# +60Hz monitors. Myth or Reality ?



## Shihab (Sep 16, 2011)

Just as the title says, do games or programs or any other form of motion picture play/run smoother at a framerate higher than 60fps ? Or is the the popular opinion that says the human eye can't notice any difference in framerates higher than 60fps is tactually a fact ?


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## robal (Sep 16, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> do games or programs or any other form of motion picture play/run smoother at a framerate higher than 60fps ?



The whole affair is way more complicated than just fps.
We've got screen actual refresh rate, fps, tearing, v-sync, v-sync buffering type, microstutter, and a whole bucket of things that people can see or can't see.

I recommend this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/1
It's about microstuttering in multi-GPU solutions, but also give a wealth of information on the subject of perception.

The short answer is:
People wouldn't be able to see more than 60 fps.
However, there are good reasons to go above 60 Hz on displays.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 16, 2011)

One phrase: 3D.


3D requires a frame rate of 120 Hz.  The human eye is, generally speaking, accepted to be unable to perceive the difference between motion at 30 full frames per second (TV used to be 60 half frames in the US).  You can generally perceive the motion difference between 60 Hz and 30 Hz with a little help, but I have yet to read any study stating that the average human can perceive a difference between 60 and 120 Hz using normal transmission methodology.

That said, I have to stipulate two things.  The term "average human" is an oxymoron.  Average rarely exists, so you may be able to perceive more or less than a supposed average.  Two, 3D is a unique beast.  It requires 120 frames per second because each eye must perceive slightly different full images.  It is, effectively the only instance where a substantial increase in frame rate, beyond 60 Hz, will make a visual difference for most people.


All of this said, marketting will never stop.  An extra 4th pixel color, higher frame rate, unique visual processing, and size sells TVs and monitors.  Whether there is an influence or not, someone will trumpet theirs as "the best" because of something....


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## Millennium (Sep 16, 2011)

I love refresh rates as high as possible, goes back to my quake days. My 21" CRT used to do 100hz in some resolutions and it looked really good. So I say don't believe the hype, at least upto 100hz more hertz is better.


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## uuuaaaaaa (Sep 16, 2011)

i play quake live and it is an immense difference between 60 and 120Hz (samsung 2233RZ), the game feels way smoother, and when you are aiming moving in game, you can clearly see the difference, also it is way easier on the eyes.


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## exodusprime1337 (Sep 16, 2011)

robal said:


> The whole affair is way more complicated than just fps.
> We've got screen actual refresh rate, fps, tearing, v-sync, v-sync buffering type, microstutter, and a whole bucket of things that people can see or can't see.
> 
> I recommend this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516/1
> ...



This isn't actually true, the human eye is capable of far more than 60hz

this article fps and the human eye explains in better detail how exactly it applies to the human eye.  Tyipcally what is accepted as a proper explanation is that 60 hz is the good rate at which the human eye can discern the image or video being displayed as fluid.  In terms of gaming, i can definately tell the difference between 60 and 125 when playing games like cod.  The play is much smoother.  The last part of this article involves the usaf testing a pilots percievable image detection when showing them an image at 1/220th of a second. It is possible if the increase is linear that that someone could detect image changes at 220 times a second giving them possibly a 220hz refresh rate of their eyes


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## MatTheCat (Sep 16, 2011)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> The human eye is, generally speaking, accepted to be unable to perceive the difference between motion at 30 full frames per second (TV used to be 60 half frames in the US).



Why dont you stop spouting mis-info and go read the article posted above?

I quote:

"_If you don't want to read it all, then the short answer is, the human eye / brain combination can see well over 100 frames per second and thus far the limits have not thoroughly been tested yet. Suffice it to say, IT IS NOTHING LIKE THE 24, 30, 60 or even 100 fps crap, that gets spouted on the Internet._ "

I am sick of retards (normally console gamers or crappy gfx card owners) telling me that I cant tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS, or even that I cant tell the difference (on my monitor) between 55 and 60, cos I can and I dare say that I could tell the difference at way higher frames than that, it is just that 60FPS seems to be when a threshold of smoothness is hit.


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## Benetanegia (Sep 16, 2011)

Refresh rate and fps is not the same. fps is related with the sense of "fluid" motion, which already happens at 24 fps (theaters). However the human eye can see "changes" at a much higher pace, so the higher the refresh rate the better. I can say first hand that the eye can see flickering up to at least 150 Hz (my CRTs maximum), but there's usually a lower rate that you can tolerate. On LCDs you don't get flickering, but there's ghosting, shimmering, etc. In that case a higher refresh rate is not really the cure (technically), but it does help a lot (just look at 120 Hz monitors and you'll understand).

However, while gaming the most important advantage of a higher refresh rate is a lower response time. When people say they need 60 fps in order to play, it's not because of te sense of fluid motion, but because of how responsive the game is.

All in all, higher refresh rate == better.


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## Shihab (Sep 16, 2011)

So the human eye (or brain?) can _see_ faster than 60 frames per second. Interesting ! But to what extent ? And How many frames would it make a difference for an _average_ human ? I mean, it's clearly impossible to tell the difference between 55fps and 60fps (with the little percentage of our brain's processing power we are using at least), so what's the minimum fps difference can our eyes (brains?) notice ? I can tell you can notice small differences at small frame rates (i.e  3fps vs 7fps).


