When do you use a FPS limit?

[angerthosenear]

*read title*

I notice a lot of games have fps limiting options, when should you use those?

I was playing through a game of osu! Catch the Beat mode and I notice my framerate was.... silly: 1724 fps

Would this be a time where I should turn on the fps limiter?

[Brian]

i tried it in BF3 and it just caused a weird tearing affect so I took it off. Overall tearing doesn't bother me at all so I don't use caps/vsync in any of my games.

[gl0ry]

Not using FPS limiters can really cause unnecessary load on your GPU I use vsync or fps limiters when one of the few things happen.

A.) My games are running at unnecessary, very high frame rates and heat up the card running it at 100% load.

B.) Screen tears are out of control or annoying me.

C.) When the vsync in the game doesn't lag up your mouse I don't mind keeping it on. Some games cause mouse response issues when using vsync, quite the annoyance.

[Khenglish]

Sometimes I use a cap at 60 when I play a game that I can't maintain 60 fps in for vsync. Frame cap at 60 ends up being quasi-vsync at 60, without the negatives of vsync when below 60.

[Ninjahunter]

FPS Limiters are generally used to reduce power consumption/temperatures, Reduce stuttering(jumpy FPS no matter how high causes stuttering), and smooth out control responsiveness.

I generally cap off my FPS in shooters because if my FPS goes from 30 to 60 then back down to 30 all the time, it throws my aiming off. Or in games that stutter a lot, like skyrim.

[Justin Treichel]

what about a program like dxtory? i believe there is a FPS limiter option in it. I dont ever limit my FPS but thats a option rather then using vsync

[NRD]

Allowing your GPU to render that many frames can actually overwork your card unnecessarily and cause a lot of heat. Depending on your refresh rate you shouldn't be running your game much higher that 60 or 120FPS. In games other than multiplayer fps games v-sync will do this fine, but it will/can add a small amount of input lag. This is the best time to use an fps limiter as you can manually set a cap without the input lag. In BF3 I have my fps limited to 62 as I've found that with it set to only 60 I get screen tearing, however at 62 it's nice and smooth.

[BigTerminator]

What do you guys think is the best way to cap FPS? Some games have decent VSYNC but some are just plain horrible. Going through Nvidia control panel doesn't work every time either.

[Shrimpy266]

Is it best to limit your FPS to increments like your refresh rate, half your refresh rate or can you just set it to anything you want?

[MihawkLFC]

You can actually set it to whatever you want. Although you won't notice an performance gain after you hit the refresh-rate of your monitor. It's the opposite in my opinion. You'll notice tearing (at least I do). So normally i limit my FPS too 60FPS which works out good for me.

If your PC isn't powerful enough and can't handle a constant 60fps i would go down another 10 fps until it's stable around that framerate.

[faqq]

The FPS limit can be usefull when your FPS goes around 30-60,above those it's useless and can cause unwanted shuttering or slow responsivness.

If you want to use it in those valors 30-60 you can cap the fps to 40 so it will stop at 40 and get rid of unwanted micro shutterings..

Anyway depends on your pc and game graphics tho',so don't want too many improvments

[JiTee]

Some games, even if the screen tearing wasn't that much noticeable, gave me weird headaches when the vsync was off. I have 3 examples on my mind, Max Payne 3, Battlefield 2 (Project Reality) and Age of Empire 3. Otherwise, vsync always created weird fps drops in some games, like Black Ops 2 and Battlefield 3. So, I mainly stays off.

[dvize]

What about the adaptive vsync with the newer Nvidia 780 cards. With that feature, you wouldn't need to turn it on in game and it would lower the stuttering right?

[Sticks435]

Yea, I'll use vsynch when the game isn't stressful enough to keep it under 60 the whole time. Like Boderlands or AC games. But I have it off in Sleeping Dogs because I am running extreme AA.

[Shoco]

Personally I use EVGA Precision to set a target framerate, my pc isn't that powerful to I aim at something like 35 fps max and from there max out the graphics as much as possible.

Limiting the fps, like it's been said, is a very good way of getting a smoother gaming experience, avoiding jumping from very high to very low fps, and preserving your hardware.

[dennis1982]

I use the FPS limiter all the time. Mostly I lock it at 60 FPS.

My games run much smoother that way, guess it's just my preference.

[moxalis]

In my case whenever I try to limit a game's fps at 59-60 to get rid of unnecessary high temperatures, it always seems to cause major screen tearing for some reason. I'd leave vsync on but I can't stand the input lag. If i turn the limiter off and a game runs at 80+ frames for example, the screen tearing is barely noticable.

[Gooberman]

I generally lock my fps at around 120 fps in any game. I don't have a 120 hz monitor but anything higher I think is just a useless amount of power being used for something i can't notice.

[Shmoo]

I usually leave it off, but it differs from game to game for me. If performance is the same but it gets rid of screen tearing, I leave it on. However, it usually does alter my performance, so I generally leave it off.

[Playfreake]

I use it in some of my games. An example is Dead Space 3 when vsync is off and my frames go to high i have some problemes with stutering but when vsync is on everything is fine. Thats wired but okay

[SeekerZA]

Most of the time i leave my Vsync off, however for all those older games i'll turn it on via nvidia control panel. Anything around 200, higher frames per second ingame should most definitely be pinned down to something more reasonable.

It draws more power and raises temps when you disable vsync ( I personally capped mt bf 3 at 140 with vsync off ) since your GPU will be running Max out most if not all the time.

[killerpc]

Does nvidia adaptive vsync help to prevent screen tearing or not?

[muneeb_nawaz]

Fps limit is used when your Gpu does not have sufficient power is being bottle necked somehow. it is used to prevent tear in pixels when distort game so VSync is used to keep a constant 60 FPS so no tear happens.. Some games have settings to set ur FPS..")

[Pender666]

I always use Vsync because screeen tearing annoys me a lot! @killerpc, Yes, it does. It turns Vsync on when you are over 60fps and turns Vsync off when its less than 60.

[WingoWinston]

I use/unuse FPS limits all the time with emulators. Sometimes with the PSX emulaors the frame limit is not set and the game runs at >400FPS making the game unplayable. Although you can power level like crazy. Same thing with other emulators,I turn the limiter on to enable... regular gameplay and off for skipping through annoying parts/power playing.