Refresh Rate Vs Frame Rate – Difference Between Refresh Rate Vs Frame Rate

Video and online games have been part of our lives for some time now. People have contradictory opinions about them, especially when they are deciding whether children should be allowed to play or not, but, in reality, there is hardly a person who never played at least one game. Many people play simple games that don’t require any special skills or computer performances, and they see that as a mere leisure activity.  Some, however, have a different attitude towards the world of gaming – they invest serious amounts of time in playing demanding, highly developed games. Some of them even compete with friends or other gamers online or in Esports competitions. Having the best gaming computers is a must for them.

Among things, you should pay attention to when choosing the best gaming PC as refresh rate and frame rate. Now a lot of people, even those with more experience, confuse these two terms and use them interchangeably even if they are not the same. Indeed, they do address the same thing – the number of images that can be shown on a screen in one second. Take it as an example if you have a 60 FPS and 60 Hz, then you know that this video displays 60 images in a second.  Despite this, however, these are not the same things, and today we will try to explain how they differ and why it can be crucial to understand this difference whether you are buying gaming laptops or desk computers.

What Is Refresh Rate?

Let’s clarify something first. When people see Hz, they tend to confuse it with GHz and think that it has something to do with gaming performance. Nonetheless, while CPU clock speed is indeed expressed in gigahertz or GHz, you should know that when you see just the Hertz or Hz, it has nothing related to the speed. As a measure, Hertz is used for refresh rate. But what is a refresh rate? Simply speaking, it refers to the number of times your monitor updates the content on the screen in a second. Still, confused? Okay, so let’s try this. If you took physics in school, then you certainly heard of frequency, right?  Frequency, which is also expressed in Hertz (Hz), is an indicator of how many times something finishes the cycle in one second. In monitors, as well as TVs, this refers to the internal hardware. We use different names for frequencies – radio frequencies, microwave frequencies, and so on. In the case of monitors, frequency is called the refresh rate. What is crucial to know is that TVs and monitors have different refresh rates, although Hz is the most common. On the other hand, a good gaming monitor features a refresh frequency of 240Hz.

What Is A Frame Rate?

To give you some idea at first, we will ask you to imagine holding in your hands a little flipbook with some pictures on each page. Now visualize quickly flipping through the pages and see what happens. The images appear as if they are moving, right?  This is what happens when you make a video. You have a series of still images that are viewed in a certain order and at a certain speed appear as if they are moving. When we are talking about the frame rate, we have in mind this very speed of motion of images. Frame rate is expressed in FPS – frames per second. If you have a video played at 60 FPS, this means that in each second of this video, you see a set of 60 still images.

Most of us don’t think about it, but the fact is that frame rate greatly affects the style of the video as well as watching experiences. Now, for movies and TV/Web series, the ideal FPS is between 24 and 60. It is significant to note that minimum 24FPS is required for distinct frames to appear as a single moving image. Otherwise, if the frame rate is lower than that, the video might be choppy or lag in time. You might not see this as a big deal if you are only playing occasionally and to unwind. However, if you are thinking to become a more serious gamer, then this is something you have to take into consideration.

What Is Target Frame Rate For Gaming

When it comes to games, we can say that it is a bit challenging to say this or that is ideal frame rate speed because it depends on individual preferences as well. The reason is that sometimes it is more important to have a stable connection and adequate power of a gaming PC card than having a fast one. People who are passionate about action games say that they are best played at 60 FPS. For other less demanding games, anything over 30 FPS will do just fine.  Serious gamers must make sure that they are playing on potent monitors that have optimized FPS. Otherwise, opponents will be able to react quicker. Low frame rate won’t drastically affect the game when there is not much going on. But when the situation becomes hectic, and you have to act quickly, you won’t stand a chance in a game if the frame rate is too low.  Important to know when it comes to frame rate is that it is often seen as a gaming benchmark that measures the performance of hardware.

What Is More Important?

Keep in mind that refresh rate and frame rate are equally important for gaming. It would be ideal that you aim for a higher frame rate and look for a monitor that is compatible with a gaming PC.  It is because if you have hardware that can produce 120 FPS and a monitor that supports 80 Hz, the refresh rate will limit the frame rate.

Conclusion:

After reading this text, you can see that refresh rate and frame rate are two very different things, although they appear similar at first glance. We remind you once more that when you want to enjoy maximum benefit from experience on your gaming PC,  it is best to look for a machine that has a similar refresh rate and frame rate. Do you like playing games? Have you heard about these differences before?