Frame rates, gaming latency and discarded frames
So what exactly are this technological jargon’s?
FPS or Frames Per Second: It is the most common technique of measuring performance and most review sites actually stress on this parameter only. Now better FPS is always better in most cases but now we know there are certain catches.
Gaming Latency: is very important while playing games as it decides how responsive the GPU is between the input from the player and the effects to take place. Sometimes it is noticed that even full frame rate is maintained, the game lags if very high amount of post processing is being applied. However, in 1080P, this latency is almost negligible in current gen Graphics cards of same league.
Discarded Frames: These days most of the Monitors are 60 Hz and it is impossible to see more than 60 FPS in real time. Then why we are opting for cards which can deliver over 100 FPS sometimes? There is a effect called Plummeting in Gaming, which reduces the smoothness, despite having 60FPS on average. Now here the extra FPS comes to rescue. By using the discarded Frames (Display can show only 60 frames in 1 sec and assuming 90 Frames are available from the Gfx card) and a simple algorithm, GPU can enhance the output frame quality to provide a smooth game-play experience as well as very good Motion Blur effects. AMD has an upper edge here as it is observed in several reviews that Game Play experience become smoother with the increase of FPS in games. I expect that they will add new algorithm in their upcoming drivers to take the advantage of it for reducing Gaming latency.
