Why does everyone need a frame limit

Saving electricity on your gaming PC is very easy with just a few simple steps, without the need to purchase particularly efficient hardware or time-consuming airflow adjustment. The graphics card is the biggest heating block in a gaming rig, so we tame it a bit, but it’s worth it. It is not always necessary to operate at 100% capacity. Because the latter percentage in particular costs significantly more electricity. So if we lower it by ten percent, for example, we save a full thirty percent in energy consumption. A compromise can certainly be worthwhile.

With a frame limit, we reduce frame times and get a smooth and even frame rate. [Quelle: PC Games Hardware]

The last top percent of GPU performance in particular consumes a lot of electricity. [Quelle: Nvidia]

We do this with a simple framework bound, which makes sense for a number of reasons. Not only because the graphics card runs more efficiently, but also because the consistent frame rate provides smoother gameplay. Chasing the maximum frames per second doesn’t always make sense. For example, if you play more than 100 fps, who will notice 10 fps less? In fact, fluctuating frames per second can be more annoying than this minimal cutoff.

Why does a gaming PC need a frame limit?

Anyone who has also worked with Adaptive Sync, such as Freesync or G-Sync, knows that a frame limit can also be necessary for this. Because if the frame rate exceeds the maximum Hertz limit of the monitor, Free or G-Sync simply is no longer active. Therefore, it is basically correct to activate Vsync in addition to the dynamic refresh rate. Yes, you heard correctly. The advice often causes confusion, and here the question always arises: Why do I need Vsync if I have G-Sync? Simply because they are both supposed to be active: don’t worry, if so, Vsync is not active, but the dynamic refresh rate is. Without Vsync, it can sometimes happen in practice that image tearing still occurs despite active G- or Freesync – so: always run Vsync too. It does not matter whether in the driver or in the game menu.

But why this digression to V- and G- and Freesync now? If a game scratches the fps at the upper end of Hz, i.e. 144 fps at 144 Hz, unfortunately, Vsync is active and no longer free or G-Sync. Therefore, the Vsync drawback of higher input lag also occurs here. At 144fps, this is no longer too brutal, but also easily avoidable. To prevent this, a system-wide frame limit of 2 frames per second below this limit is recommended, i.e. 142 frames per second at 144Hz. Colleagues at Blurbusters recommended this procedure a few years ago after extensive measurements and research. On the Blurbusters website There is a detailed report to read.