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## catnipkiller (Sep 16, 2011)

I dont know if this will help but watching a 60 hertz tv vs a real 120+ you can see a diff.


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## The Witcher (Sep 16, 2011)

MatTheCat said:


> Why dont you stop spouting mis-info and go read the article posted above?
> 
> I quote:
> 
> ...



Finally someone who shares the same opinion with me, and I thought I was the only one who is getting sick of this myth.....

I really hate pseudo-science BS, plus people should start learning how to evaluate supposed "studies" or "researches" just because some people published something using the scientific method doesn't make it necessarily true, you have to evaluate how did they reach that conclusion. 

Anyway, I wouldn't care even if they published a million study about how the human eyes can't distinguish the difference between 30fps and 60fps or 60fps+ BECAUSE I CAN SEE THE DAMN DIFFERENCE CLEARLY !!! Buy a high-end PC or lower your settings then tell me that you don't see the difference between a constant 60fps and a constant 120fps....


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## cadaveca (Sep 16, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> So the human eye (or brain?) can _see_ faster than 60 frames per second. Interesting ! But to what extent ? And How many frames would it make a difference for an _average_ human ? I mean, it's clearly impossible to tell the difference between 55fps and 60fps (with the little percentage of our brain's processing power we are using at least), so what's the minimum fps difference can our eyes (brains?) notice ? I can tell you can notice small differences at small frame rates (i.e  3fps vs 7fps).



I can very easily tell the difference between 55 and 60. For me, there is an actual effect on how "3D" a game appears, and lighting takes on a different quality.

Of course, this depends on the app, some engines I cannot tell, but in like 95% of all games, I can.


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## temp02 (Sep 16, 2011)

On LCDs there is "almost" no change, now on good ol' CRTs (RIP Phillips 107E4) there is a huge difference (I would quickly get eye strain/fatigue if I didn't had the screen on 75Hz).
In fact on LCDs, I believe, more Hz might be worse, due to quicker pixel shifting, leading to trails, well at least on lesser quality screens.


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## Benetanegia (Sep 16, 2011)

The Witcher said:


> Buy a high-end PC or lower your settings then tell me that you don't see the difference between a constant 60fps and a constant 120fps....



Most probably you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between *constant* 60 fps and *constant* 120 fps. Problem is you'll never know, because *you have never seen constant 60 fps or constant 120* in a game. 

Frames are never constant, because each frame takes a different ammount of time to render, even with vsync, so the result is that while the frames are constant, the movement is not. i.e Imagine a ball moving, frame nº 34 is rendered at T, frame 35 is rendered at T+1, but because of Vsync, it is displayed at T+2, and while the frames might be constant, the ball is not where it should be by T+2. 

^^This is why you can "see" a difference beyond 60 fps on a 60 Hz screen, otherwise you wouldn't be able to.

Aside from that, generally people who say they can do what 99% of people can't are usually morons who would never be able to pass a blind test, just like the ones who claim to have golden ears...


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## cadaveca (Sep 16, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> Aside from that, generally people who say they can do what 99% of people can't are usually morons who would never be able to pass a blind test, just like the ones who claim to have golden ears...





My daughter who only has one working ear would tell you that hearing is ultimately very important and that tone and timbre of audio is the difference between hearing easily, hearing nothing at all, or a headache.

All of our eyes and ears are literally physically different, just as our personalties are. Equally, although we may all share commonailties on our body's construction, things like the quality of our nerves, and our body's natural chemistry, affects our sense's ability to react to stimulation, and the reaction, becuase it's ultimately chemical in nature, can even be affected by diet.

Personally, I enjoy the science behind this stuff.


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## trickson (Sep 16, 2011)

What is the frame rate of just looking around ? I mean looking at the real world . I would like to know this .


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## cadaveca (Sep 16, 2011)

trickson said:


> What is the frame rate of just looking around ? I mean looking at the real world . I would like to know this .



There is no framerate. Light flows in your eyes at the speed of light....far faster than anything else, and as such, our eyes must distinguish and process light at the speed it enters our eyes. Becuase our nerves react constantly, and a "frame" has a distinct beginning, and an end, but light more often than not does not, it's impossible to actually correlate the two.

In a second, your eye processes a 186000 miles worth of light. When you can translate that into a "frame", let me know.


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## trickson (Sep 16, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> There is no framerate. Light flows in your eyes at the speed of light....far faster than anything else, and as such, our eyes must distinguish and process light at the speed it enters our eyes. Becuase our nerves react constantly, and a "frame" has a distinct beginning, and an end, but light more often than not does not, it's impossible to actually correlate the two.



Interesting . So the world around us has no real frame rate it is just artificial things like monitors and TV's and iPhones that we look at that have them .


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## cadaveca (Sep 16, 2011)

Well the fact of the matter is that your brain, based on attention, will automatically discard unneeded data, and this is in part affected by your own personal perception of what is important or not. We;ve all heard of husbands that can completely ignore thier wives, and clearly we are capable of "mutli-threaded" processing, as you can hear someone talk while listening to music, and your brain will focus on what you feel is more important.

There is alot of science behind how this impacts us on a psychological level, and even how our psychology affects our perceptions.

Then, we could add in how many cones and rods your eye has, and how there are only three basis receptors, and somehow, they still manage to seperate light into its given wavelength and intensity, thanks to complementary psychophysics(yes, that is a real word).


