I
t’s the Holy Grail of current gaming PCs—
144fps. You’ve splurged on a great gaming
monitor, and paired it up with the fastest CPU
and one of the best graphics cards money can
buy. It’s so smooth, so responsive, and you’re
ready to dominate your opponents with your superior
skills—or at least your higher refresh rate. There’s only
one problem. Hitting 144fps in many games is difficult,
and sometimes it’s just flat out impossible. What gives?
It starts with a game’s core design and features. Not to throw
shade on consoles, but when several of the current generation
gaming platforms cannot output at higher than 60Hz, it’s only
natural that the games played on them don’t go out of their
way to exceed 60fps—or even 30fps in some cases. When a
game developer starts from that perspective, it can be very
difficult to correct down the line. We’ve seen games like Fallout
4 tie physics, movement speed, and more to framerate, often
with undesirable results.
It’s not just about targeting 30 or 60fps, however. Game
complexity keeps increasing, and complexity means doing
more calculations. Singleplayer games are typically a different
experience than multiplayer games. The latter are inherently
more competitive, which means higher fps can be more
beneficial for the top players, and they often omit a bunch of
things that can increase frametimes.
Think about games like Counter-Strike, Overwatch, PUBG,
and Fortnite, for example. There’s very little in the way of AI or
NPC logic that needs to happen. Most of the world is static,
and it’s only the players running around, which means a lot
less overhead and the potential for higher framerates.
Primarily singleplayer games are a different matter. Look
at the environments of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Monster
Hunter World, and Hitman 2. There can be hundreds of
creatures, NPCs, and other entities that need to be processed.
That can bog down even the fastest CPUs.
Yes, the CPU and not the GPU. While the GPU is often
considered the bottleneck for gaming performance, it’s
mostly about selecting the appropriate resolution and
graphics quality. Turn down the settings and/or resolution far
enough and the CPU becomes the limiting factor. And in
complex games, that CPU limit can easily fall below 144fps.
While a fast graphics card is often necessary to hit 144fps, an
equally fast CPU may also be required.
This is shown by benchmarks for games such as
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Hitman 2, and Monster Hunter
World. Running at 1080p and low or medium quality, there’s
excellent scaling in terms of CPU performance, but 144fps is
still a difficult hurdle to clear. More importantly, the scaling
comes mostly from clockspeed, with core and thread counts
being less of a factor—especially moving beyond 6-core
processors. That’s because most games are still ruled by aEven if you can’t
maintain 144fps
or more, 144Hz
refresh rates are
still awesome.
The higher
quality 144Hz
displays also
support G-Sync
and FreeSync,
which can help
avoid noticeable
stutters and
tearing when
you drop a bit
below 144fps.Everybody
HertzFRAME PERFECT
Why is hitting 144fps so hard?
Massive crowds can
prevent your PC from
reaching 144fps.TECH
REPORT