tsushima at a buttery smooth 60FPS. At first, the drop in frames was jarring. But after a while, I didn't notice and thought it looked fairly smooth.

It really is a case-by-case basis for me, unfortunately.

 

[Gul Sengosts]

it’s gotten to the point now where they offer the choice of 60FPS or better graphics even on consoles, console players didn’t have to worry about such things at one point.

Back in the days, I bought a PS3 partially because I didn't want to bother with PC upgrades anymore. The idea being that there's a unified piece of hardware that developers can optimise their games for, so everything should be fine for years to come. Sadly it turned out that instead of worrying about settings and hardware to get better performance, in a great lot of PS3 games you were stuck in 20fps hell and there was nothing you could do about it. It was pretty bad, and the main reason why I returned to PC for good.

Well actually, there even was a case where in a way I could choose between quality and performance mode on PS3: Gran Turismo 5+6 would run at a higher resolution if the console was in 1080p mode, but with a lot of framerate drops--if you set the console to 720p mode, resolution was lower but the framerate was much more stable. I always chose the latter, although it sucked to always change the system settings because there was no in-game setting for this.

Perhaps it depends what kind of game you’re playing.

It definitely does. On a purely visual side, some highly detailed games clearly benefit more from higher fidelity than others like Borderlands do. On the gameplay side, a game like Jedi Knight Fallen Order that doesn't rely as much on speed and precision suffers less from 30fps than something like Doom Eternal.

Personally, for me framerate always trumps detail/resolution. With time I've become less interested in shiny graphics and am much more concerned about smoothness, responsiveness, precision. This is partly due to the type of games I like to play, which is mostly 2D platformers these days. For a long time 1080p60 was simply the only option available to me (if necessary, always lower detail until I get rock solid 60fps), but now that I have a TV capable of up to 4k and 120fps, I have to make choices again. 120fps isn't feasible in most games, but whenever it's possible I choose that. Examples are Hollow Knight and 20XX, which I play at 1080p120 instead of 4k60.

That's just me though. I also always use frame smoothing when watching movies because I can't stand the 24fps stutter.