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## trickson (Sep 16, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> We've all heard of husbands that can completely ignore their wives, and clearly we are capable of "mutli-threaded" processing, as you can hear someone talk while listening to music, and your brain will focus on what you feel is more important.



Amazing I do this all the time . I hear my wife talking I just don't care any more . I have the unique ability to tune every thing she says out . Thank GOD too if I had to listen to her all day I would stick hot pokers into my ears and seal them holes shut forever ! I love her yes I just hate to listen to her .


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## Benetanegia (Sep 16, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> My daughter who only has one working ear would tell you that hearing is ultimately very important and that tone and timbre of audio is the difference between hearing easily, hearing nothing at all, or a headache.
> 
> All of our eyes and ears are literally physically different, just as our personalties are. Equally, although we may all share commonailties on our body's construction, things like the quality of our nerves, and our body's natural chemistry, affects our sense's ability to react to stimulation, and the reaction, becuase it's ultimately chemical in nature, can even be affected by diet.
> 
> Personally, I enjoy the science behind this stuff.



You know that I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who claim much more than they can prove.

Specifically most if not all of the so called (and selfproclaimed) golden ears have failed in blind tests that should have been easy in comparison to their claims.

On 60 Hz screens the difference between 60 fps and anything below is definitely indentifiable, mostly because of temporal aliasing and/or uneven motion.

And like I said before you can see (more like "sense") the difference in smoothness between 60 fps and much more fps, i.e 100 fps in a 60 Hz screen, because as I explained above, you have better chances of getting the one frame that best matches the "ideal" frame to be displayed at that one moment. But really, people who claim to be able to perfectly tell the difference between 120 and 150 fps on a 60 Hz screen are just morons. I'd refrain from saying the same about someone claiming t see the difference between 100 and 120 fps on a 120 Hz screen though, because yes our eyes do differ, but that's a completely different case.


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## Play3r (Sep 16, 2011)

i have a BenQ 120hz and i noticed a difference the first time i moved the mouse on it, not to mention game look and feel so much smoother than on 60hz. i would whole heartedly recommend every gamer that has gfx that can hold at least 100fps to buy one.


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## cadaveca (Sep 16, 2011)

Benetanegia said:


> You know that I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who claim much more than they can prove.



Sure, I was just putting that out there as the timing was ideal. Nothing in it really has any reflection on your comment other than it fit in the conversation there. I just happen to have been educated a bit by the real pros thanks to my daughter's experience. And because it concerns my little girl, you bet I was paying attention. 

Imma nerd, science gets me interested, anyway. .


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## Benetanegia (Sep 16, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Sure, I was just putting that out there as the timing was ideal. Nothing in it really has any reflection on your comment other than it fit in the conversation there. I just happen to have been educated a bit by the real pros thanks to my daughter's experience. And because it concerns my little girl, you bet I was paying attention.
> 
> Imma nerd, science gets me interested, anyway. .



Sure man and your post was a good opportunity for me to try further explain my point .


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## qubit (Sep 16, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> Just as the title says, do games or programs or any other form of motion picture play/run smoother at a framerate higher than 60fps ? Or is the the popular opinion that says the human eye can't notice any difference in framerates higher than 60fps is tactually a fact ?



Good question. No, it's not a myth and there's many aspects to this answer.

Running the monitor faster and rendering games with vsync on with no dropped frames, you get an increase in temporal resolution. Therefore, a 120Hz monitor has literally twice the timing/temporal resolution of a 60Hz one. Motion is literally twice as smooth and it _is_ visible. 240Hz will in turn look smoother than 120Hz, but the perceived gain will be much less due to the limits of the human visual system.

On CRT monitors, increasing the scanning rate did several things, the main ones being to noticeably reduce flicker, increase temporal resolution & motion smoothness and blur the picture (you really don't want this last one, lol).

Heck, I managed to get 144Hz at 800x600 on one of my CRTs and a static picture literally looked _stuck_ on the screen. Hard to really get across, but an amazing effect. I actually did this to try out 3D Vision on it, which surprisingly worked fine, since it's designed for 120Hz. Note that the static picture I'm talking about was a 2D one without the glasses.

On LCD monitors, you increase the temporal resolution and reduce the inherent and significant motion blur in LCD displays. There is no loss of sharpness though, especially with a digital connection and running at native resolution.

The eye is particularly sensitive to dropped rendering frames though (eg game animation) which reveals itself as unpleasant stutters and double images. However, if you lose a few frames at 120Hz, the effect is much less noticeable.

On perception, I saw something geekily interesting once. I once played a game through the 50Hz UK PAL TV out on my video card (non interlaced) with the monitor output set to 100Hz. This resulted in the game being rendered at 50fps/Hz as it was vsync locked to the TV. This resulted in each image being displayed twice on the monitor. Normally, if the monitor is being run at 50 or 60Hz and the game is rendered at half the framerate, this will be perceived as severe judder and a double image. However, because the monitor was running at 100Hz, it was perceived as a smoothly animated double image with no judder. Fascinating!


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 16, 2011)

LCDs (the liquid crystals, specifically) can't do 120 Hz.  They can't even literally do 60 Hz.  The hertz is the signalling rate from the graphics card to the monitor.  In other words, 120 Hz means the graphics card is sending twice as much data to the monitor as it would at 60 Hz.  Whether or not that even displays depends on the monitor and whether or not you can see a difference depends on the individual.  In short, the higher the hertz, the better but don't expect miracles.


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## qubit (Sep 16, 2011)

FordGT90Concept said:


> LCDs (the liquid crystals, specifically) can't do 120 Hz.  They can't even literally do 60 Hz.  The hertz is the signalling rate from the graphics card to the monitor.  In other words, 120 Hz means the graphics card is sending twice as much data to the monitor as it would at 60 Hz.  Whether or not that even displays depends on the monitor and whether or not you can see a difference depends on the individual.  In short, the higher the hertz, the better but don't expect miracles.



Surely a 120Hz monitor's pixels must be able to react at 120Hz, or it would look no better than 60Hz and likely would just smear badly? My Samsung 2233RZ monitor definitely showed motion better at 120Hz, that was no illusion.


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## Laurijan (Sep 16, 2011)

Millennium said:


> I love refresh rates as high as possible, goes back to my quake days. My 21" CRT used to do 100hz in some resolutions and it looked really good. So I say don't believe the hype, at least upto 100hz more hertz is better.



I had a Nokia CRT that did 120Hz at 1600x1200 and I was very proud of back in the days.
Played Wolfenstein Enemy Territory at 120Hz, V-Sync on and 1000Hz Mouse USB polling rate and I could swear I fragged more than with 60Hz


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## Shihab (Sep 16, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> There is no framerate. Light flows in your eyes at the speed of light....far faster than anything else, and as such, our eyes must distinguish and process light at the speed it enters our eyes. Becuase our nerves react constantly, and a "frame" has a distinct beginning, and an end, but light more often than not does not, it's impossible to actually correlate the two.
> 
> In a second, your eye processes a 186000 miles worth of light. When you can translate that into a "frame", let me know.



 I think the only way to define this "frame" would be by looking at the weakest link. That would be our brain's processing capability. I don't mean the brains capability to render (or whatever is equivalent in our brains) the image, but our ability to understand these images we see. And I believe that differs from one to another, but it would still be much MUCH higher than a measly 100 frames per second. assuming that IS what a "frame" would translate into our bodies' language.



qubit said:


> Heck, I managed to get 144Hz at 800x600 on one of my CRTs and a static picture literally looked _stuck_ on the screen. Hard to really get across, but an amazing effect. I actually did this to try out 3D Vision on it, which surprisingly worked fine, since it's designed for 120Hz. Note that the static picture I'm talking about was a 2D one without the glasses.
> 
> On LCD monitors, you increase the temporal resolution and reduce the inherent and significant motion blur in LCD displays. There is no loss of sharpness though, especially with a digital connection and running at native resolution.
> 
> The eye is particularly sensitive to dropped rendering frames though (eg game animation) which reveals itself as unpleasant stutters and double images. However, if you lose a few frames at 120Hz, the effect is much less noticeable.



 I have a CRT rated for up to 160Hz refresh rate. Best I could do with it was 100Hz@800*600 though (Damned Horizontal frequency limit :shadedshu ).
 I agree that the jerkiness that occurs when the fps drops is noticeable, I think you could say that's a proof that the eye can differentiate between frame rates higher than 60fps. Though I think most people don't notice because their brains are busy looking for noobs to frag.




FordGT90Concept said:


> LCDs (the liquid crystals, specifically) can't do 120 Hz.  They can't even literally do 60 Hz.  The hertz is the signalling rate from the graphics card to the monitor.


 I'm not sure I'm following


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2011)

It's one thing to send/receive a 120 Hz signal and another to actually display it.


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It's one thing to send/receive a 120 Hz signal and another to actually display it.












Not sure if this will help you or not

There are more on youtube but this is one of the few that has freeze frames and slow motion


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## qubit (Sep 17, 2011)

seronx said:


> Not sure if this will help you or not
> 
> There are more on youtube but this is one of the few that has freeze frames and slow motion



Nice find. Ironically, the song is the best part. 

The YouTube poster is right, that video doesn't do 120Hz animation justice and a 120Hz seriously makes a difference. Also, the freeze frames revealed the interlaced nature of the video, which really obscured the 120Hz improvement.

I've got various CRT's knocking around the house (a geek like me would  ) and I've got the graphics card to drive them at 120Hz and then some, so I' think I'll get doin'.


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## Batou1986 (Sep 17, 2011)

I don't see how you can review 120hz equipment using at best 60fps cameras unless im confusing something fps equates directly to hz cause that what vsync locks.
So by my reasoning you would need a camera capable of doing 120fps or better to truly see what it looks like in person since the camera is dropping frames so to speak.


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## qubit (Sep 17, 2011)

Batou1986 said:


> I don't see how you can review 120hz equipment using at best 60fps cameras unless im confusing something fps equates directly to hz cause that what vsync locks.
> So by my reasoning you would need a camera capable of doing 120fps or better to truly see what it looks like in person since the camera is dropping frames so to speak.



No, you're absolutely right, you can't show it. And what frame rate is the YouTube video itself running at? Usually at 30Hz, although I can't tell if that was the case here, because Fraps wouldn't display on the video. EDIT: Got fraps running: the video frame rate was wobbling around 35Hz. Useless for showing the improvement of a 120Hz monitor. 

Also, I forgot to specifically point this out in my comment above. It would have also helped to have Fraps running to prove the frame rate being rendered. Now I think about it, I suspect that the game was actually rendering at 60Hz, because that's the lowest common denominator, as in my TV example earlier. Fraps really should have been running...


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

I say Reality on this

120Hz is a lot better than 60Hz
and most games allow 120Hz as the refresh rate

I'm going to wait for S-IPS or OLED 120Hz though


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## Jetster (Sep 17, 2011)

You can buy LCDs at 240Mhz and 480MHz


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

Jetster said:


> You can buy LCDs at 240Mhz and 480MHz



240Hz and 480Hz....
and there are Plasmas that 600Hz

But there is a reason those aren't good, I'll let someone else explain this


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## Shihab (Sep 17, 2011)

seronx said:


> 240Hz and 480Hz....
> and there are Plasmas that 600Hz
> 
> But there is a reason those aren't good, I'll let someone else explain this



Ridiculous pricetags and no gain in performance ? I read an article a while back that 240Hz LCDs are basically "overclocked" 120Hz monitors   While they did give a true 240Hz frequencies, there was no notable increase in smoothness. Though the writer did say that this has to do more with the LCD not being able to handle such high frequencies.



FordGT90Concept said:


> It's one thing to send/receive a 120 Hz signal and another to actually display it.



So you're saying the "Hz" only define the data rate between the GPU and the monitor ? So what do you call the maximum frame rate the monitor can display ?


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## exodusprime1337 (Sep 17, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> So the human eye (or brain?) can _see_ faster than 60 frames per second. Interesting ! But to what extent ? And How many frames would it make a difference for an _average_ human ? I mean, it's clearly impossible to tell the difference between 55fps and 60fps (with the little percentage of our brain's processing power we are using at least), so what's the minimum fps difference can our eyes (brains?) notice ? I can tell you can notice small differences at small frame rates (i.e  3fps vs 7fps).



There isn't much good testing done to determine what exactly our "refresh rate" is because everyone can be different.  i honestly think that we can see well about 500 fps if not more.  It seems our eyes are so able to see high frame rates that we can easily percieve the subtle changes in frame rate such as going from 55 to 60 or 60 to 120.  those are small jumps in the grand scheme of refresh rates.  and if the human eye can see and image flashed at 1/220th of a second does that mean we percieved the whole image as the artical states, or are we missing most of the images depth and color because we were unable to see the whole image.. mysteries oooooo


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> So you're saying the "Hz" only define the data rate between the GPU and the monitor ? So what do you call the maximum frame rate the monitor can display ?


Hertz.  The keyword is "maximum."


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

exodusprime1337 said:


> There isn't much good testing done to determine what exactly our "refresh rate" is because everyone can be different.  i honestly think that we can see well about 500 fps if not more.  It seems our eyes are so able to see high frame rates that we can easily percieve the subtle changes in frame rate such as going from 55 to 60 or 60 to 120.  those are small jumps in the grand scheme of refresh rates.  and if the human eye can see and image flashed at 1/220th of a second does that mean we percieved the whole image as the artical states, or are we missing most of the images depth and color because we were unable to see the whole image.. mysteries oooooo



Eyes can see ∞ of FPS/Refresh Rate
Brain operates at 1680~ GHz if it is compared to a Pentium III but that is an average amount of GHz 100–500 trillion Brain ALUs and AGUs exist in adult brains
How much the brain or a person perceives is practically near ∞.

The person has to be conditioned to notice the difference because if that person isn't conditioned that person won't notice the difference
(How you condition a person is you show them 120 fps then 60 fps when motion is more well perceived only then can you see the difference between 120Hz and 60Hz)
((The source also has to be captured at 120Hz and 60Hz then displayed at 120Hz and 60Hz...you won't notice the difference if your monitor is 120Hz and you are only getting 60 fps)

It is like frogs(Is this the correct animal?)...If you place them in warm water they won't notice you boiling them alive, they won't even notice being boiling alive at all if you increase the water temperature


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2011)

The eyes are the problem and they literally have a framerate (still upside-down images in rapid succession).  What the framerate is of the eye is unknown, partially because it isn't absolute.  This website goes into details:
http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Keep in mind that just being tired can cause the framerate to drop to virtually zero (gazing).


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## Jetster (Sep 17, 2011)

seronx said:


> It is like frogs(Is this the correct animal?)...If you place them in warm water they won't notice you boiling them alive, they won't even notice being boiling alive at all if you increase the water temperature



I think its an analogy and yes its a frog. I dont think someone actually boiled a frog 

The point I believe is if you go from 60hz to 120 you may notice the difference but not if you change it slowly


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## Solaris17 (Sep 17, 2011)

this is honestly all perception. lets take a quick snippet.

someone mentioned a 120hz display looked smoother when moving their mouse.

See what baffels me is that everyone calls everyone liers in these types of arguments. What people seem to fail to look at. is what your doing.

Lets take this mouse example. at 60hz you move the mouse fast. at 120hz you notice it seems move fluid. This makes sense the screen is refreshing faster. However lets take these 2 monitors. now lets move the mouse slower lets say a few Millimeters in the span of like 15seconds. steadily, This has no affect on either. the mouse is moving slow enough for refreshrate not to matter. 

Now in a gaming perspective we see the same behaviour. neverwinter nights. Will look the same on both monitors. call of duty may not. Its a fast paced game and if your card is good enough your already pushing FPS over your refresh rate. in this instance it looks better because you are getting that many more frames shown to you. more detail and the game looks smoother. However do you really notice the diffirence? You are getting a few extra frames and you see more of the flames and coolness, that cant be disputed. but thats also like a movie being played at normal speed vs a movie being played in slow motion. you can be fast forwarding at 30fps and the movie plays normally at 30fps but one looks better then the other. at that point can you really say you notice a diffirence? Their is also the argument of high FPS and noticing drops. people genreally say that when a game is played at 25fps vs 30 the diffirence is noticable. This is true and I also agree. However the same logic can be used on the other side of the spectrum. We have all noticed going from 130fps to 70 in half a second seems laggy to us. but in its right mind still on the plane of "fluidity". What i think we should be focusing on is the science behind what the eye can physically process in a 1 second intervals. Because while comparing FPS and fluidity is nice. This doesnt really end this argument. because that is based on what we perceive. not what can physically be done by our eyes.

my 2c


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

Jetster said:


> The point I believe is if you go from 60hz to 120 you may notice the difference but not if you change it slowly



You won't notice the change going up

However you will notice the change going backwards






*Now if this image didn't have text telling you and instead had 10 seconds .5Hz then 10 seconds of 1Hz then 10 of 2Hz you wouldn't notice the difference same goes with backwards some ways but it is easier to show the difference when going backward than forward*

_You don't know you lost something till you lose it._

The Hobbit(2012) watch it @ 48Hz then watch it @ 24Hz then watch it again @ 48Hz


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## Shihab (Sep 17, 2011)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Keep in mind that just being tired can cause the framerate to drop to virtually zero (gazing).



Framrate doesn't drop, it's just your perception of the scene you're eyes are looking at drops. Your eyes don't stop sending the image to your brain. And your brain doesn't stop processing the image. It's just that your concentration is pointed somewhere else.



seronx said:


> You won't notice the change going up
> 
> However you will notice the change going backwards
> 
> ...



So you're saying one can notice increased stutter/judder/lag easier than the increase in smoothness/fluidity ? True I guess. But then it all depends on the range of the rate you're working with. If you consider a difference within 10~20 frames from an average of -say- 30 fps, It wouldn't be difficult noticing the difference both ways (frame rate jumping to 40 or dropping to 20).


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 17, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> Just as the title says, do games or programs or any other form of motion picture play/run smoother at a framerate higher than 60fps ? Or is the the popular opinion that says the human eye can't notice any difference in framerates higher than 60fps is tactually a fact ?



Fact 1: Yes higher frames per second means smoother movement.

Fact 2: The human eye can see well over 120 frames per second. How high varies but studies have show some people can pick up over 500 frames per second.


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## seronx (Sep 17, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> So you're saying one can notice increased stutter/judder/lag easier than the increase in smoothness/fluidity ? True I guess. But then it all depends on the range of the rate you're working with. If you consider a difference within 10~20 frames from an average of -say- 30 fps, It wouldn't be difficult noticing the difference both ways (frame rate jumping to 40 or dropping to 20).



If input is 30Hz and output is 30Hz and you watched one clip
then
If input is 60Hz and output is 60Hz and you watched the same clip
Unless, you were told their was a difference you wouldn't notice it

But when it is reversed
If input is 60Hz and output is 60Hz and you watched one clip
then
If input is 30Hz and output is 30Hz and you watched one clip
You will notice it because your brain just saw 60Hz then the data inputted into the brain became 30Hz

30Hz to 60Hz
Brain is conditioned to see 30Hz when increased to 60Hz the Brain is conditioned to see 60Hz

You wouldn't actual be able to tell the difference
60Hz to 30Hz
Brain is conditioned to see 60Hz when it sees 30Hz it's expecting 30 extra data points to be received

But, in most scenarios this doesn't happen....

When you get a 120Hz monitor you expect a change so going from your 60Hz monitor to a 120Hz monitor your brain is expecting the change as it was conditioned so with the numbers and letters "120Hz"

But, I am probably confusing everyone

Just remember 24Hz is considered "Fluid" enough obviously that isn't the case as the brain evolution works with Fibonacci numbers(Something that has lasted since the 1920~ probably isn't "Fluid" enough anymore)((Also, Brains operate much like CPUs aka look at what CPUs do when they are idle..or if the workloads are not that "heavy"(Before Turbo core came about)))


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## ctrain (Sep 17, 2011)

I own a 120hz monitor. 60hz is smooth, 120hz is obviously more so. The fluidity is obvious in just moving windows around. More than just visual is the feedback, there's less input lag with a high framerate.



seronx said:


> 240Hz and 480Hz....
> and there are Plasmas that 600Hz
> 
> But there is a reason those aren't good, I'll let someone else explain this



The reason is that their refresh rate is still only 60hz... like when people connect them thinking they are going to be a supremely hot shit monitor only to find there's no mega refresh rates to be found.


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## Prima.Vera (Sep 17, 2011)

Is a long debate here. It seems that human EYE perceive fluid motion from ~25fps, and cannot "record" more than ~65-74fps. However, the human BRAIN is far more capable, and can take and process up to several hundred fps. Imagine like this. If you would have some high speed cameras instead of your eyes, you wouldn't see the trail made by a fast moving laser for example, and see just the fast moving dot...


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## driver66 (Sep 17, 2011)

Send this to Myth Busters


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## ctrain (Sep 18, 2011)

Prima.Vera said:


> Is a long debate here. It seems that human EYE perceive fluid motion from ~25fps, and cannot "record" more than ~65-74fps. However, the human BRAIN is far more capable, and can take and process up to several hundred fps. Imagine like this. If you would have some high speed cameras instead of your eyes, you wouldn't see the trail made by a fast moving laser for example, and see just the fast moving dot...



Film has motion blur, that's why it doesn't look like choppy shit at 24hz.


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## Horrux (Sep 18, 2011)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> i play quake live and it is an immense difference between 60 and 120Hz (samsung 2233RZ), the game feels way smoother, and when you are aiming moving in game, you can clearly see the difference, also it is way easier on the eyes.



I also have the Samsung 2233rz and I must say, 120hz refresh rate is a completely different ball game from 60hz. I will NEVER go back to a 60hz display for gaming. N-E-V-E-R. Yes, the difference is major.


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## qubit (Sep 18, 2011)

ctrain said:


> Film has motion blur, that's why it doesn't look like choppy shit at 24hz.



I agree that the blur smooths it out a fair amount, but it still there, especially on panning shots. They really should get away from this format and make movies at a high frame rate.



Horrux said:


> I also have the Samsung 2233rz and I must say, 120hz refresh rate is a completely different ball game from 60hz. I will NEVER go back to a 60hz display for gaming. N-E-V-E-R. Yes, the difference is major.



Yeah, you noticed too.  I used to have one of those monitors. And if the computer drops a few frames, it's not half as noticeable, is it?


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## Mussels (Sep 18, 2011)

Shihabyooo said:


> Just as the title says, do games or programs or any other form of motion picture play/run smoother at a framerate higher than 60fps ? Or is the the popular opinion that says the human eye can't notice any difference in framerates higher than 60fps is tactually a fact ?



humans can see well over 300FPS. the reason you dont see much of a difference is the source material - a 120Hz screen means squat if you run a movie at 24FPS (with added blur to smooth it out)



also, people see '200' and '240'Hz HDTV's and think "well that doesnt look any better" because again, 60Hz inputs (at most)



summary: god yes it looks ton better, IF you actually use it fully.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 18, 2011)

Recently just switched to a Asus VG236H 120hz. Was playing a bunch of games lately.. I was first skeptical about the smoothness.. At first I was like 'meh.. looks the same'.. But then I forgot to set the refresh rate to 120hz in the advanced video settings. Booted up Guildwars and was amazed.. it just like playing it on a crt way back when I had it 06' lol!

You can really see and define the textures when you move the camera.


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## seronx (Sep 18, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> Recently just switched to a Asus VG236H 120hz. Was playing a bunch of games lately.. I was first skeptical about the smoothness.. At first I was like 'meh.. looks the same'.. But then I forgot to set the refresh rate to 120hz in the advanced video settings. Booted up Guildwars and was amazed.. it just like playing it on a crt way back when I had it 06' lol!
> 
> You can really see and define the textures when you move the camera.



You are making me want to buy a 120Hz monitor


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## qubit (Sep 18, 2011)

Mussels said:


> humans can see well over 300FPS. the reason you dont see much of a difference is the source material - a 120Hz screen means squat if you run a movie at 24FPS (with added blur to smooth it out)
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Absolutely, +1.

If a TV has good frame interpolation technology, then it can help somewhat - someone here posted a link to a video demonstrating this (spinning tennis racket with interpolated frames inserted). However, we still have the same Nyquist sampling limit present as the original source was only ever sampled 24Hz, 30Hz or whatever. And of course, interpolation brings with it its own arrtefacts, too. I haven't seen a TV with it yet that doesn't mess up the picture at times with judders and odd artefacts appearing in the picture.

Nyquist frequency

Nyquist rate

Yes, they're different - take a look!


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## Horrux (Sep 18, 2011)

qubit said:


> I agree that the blur smooths it out a fair amount, but it still there, especially on panning shots. They really should get away from this format and make movies at a high frame rate.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, you noticed too.  I used to have one of those monitors. And if the computer drops a few frames, it's not half as noticeable, is it?



I agree on both counts, the movies really make my eyes go "WHAT?" on panning shots or fast action scenes. And about my 120hz monitor, I am often content with 90fps that I can SEE, especially at super quality settings, and I notice that I am often unsatisfied and start looking to diminish my quality settings when things slow down to... About 60 fps. 

I certainly am looking forward to enjoying BF3 and Skyrim at 100+fps silky smoothness.

Oh, another thing I noticed: My wife games on the 40" HDTV downstairs (yes my wife is a gamer, be jealous) and 60fps looks good. But then again, that's seeing it from a much further distance than we generally look at our monitors from, so I guess that also makes a difference, and some sense if you think of it as the visual distance between frames. At the movies it is often simply too huge, no matter that you sit far away from the screen, due to its size, and so in my living room a compromise is made, but in front of a monitor, it's another ball game entirely. Hopefully this last paragraph makes some sense....


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 22, 2011)

seronx said:


> You are making me want to buy a 120Hz monitor



But it really depends on how many frames youd get in a game.. Its glorious in apps that go 100fps+.. old games like Guildwars or older engines like Valve's Source (L4D2 looks awesome) or console titles.

But say that you wont go above 60fps, it feels just the same with your standard 60hz monitor. Basically switching to a 120hz monitor requires you to have a meaty machine as well.


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## Mussels (Sep 22, 2011)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> But it really depends on how many frames youd get in a game.. Its glorious in apps that go 100fps+.. old games like Guildwars or older engines like Valve's Source (L4D2 looks awesome) or console titles.
> 
> But say that you wont go above 60fps, it feels just the same with your standard 60hz monitor. *Basically switching to a 120hz monitor requires you to have a meaty machine as well.*



twice as fast, literally. 


thankfully, if you're ok with a mix of medium/high settings, most modern games double your FPS just by dropping a few key settings (AA/useless shaders/tesselation)


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Sep 22, 2011)

The "600 hz" of a plasma may be bull but the smoothness is real. I'm not really sure what exactly is responsible for it but motion on my plasma looks incredibly slick compared to LCD displays. 

In general I don't think it's all about refresh and frame rates. I think sync is a big factor. Say the eye can only see 300 fps, yet you can still see an improvement at 1200 fps. The frequency that your eye and the display are updating at might be the same but out of sync. By going several times higher you overcome that polling variance. For natural real world viewing there is no frame rate on the "display" side; it's practically infinite. To really get a display that provides a life-like image you need the fastest refresh and response times possible. CRT response at 1200 HZ might be ideal but I don't know of any display tech on the horizon that could do that.


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## qubit (Sep 22, 2011)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> The "600 hz" of a plasma may be bull but the smoothness is real. I'm not really sure what exactly is responsible for it but motion on my plasma looks incredibly slick compared to LCD displays.


No, you're not imagining it. LCDs have inherent motion blur and judder that cannot be completely removed. CRTs and plasmas don't have this problem, so animation looks nice and smooth. The fact that your plasma interpolates frames to show more per second makes it even smoother, as you've noticed. 



LAN_deRf_HA said:


> In general I don't think it's all about refresh and frame rates. I think sync is a big factor. Say the eye can only see 300 fps, yet you can still see an improvement at 1200 fps. The frequency that your eye and the display are updating at might be the same but out of sync. By going several times higher you overcome that polling variance. For natural real world viewing there is no frame rate on the "display" side; it's practically infinite. To really get a display that provides a life-like image you need the fastest refresh and response times possible. CRT response at 1200 HZ might be ideal but I don't know of any display tech on the horizon that could do that.


I think you're confused here. The human eye and brain don't have a refresh rate. There's no "polling" going on inside you. It's just one smooth motion (with motion blur).


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## Millennium (Sep 22, 2011)

This just makes me want to get a 46" 3d full hd plasma. I mean, why not 

Still I would have to drop about £600 pounds into it. But a decent size and spec 120hz monitor is at least half that. I know it would only show 60 fps but lag-free CRT quality 60 fps would be so cool 

and i could watch movies too! yep im sold.


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## ivicagmc (Sep 22, 2011)

IPS+120Hz, that is what I want to see... 120Hz is probably way smother, than 60Hz, but picture quality comes first. I would never change my Dell IPS for some TN 120Hz...


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## qubit (Sep 22, 2011)

ivicagmc said:


> IPS+120Hz, that is what I want to see... 120Hz is probably way smother, than 60Hz, but picture quality comes first. I would never change my Dell IPS for some TN 120Hz...



I'll bet the technology is out there, but it's just not possible to produce it at a low enough price.


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## Horrux (Sep 22, 2011)

qubit said:


> I'll bet the technology is out there, but it's just not possible to produce it at a low enough price.



The refresh rate of IPS is painfully slow, I don't think they will EVER produce 120hz IPS. Not with OLED around the corner with 1200hz and RGB^2 color gamut.


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## qubit (Sep 22, 2011)

Horrux said:


> The refresh rate of IPS is painfully slow, I don't think they will EVER produce 120hz IPS. Not with OLED around the corner with 1200hz and RGB^2 color gamut.



You're probably right about it not ever being made. And OLED is indeed vastly superior if they can get the panel lifetime up to reasonable levels and keep the cost down. Heck, it might even be better than plasma, but that remains to be seen.


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## ivicagmc (Sep 22, 2011)

Horrux said:


> Not with OLED around the corner with 1200hz and RGB^2 color gamut.



Just a minute... IPS refers to matrix(panel) of monitor, not the background lightening... There are LED IPS panels (LG IPS236V), and OLED is background lightening, or I'm wrong? Than I see no problem in making OLED IPS...


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## Millennium (Sep 22, 2011)

OLED is not background lighting, it's individual LEDs for each pixel with their own brightness. and it's 100x better then LCD / "LED"


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## MilkyWay (Sep 22, 2011)

RGB LED IPS monitors do exist im sure.
IPS monitors are always getting faster with every revision, you can pick one up and use it for gaming without the major problems associated with IPS.

Movies dont run at 24hz they run at film standard 24fps or 23.333... im sure? AS you can get 24p compatible blu ray players and tvs like my tv. The refresh rate is not changed, it can still run at 60hz or 50hz.


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## Horrux (Sep 22, 2011)

MilkyWay said:


> RGB LED IPS monitors do exist im sure.
> IPS monitors are always getting faster with every revision, you can pick one up and use it for gaming without the major problems associated with IPS.
> 
> Movies dont run at 24hz they run at film standard 24fps or 23.333... im sure? AS you can get 24p compatible blu ray players and tvs like my tv. The refresh rate is not changed, it can still run at 60hz or 50hz.



It's 23.976hz. You can call it 24.


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## Mussels (Sep 23, 2011)

and it works because the screens double it to roughly 50Hz/FPS, which is what people miss out on when they make the argument '24fps is enough'


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